Starting a Church Website on a Shoestring: Part 1 of 2
Posted by Anna Belle on 19 Jun 2007 at 06:29 pm | Tagged as: Church Websites
Not all churches have websites. Those of us who have them tend to take them for granted and assume that everyone else has them too. But the more I explore this area, the more I learn that’s just not so.
These are wonderful, vibrant churches, with people who understand the importance of the digital age. Once they know of my interest in websites for churches, they’ll say, “We don’t have a website. What should we do?”
I got an email like this about a week ago. The person said she plans to start with a meeting. In my opinion that’s the single smartest thing she can do, but it’s not a guarantee. There are no silver bullets for creating a good church website – not even a meeting, much as I love meetings.
She doesn’t live close to me, so I can’t do what I’m used to – that is, help in a hands-on kind of way. So to try to answer her question, I imagined what I’d do if I were running the meeting, but was only allowed to delegate and not permitted to do any of the technical work.
Here’s my strategy:
1. Plan for the meeting
- Ask the best people you can think of, including likely prospects to be writers, editors, photographers and coders, to attend. It’s especially important to get leadership buy-in. So if you can find a minister, senior staff or lay leader who is interested, by all means include them.
- Set it up at a time most of them can come.
- Plan for an informal, comfortable setting – for maybe a couple of hours, with snacks. If it has wireless and people bring laptops, that’s great, but not required.
2. Organize your ideas for the meeting. Things to consider include:
- What content is most needed. Research this on the web, particularly looking for church content that’s simple but effective. If you can, get a sense of what’s easier and what’s harder to do.
- Your best options for a host and software to run the site. This is probably going to be the most challenging and important decision and I intend to blog on it in Part 2. Options range from WordPress to hiring a web company.
- Possible domain names.
3. Run a very focused meeting.
- If someone can take minutes, that will be very helpful.
- Be clear about your goals. My primary goals at this stage would be to identify talents, garner support and further refine the wish list for the site. Once you know what people can do and what they want from the site, it’s going to be easier to pick a solution.
- Develop an action plan – who will be doing what and when. This doesn’t have to be comprehensive – just concrete things you know need to be done to get the process moving.
4. Follow-up.
- Distribute the minutes as soon as you can.
- Develop a schedule based on the action plan, and follow up with the appropriate people at the appropriate times if you haven’t heard from them.
- Make plans to reconvene at least a core group. Depending on how big the congregation is and how lofty your goals are, it could be a large group or it could be as small as just two of you over lunch.
Remember: the most important thing is to enjoy this. It could be an opportunity for you to learn new skills, deepen connections in your church or broaden your circle. In the end, the process is every bit as important as the product. After all, it’s church we’re talking about.
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If I were planning on putting together a meeting like this I would try and take the focus away from any technical aspects. I have seen various attempts for websites nearly killed in infancy because the techies “absolutely must” decide if the project will support Open Source technologies before they will participate, leaving the non techies out of the conversation entirely. On websters I have frequently seen complaints that “no one will participate” and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that comes from the non techies feeling they can’t contribute.
Thing about a website for a congregation is that it’s about communication. Who is your target audience? Potential new members? Existing members? Larger UU community interested in your particular church/history? What do you want to say to the various audiences? This is what the church website is all about, everything technology related is entirely secondary of importance. A church website running on the coolest most wonderful software can still have poor content, a compelling message delivered by “bad software” can still be of use to people.
With that said it’s important for a somewhat web savvy person to set reasonable boundries on what can and can not be accomplished on a website, vision will exceed reach. I would have techies at the initial meeting, but make it clear that it’s about vision and not implementation. Once clear goals and objectives had been set, then I would go after techies, graphic artists, etc. to make it happen.
UUpdater is right on about how technical discussions can scare off good, non-geek volunteers who are interested in contributing to a church website. Focusing on the communications aspect as outlined in the comment is great advice.
Before a kick-off meeting, get some high level buy-in from your pastor and/or council on whether they would support the idea of a website in the first place. Waiting until the meeting is too late. Find out what their top goals are and explore how a website can help meet those. Try to get a sense of what budget you might receive. Knowing if you have $100, $1,000 or $10,000 to work with will focus some of your subsequent hosting and technical discussions.
When brainstorming content ideas with your team, look to your organization’s strategic plan or annual goals to see how a website can fit in. You’ll also want to survey your congregation to see what content they are interested in, which just might be different than what your eager volunteers have in mind.
Regarding domain names, if you have a good one in mind that’s still available then I’d grab it, or at least park it, before the meeting. We lost a good one by a day when a volunteer failed to jump on it in time after a kick-off meeting back in 1998.
Hi. This is so true. I see lots of church websites made by techie geeks who have crammed them full of flashy features but sadly missed the mark on making a site that communicates well. One of the sources I found really helpful (for a non-techie webmaster like myself) was http://www.church123.com they have a free church website design guide which is well worth reading. I suspect even the techie people would get something good out of that too.
Thank you all so much. These are really helpful thoughts. I whole-heartedly agree that initially (as UUpdater put it) it’s about vision, not implementation and that a techie’s role is just to make sure the vision can be done.
That said, I was thinking more about churches that don’t have techies at their fingertips, though they do have people who are tech-capable. For example, I’m likely to be helping a local church with a pastor who is a PR wonder, but doesn’t have a website. He doesn’t have any tech people in his congregation, but he’s not shy about asking me, and I’m glad to help.
For that group, I’m likely to look for people who are willing to learn some technology so they can do it themselves without me, and together we choose a technology that most suits who they have, as well as their goals.
I also agree with Mark that management buy-in at the front-end is critical. As for budget — I meant to say something about that in my original post, and forgot.
All in all, this is a significantly harder topic to parse than a more nuts-and-bolts one, and so I’m particularly appreciative of comments to flesh the topic out.
Thanks for all these suggestions. I will use them for our meeting. I’m learning a lot as I go along, and there is still more to learn with developing a website. If I come up with any more questions, I will ask.