What Should Be “Members Only” On a Church Website?
Posted by Anna Belle on 22 Jun 2007 at 06:19 am | Tagged as: Church Websites
At long last, our church has launched a “Members Only” area of the site.
Why we’ve wanted one is simple: for our membership directory. It contains all that critical, but often private, information like phone numbers and email addresses. The idea first came up in 1996, believe it or not. But things generally move slowly in the church web world. Particularly with potentially touchy areas like this, it’s good to take it slowly and wait for the right time.
So the right time is here, we’ve got it going, and suddenly I wonder, now what? Is there anything else we can use this password-protected area for? It’s basically one folder locked down with an .htaccess file that requires you to sign in with the secret password.
Here are some other ideas:
- The budget. A while back we posted a proposed budget on our main site before a congregational meeting. It saved paper, since we didn’t have to mail it to all members, but somehow I just wasn’t comfortable with it being so visible to the larger world. A members’ only area seems a better place.
- Old newsletters. They are chock-full of information that members don’t want Google remembering ad nauseam.
- Maybe, just maybe, an announcement board. Members frequently suggest that we have an area of the site where they can post information about their businesses, needs, etc. Basically they hope for an online church classifieds section. What usually happens is they say to me, “I think you should set up an area where I can post X.” It’s the pronoun that gets me every time. Actually the verb bothers me some too. Yes, I can set one up, but the issue is who will maintain it? The thinking is usually that it will take care of itself, but that’s just not so. So, if we can find someone eager to tend to such an online board, I’m all for it.
Do you have other things you use a Members Only area for? I would love to know if others have tried this and what you have learned from it.
Update July 4: For more on this topic, see guest blogger Dean Goddette’s post: Members Only: A Wiki in Sheep’s Clothing.
Subscribe in a reader
It’s a really good point. So many churches just slam up a members area for no real reason. My church deliberately doesn’t have a password protected area as it can seem very unfriendly and unwelcoming. If you’re going to have one it’s good to put it to real use. I’d suggest you hide the links to the members area somewhere off the main menu and make it sound boring (Click here for serving rotas – password required) sort of thing. You may like to read our church website design guide at http://www.church123.com/design. Hope that’s helpful.
Thanks. These are great suggestions. I particularly like the “make it sound boring” suggestion. I’m sorry it took me a while to respond. Askimet thought your comment was spam, but I just found it.
Au contraire. It’s not boring and it attracts people. I recently created a members section using mediawiki and it has been growing rapidly as people catch on (http://members.chaliceuu.org)
The members only section has turned into a very exciting part of our website. It is on a subdomain but there is a link from our main page. Because people can see the members-only index page without an account, they have a clear idea what is in there and it makes sense why it is members only. People can clearly see that there are things happening and that this is an active vibrant congregation.
The opening page & a select set are open to the public. Currently content includes:
* Minutes
* Official documents (eg. MUP)
* Maps, drawing & diagrams of the facility
* Directory of Members
* Congregational History while it is under development
* ByLaws
* ByLaw drafts
* Long Range Planning docs
* Committee pages (title, purpose, members, minutes)
* Policies
* Forms
* News clippings
* Support documents such as instructions for Greeters, etc.
* Event photos
Dean
PS. I think that the other email is spam. Why else would their “name” be a direct link to their “church website” website. Didn’t know you could do that but I see how.
Ooops! I see that it did it with my name, too. !-0 Doh!
Wow! These are excellent suggestions, Dean. Now I’m planning on spending some time this weekend improving our fledgling members-only area. I particularly like the support documents, e.g. for greeters. And for things like that, a little wiki might be a great platform. Hmmmm…..
As my husband went through the ministerial search process, I went through church websites. It was astounding, the range of what was locked down and what wasn’t. Members-only areas, for my purposes, were extremely frustrating when they included not only the archives of the newsletter, but the current edition, too. But there were other websites where things like bylaw changes and minutes of the annual meeting (including the budget) were all there for the seeing — one particular church articulated quite clearly their anti-ministerial bias through bylaw changes, and we chose not to apply there as a result (the board can fire the minister with a majority vote, without consulting the congregation — yikes!!)
I think it would be useful to have some kind of guest-access for visitors who are considering deepening their relationship with the church — maybe collect some information from them for a “welcome wagon” type thing, and let them into the section provisionally? But again, it comes down to how welcoming that can be, compared to how vulnerable the congregation might be with certain information open to the public.
I think, fundamentally, this issue is really about a church’s approach to the web in general — do they want to be “safe” and protect members’ privacy, or do they want to let it all hang out as a way of welcoming all possible visitors?
I think the examples from the post would actually make excellent additions to the public site and don’t belong locked away.
- Budgets (proposed or actual): These documents demonstrate what’s important to an organization. Having these as open as possible shows that you have nothing to hide and that you welcome input. Even more so for prospective budgets or planned spending. Most churches put their appeals for donations on the public site; what’s done with the money once received should be there as well. Exceptions would be staff salaries and such, which should be aggregated.
- Old newsletters: Great sources of long-tail terms and important for SEO. These also give prospective members a sense of what your community is all about. If your newsletters include articles “that members don’t want Google remembering ad nauseam,” should these even be said in the first place?
- Announcement boards: If I were advertising a business such as in the example mentioned above, I’d want as broad an audience as possible.
I can see the member directory as an exception. However, if it’s in an electonic form then it’s not hard to imagine the list becoming public when someone accidentally emails it outside the approved group.
Even the exciting work that Dean is doing doesn’t feel like it needs to be secret and locked down for the most part. I can see the need to control who has write-acesss, but limiting read-access can send the wrong message.
Jess and Mark — You’re both on to something here. Jess — I’m not sure if I’d call putting tons of info in a members-only area “safe.” To me it’s a matter of how one defines what’s private. A congregation that hides info from the outside might easily be anything but safe. Of course, it could be unintentional. Really, it’s a boundary issue.
For now, the way my church is doing things is to only put items in the members-only area that wouldn’t be posted at all if they couldn’t be private. I suspect we’re going to get more stuff posted that otherwise wouldn’t get on the web at all, and that seems like a good thing to me.
There was a reason I used quotation marks around “safe” — many people think that if you need a password for something on the web, it’s really protected. But, really, if someone wanted to crack a password on a church website and had the skills, I don’t imagine it would be that hard.
It’s kind of like the anonymous blogging issue — many people who blog “anonymously” write things they wouldn’t with their own name, thinking they’re “safe” behind that pseudonym. But it doesn’t take much to get through that, either.
I guess I think the best way to go about these types of things is to be as intentional as possible. If it would cause major problems if a certain document were seen by a non-member of the church, I don’t think it belongs on the web at all, even password protected. But your minister’s newsletter column? That belongs on the main site.
Good points. I don’t disagree except that each congregation will find their own equilibrium as to what they think needs to be secured.
For our congregation, the security has two purposes: first to allay the congregation’s concerns about identity theft, phishing, etc. and second, to prevent spammers from piling in garbage (big plus for me) or bots from dredging names, phone numbers and addresses.
While we do keep the newsletters in the members only section, I extract articles and post them on our Recent News Blog which appears on our main page.
And “members”-site is really a nominal term. They don’t have to be official members of the congregation. They have to be around enough that someone knows who they are and are interested in something enough to ask for an account.
Jess – I think you’re right about being intentional. That suggests paying attention to the choices when you have a new web possibility. They boil down to:
(1) Post it on the main web site (hopefully in the appropriate section, but that’s a whole different issue).
(2) Post it on the members-only section because of need for moderate privacy (as opposed to security, which again is a whole different issue).
(3) Don’t post it. I’d say the majority of church publications go in this category. They are mostly ephemera, with few-to-zero important documents that are too hot to post. My church used to have a few of those “too hot” documents, but I can’t think of any for quite a number of years. Oh course, maybe they are so hot no one is telling me about them. ;-)
Hi Dean,
It really depends on who is looking at your site. If it’s simply Christians shopping for a new church then that’s fine. But I was considering the viewpoint of someone who never normally goes to church. Most of the stuff on your members area (except the photos) sounds suitably boring. If there really is interesting stuff in your members area then if you can make it accessible without a password so much the better. My concern is with church sites seeming to be clubs that like to shun others by says ‘ACCESS FORBIDDEN’. Let’s try and be as friendly as we can to those who don’t know Jesus. Just my thoughts.