A quick look at our portfolio will reveal that we build our fair share of church sites on WordPress. We’ve average about one per month these days… so we’ve learned a thing or two along the way.

Here’s a quick inventory of essentials

1. Cover the basics on the homepage. 

Your homepage is what your church sign or yellow page ad used to be.  The vast majority of people who check out your church will first look you up online. With that in mind, I want the homepage to purely be for visitors. Does it communicate who we are and more importantly where we are?

2. Make it easy for the staff to update it.

When you boil it down, church websites are pretty simple. There are some static pages, there are some forms for contact, sign-ups, or giving, usually there is a blog of some sort, there’s a calendar, and there is a sermon archive/podcast.

But most important to remember? That there is a staff member who will be tasked with upkeep of this site who isn’t a web developer.

Gravity Forms ($39 per site)

What I like about Gravity Forms is that it’s super easy for the end-user to edit existing forms or create brand new ones. It’s all drag-n-drop via the dashboard. You can build-up Gravity Forms with add-ons to do all sorts of things from hosting surveys to event registration to taking donations. It’s a must-have for a church website using WordPress. 

Custom Post Types – I use Toolset to create custom post types and templates. (Types is free, Views is $95, the full set is $149)

I use custom post types to create functionality for unique tasks. Things like a staff page or a sermon repository. But you could create a custom post type for all sorts of things you’d like to display that gets added to or edited over time. The reason you do this? It makes things easy and efficient for the staff member keeping the site updated.

For instance, this is how a new sermon gets added:

Events Calendar Pro - About half church sites just embed Google Calendar, the other half use ECP, a premium WordPress plugin. ($50 per site)

What I like about ECP is that it’s easy to set-up events for the site admin. And the public display can start as a list of events or a calendar before drilling down into individual events.

Picking ECP versus Google Calendars is really just a matter of the staff team. My advice is to use Google Calendars if your church is already using it. But both options allow people to add items to their Google Calendars, Outlook, or iCal.

Powerpress – For managing your podcast and media feeds. (free)

One of the most common features that churches can’t seem to figure out on their own is a podcast. Distributing sermons is something every church wants to do… and Powerpress makes it pretty simple by adding a form to the bottom of every post. It couldn’t get much easier… upload your MP3 via WordPress’s core media library and drop the link into the box.

3. Make it responsive. I make sure the website looks great on a mobile browser.

We all need to face the reality that about 50% of web visitors are viewing our site on either a mobile phone or a tablet. So, as of about a year ago, every one of our sites is built using responsive design. My goal is to make the site look great on whatever type of device you have. Using CSS, you can make a site respond to various screen sizes pretty easily. Yes, it’s extra hassle. But it’s totally worth it.

Questions? Leave us a comment?

Want us to build a site for your church? Contact us. 

Today, Evernote reported that they’ve been hacked and are forcing millions of users to create a new password.

This is a great reminder of a couple things:

• There’s no such thing as absolute security on the internet, so never post anything online that would hurt you if it were public. 
• It’s a good idea to have a unique password for each web app, so if one is hacked you’re not giving away the keys to your digital kingdom. I’ll teach you a simple way to remember them all below.
• As much as you can depend on Keychain or an app to store your passwords, it’s a good idea to have the most important ones memorized.

Tip for creating and remembering passwords for every web app

Millions of people will reset their Evernote password today. But, if they use that password for everything, they really need to reset a whole bunch of passwords. And that’s a royal pain.

I use a simple naming convention to keep a separate password for every app. Here’s how it works:

Start with a base password, like this: holyCR@p

Then just add the name of the app you are logging into in the same way for every password, like this: [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected]

Simple, easy to create, easy to remember, and absolutely unique to each place you create a password. This is especially useful for things you rarely log into like your airlines frequent flyer program or your gym profile or Myspace.

Want More Help?

If you’re looking for more tips on internet safety, specifically as it relates to family life, check out the book I co-authored with Mark Oestreicher, A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media.