Guides and Guidelines for a Church Web Site
Background Information to Consider
If you are planning on creating, evaluating, or improving a church website,
take a look at some of these resources:
- The ELCA Guide to Developing
Your Own Congregation Web Site - There are quite a few links on this page
leading you to other good resources
- Gospelcom.net Resources
- This is a great place to get you started thinking about web design. Be
sure to follow the links on the lefthand menu bar: Church Sites, Outreach
Strategies, Relate & Chat, Training/Volunteer
- Christian Web Site about
Christian Web Design
- 25
Church Website Design Tips (PDF) from Christian Computing Magazine
- Church
Webmasters Forum
- ForMinistry - full-featured,
free church website building tool, plus many resources for ministry online;
a ministry of American Bible
Society
- Heal Your Church Web Site:
"Teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteous web design."
- Assesing
Church Websites: Studying Best Practices in Online Ministry
- Ten
Internet ‘best practices’ for e-ministry by Terrell Sanders
- Criteria
Used to Review Congregational Web Sites
- Designing
Church Web Sites
- Internet Ministry
Conference
- How do the professionals work? Check out: MyChurchWebsite
- If you are at all unsure about your way around the Internet, take this
excellent
Internet for Religious Studies tutorial / guided tour.
-
Is your website mainly intended for church members, or do you want it to be
more of an evangelistic and outreach medium? For some guidance to online
evangelism, the following are helpful (though keep in mind the theological
perspectives):
Evaluating Church Web Sites
- Evaluating Church Web Sites: Criteria
- You may choose to use the tool in the next bullet, but in general,
keep in mind the following questions:
- Is the site geared toward members or non-members? Is it mainly
insider information or intended to be evangelistically welcoming?
How would a non-member respond to the site?
- Is the site attractive? Easy to navigate? Does it load quickly? Is
it 'fresh'? What is the first impression you get? What is your
final, overall impression?
- What is the focal point of the site? What attracts the most
attention?
- What is this site good for? Would you want to attend this church?
Has this site made it easier or more helpful to attend this church?
- Does this site help create 'community'?
- Evaluating a Church Web Site - This is a
great tool to use, but, as it notes, it is simply a guideline for
evaluation. Do you agree with all the values it values? Follow the
directions to generate a report.
- Church Web Sites to Evaluate
- Evaluate your own home congregation's site
- Evaluate a site of a church of another denomination
- Evaluate a church which you have visited
- Evaluate at least one of the following:
Community and Outreach
What are some things you might do to create community?
- Blogs: They are free and very low maintenance. Try
Blogger or
WordPress. This could either be a
pastoral or congregational project.
- Try MyChurch or even Facebook /
MySpace.
- Voicethread - Try creating a
voice annotated history.
What are some things you might do for your church web site to serve as an
outreach tool?
- What information is a non-member likely to want at your church's site?
- Are the ways you create community the best ways to generate interest for
non-members?