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While the availability of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and others have connected us in ways that are awesome and crazy convenient, these platforms are owned and controlled by corporations.
You are merely renting space on these platforms; subject to the changing markets and complicated algorithms that are designed to maximize profits for these companies.
This is why we believe having your very own website is crucial to doing the mission work you are called to as followers of Jesus Christ.
Your own website gives you total and complete control over its content.
You have control via SEO (search engine optimization) in being found by potential visitors to your church.
Your own website gives you a more flexible platform to truly showcase who you are as a congregation. You’re not limited or restricted in any way by a specific platform.
The Basics (it’s not hard!)
Domain
First you need a domain name. This is so you can direct folks to a web address that makes sense to them, like www.thisawesomechurch.org.
Geek alert-> the server where your website is stored, really refers to your site with a series of cryptic numbers known as an IP (internet protocol) address, e.g. 172.1.55.165. The servers that host your website, translate this IP to the domain name.
For many churches and nonprofits, the extension or part that comes after the second dot is typically .org – which means organization. For-profit “companies” typically have the .com. Some companies even offer .church as a domain!
And there are a whole host of new extensions being created, to further niche down sites, separate them by geographic region and basically allow more options to be available.
Hosting
After you have registered a domain name, you’ll then need a hosting company where your website files will live. Sure, self-hosting is an option, but not one we would recommend churches take on. Your “business” is that of spreading the Gospel and not monitoring hard drive space and security threats!
Hosting companies are plentiful with lots of options for different levels of service.
Some hosting companies go so far as specializing in hosting specific platforms, such as WordPress.
Geek alert-> Their servers are optimally configured to serve up WordPress sites quickly and securely.
Hosting costs can vary widely; ranging from about $3 to $30 per month. As the cost increases, the server space and services available increase accordingly. Higher priced plans will host your site on beefier servers with a snappier response rate for your visitors. You may also be able to go to the front of the line if you have support needs and need to talk to a live person.
Typically, the cost per month will be lower in the first year of your hosting contract and be increased the next year. Be cautious that the “low, low price” isn’t only when you buy into a multi year contract.
Free Hosting
There are a decent number of companies offering free hosting to any one, not just non-profits.
Geek alert-> The specific offerings vary from vendor to vendor, but overall storage space allocated is fairly low, ranging from 500MB to 10GB.
Each may have their own little quirks about them, e.g. one vendor takes the sites down for 1 hour everyday (ostensibly for maintenance). Additionally, getting live support or timely email support could be a challenge with these options.
Dreamhost.com, offers a totally free shared hosting package to non-profits; this currently includes 50GB of storage, email hosting and FTP accounts. This is very generous compared to the other free offers we’ve seen.
As with anything, the old adage applies here: ”you get what you pay for.” The servers may not be offering up your site with lightning speed and you’ll likely have to take care of backups yourself. (A good practice anyway!)
Platforms
WordPress
WordPress is an open source platform or more specifically, a content management system (CMS) that offers a humongous array of options by way of themes (the look and navigation of your site), plugins (extra functionality) available and drag and drop page builders (Elementor, Divi).
In many cases, as a church, you don’t need to know any programming languages like “html”, “css” or “php” to have an effective site.
Wix/Squarespace
Wix and Squarespace are platforms advertised as “do it yourself” website builders; featuring very easy to use drag and drop builders and done for you templates that are basically “plug and play”. They have hosting and plugin costs included, so it’s essentially one stop shopping. Where with these platforms you gain convenience, you are giving up flexibility. Since WordPress is “open source” that means anyone can create and contribute themes and plugins to the WordPress ecosystem.
This is not the case for Wix and Squarespace, where there is a closed, partnership arrangement with third party vendors. Great upside to this arrangement is less variability in the quality of the plugins; they are more likely to ‘just work’ on these platforms.
Cost wise, all will be competitive, but TIME wise, WordPress will be more of a time investment in the learning curve if you’re going to be bootstrapping your site and building it yourself.
Church Website Builders
There’s another flavor of platform in the church website space. And that’s companies offering church and mission focused templates that give you control over content and theme selection. They are pretty cost competitive, but on the down side, require a month or yearly contract. So if you leave their service, in most cases, you no longer have “a website”. You certainly can take copies of your content, but the themes and look and feel of the site while using these builders are proprietary and specific to the vendor.
So Many Choices!
While a lot of choices and options can be confusing, it can also be a big advantage to you as the consumer.
Not only are many of these vendors cost competitive, but feature competitive as well.
You have to figure out what makes the best sense for your church or faith community. And if you need help along those lines, Digivangelism would be happy to come alongside you and have those conversations.
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