Introducing the Using WordPress for Church Websites Tutorial Series

wordpress for church websites tutorial series

Today, I’m kicking off another tutorial series …

I’m calling this new series Using WordPress to Run Church Websites. In this series, I want to explore how a church could use WordPress, the free blogging platform that runs this site and thousands more like it, as a cheap, easy and flexible content management system to both create a church website as well as easily maintain it.

Don’t be baffled by the phrase “content management system”(or CMS). That fancy phrase is just a way to describe online software programs that allow people to easily update websites without the use of desktop software like Adobe DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage. Everything is done on the Internet using an interface that often resembles a word processor like Microsoft Word.

I tell most people that if they can operate Microsoft Word, they can use a content management system like WordPress.

Let me say at the outset of this series that I think WordPress is NOT a good alternative for all churches to use to run their main website. In fact, WordPress is designed primarily to create and maintain blogs. BUT it is flexible enough with lots of functionality to also run a primary website.

And I DO believe it could be an easy and affordable solution for the thousands of small- to medium-sized churches out there struggling to maintain or even create an Internet presence.

Because I use WordPress for the websites I design, I thought this might be a good tutorial series for those churches to walk through. So in this series, I’m going to share with you some of the tweaks and lessons I’ve learned with using this powerful program to run a small church website and how to leverage it for greater exposure for your church.

At times this will get technical, I apologize beforehand for it, but I will endeavor to keep this as simple as possible. Along the way, if you have questions or ideas for posts, please send me an email.

So without further ado, let the series begin.

The master story list for this series will be located here. Please bookmark this page and refer back to it.

January 24, 2007 · Filed Under Church Marketing, Web Site Design, WordPress

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Comments

One Response to “Introducing the Using WordPress for Church Websites Tutorial Series”

Wayne Hatcher on March 21st, 2007 10:52 am

Dear Cory,
I found your site about six months ago from reading Micah Fries blog. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten around to writing you sooner, but I keep telling myself that I am just too busy at the moment, so I have put it off and put it off; until I needed something (grin).

I do have a question, but I want to thank you for what you have done on this site. Discovering PodPress alone was worth the full price of admission. Add to that your “WordPress for Churches” series and, well, I don’t know what to say. It has been a blessing and a curse at the same time. I have undertaken to revamp my church’s web site using WordPress, and am about 80% complete. What I am looking for at this moment (”my question to you”) is a feed for the Baptist Messenger. I have a sidebar feed for Baptist Press, but am unable to find anything for the Messenger. I know it is out there, somehow, because I have seen it on some other church sites using mychurchwebsite.net. Do you have any ideas?

The way I have been working on this new site for my church was to install a second WordPress on my server under a subdomain, and then when it is complete I plan to copy the database files and import them onto a new server (not yet) owned by the church. I am not sure how that is done, but it has worked so far for me. If you would like to take a look at the in-progress it is

http://testsite.theplowman.org

Could you do a post sometime on how to work on a site “out of the public eye,” and how to transfer domain names, etc.

Thanks again,
Wayne Hatcher
Trinity Baptist
Tulsa