The Pros and Cons of Website CMS (Part Two)

In Part One of this series, I talked about the importance of great design and content – as well as what a content management system is. In this second part, I want to share the advantages (pros) and disadvantages (cons) of using a CMS platform.

THE PROS

1. Quality through templates

The natural structure of a CMS assures that quality is maintained. Most CMS’s use a format where a master administrator controls the “look” of the site including the fonts, colors, navigational structure, content, and special widgets such as site-wide search engines, online giving, or flash banners.

The administrator also has many other options including the ability to set an approval process before a content item can be published or “made live” to the site. This keeps all aspects of the website up to church standards.

Additionally, most companies that offer a CMS platform can provide you with professional design services to “skin” out your site with a custom look or offer an array of pre-designed templates they plug-in and modify to your needs.

2. Functionality

While the quality of your design layout is improved using a solid CMS, the functionality of your site also increases! An example would be a media upload editor, which optimizes media files as they are uploaded to a server, can help increase quality by helping to assure images load quickly and are sized properly. Publish dates assure that updated content gets published at a specified time, though perhaps written weeks earlier. Using time-out date features, contributors to the site can set their content items to expire to assure that no out-of-date content is left on the site.

3. Ease of Use – No Web Development Knowledge Necessary

Almost anyone can edit their website content using a web-based “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor built into the CMS. Adding event information or a news article is as simple as using a word processor. Other features such as those listed below, also can be simple to use after a thorough training session.

4. Features & Plug-ins

One of the greatest advantages of using a quality CMS is the ability to choose a variety of features or plug-ins to use on your site including:

Discussion or collaboration modules
Seamless blog integration
E-Newsletters
Flash or Rotating Banners
E-Invitations
Online Giving or E-Commerce
Audio, Video, and Podcasting

Many systems already come with these “bonus” features so there is no need to purchase different components like what was required in the past.

THE CONS

There are a few disadvantages to using a CMS however. While these are far outweighed by the advantages, fairness demands that we consider a few.

1. Restrictive For Web Designers

Though CMS’s add an element of control for those who are not web savvy, they can be restricting to administrators who have a deep understanding of website design and limit the creative options.

2. The Price

CMS platforms can either be purchased outright and set up on an internal server or “leased” from the CMS provider through a monthly / yearly fee. The first option usually lacks tech support, updates, or training. It requires more involvement and can be more of a hassle or expense. Leasing is a better option because you can get customer support or training but it is way more expensive than a typical monthly hosting plan.

3. Learning Curve

A few systems are fairly easy to learn and many others are more complicated. If the administrator or team member has some knowledge of computer technology and are web savvy, the learning curve will be quicker than a non-techie or non-trained person. Either situation will require a fair amount of training but it is much better than learning all the ins and outs of web design. My advice is to choose a company that provides on-site or online training along with good documentation and manuals.

All things considered, the benefits to a church using a content management system and having a well-designed site far outweigh these minor disadvantages. In part three of this series, we’ll look at how to choose a CMS for your church.

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Chuck Scoggins is Creative Communications Director at Calvary Church in St. Peters, MO and President of 374 Designs. His latest project is Serve15 and you can email him at chuck@374designs.com.

June 3, 2008 · Filed Under Church Media, Church Websites, Web 2.0, Web Site Design

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The Pros and Cons of Website CMS (Part One)

Church websites are an essential piece to the church communication process. In fact, The Pew Research Center states that 64 percent of the nation’s 128 million internet users use the web for religious or spiritual purposes – and nearly 6 out of 10 Protestant churches now have a dedicated website.

If church websites are one of the most effective ways to reach our audience, wouldn’t it make sense to create them to meet the viewer’s expectations?

As a designer, I could write about how a majority of church sites make my stomach turn because they were designed poorly, but during this three part series I really want to focus on the backbone of a website which is the Content Management System (CMS).

We know that content (along with great design) is extremely important to keeping your audience engaged and coming back. It’s like a garden. If you keep it cultivated, watered, and weeded it will bear fruit or vegetables. If not, it will become useless and waste space. The same goes for your church website.

What exactly is a content management system?

A content management system, in general, is a computer software system for organizing and collaborating in the creation of documents and other content. The content management systems I will be discussing are web applications for managing websites and web content.

CMS provides a structure by which churches can use templates to control the “look” of a site; it allows multiple users at various administrative levels to organize the content while maintaining quality. CMS programs are available in various price levels, complexity, and features. They are an optimal choice for large churches (with various departments and potential administrators including volunteers and paid webmasters) and for small churches alike.

There are also advantages and disadvantages to using CMS’s to manage a church’s web site, which I will discuss in part two of this three part series.

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Chuck Scoggins is the Creative Communications Director at Calvary Church in Saint Peters, MO. He also contributes at Church Web Adviser; a publication that provides smaller churches with webmaster tools to accomplish big things with their sites. Chuck is not a Barry Manilow fan.

May 28, 2008 · Filed Under Church Media, Church Websites, Web Site Design

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iThemes Premium WordPress Themes Site Open for Business

If you’ve been following this blog for long, you know that for the last 10 months I’ve been doing freelance web design work. And recently, I left the awesome church staff where I served for the last two years to start a new venture called iThemes.com.

Well …. today we officially launched and rolled our first called Essence.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out some new church-specific themes over at ChurchTheme.com. But, I think, out of the box, these themes could be used very effectively for a small to medium church website.

P.S. – We’re offering a 25% discount on all Essence themes until Thursday, Jan. 31 by entering in this discount code: LAUNCH. To redeem this, simply click the “Add to Cart” button, then enter LAUNCH into the discount code box and Update your cart to reflect your savings.

January 24, 2008 · Filed Under Church Websites

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5 Realities of Church Website Design

Over the last five-plus years of working in the churches, I’ve honed my philosophy of church websites quite a bit. I’m been frustrated often because ministry leaders usually don’t have a concept or idea of what goes into a typical website and the cost of the sites they have dreamed up.

Granted, I like to dream too. But dreaming costs money. And no matter what someone says, web designing is more complex (read: hard) than typical graphic design (i.e. your Sunday bulletin). Meaning, it takes more time, it costs more money, and it’s overall — just harder.

This is why most graphic designers haven’t crossed over. Most graphic designers don’t have to know how to create and tweak code in order to produce beautiful designs. Throw in the fact that web surfers use numerous different browsers, of which all render websites differently, and you can see why it took me so long to do it.

So with all this in mind, here’s a couple of things I’ve come back to often when trying to educate ministry leaders on my philosophy of church websites design and production:

1. Great websites cost money.

Most ministers will see a great website and think that for $39.99 they can have one exactly like it. But if you want a quality church websites, you need to realize, it will cost you a lot more than $39.99. Read more

November 28, 2007 · Filed Under Church Websites

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A Church Event Calendar WordPress Plugin

Although it was designed for touring bands to be able to announce their concert dates, GigaPress could also be the answer to helping churches who are using WordPress post an easy event schedule to their websites.

Here’s a screenshot of what it could look like:

November 27, 2007 · Filed Under Church Websites

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A New Premium Dark WordPress Theme

We recently released another premium WordPress theme to our inventory — Dark News Theme.

It could be used by a church, for a contemporary look. It has a couple of great features, including using a Features post section for upcoming events, and more …