A Request from Church Communications Pro to You!

I can’t tell you how excited and blessed I am to be given this opportunity here at Church Communications Pro and to be able to explore new territory! I have all kinds of ideas jumping around in my head but I know that I am going to have to pace myself and learn some new skills and take time to do this right. I am going to share a bit of what I envision happening here at some point:

  • Great interviews and Q & A Sessions with some really cool people from a variety of church backgrounds, visions, and skills. I love learning from others in the trenches and hope this will be a sweet addition.
  • Pre-designed and Open Source products such as sermon branding kits, blog headers, website skins, connect cards, and more. I have stuff I have been working on for some time as well as have a few talented designers who will be contributing their stuff as well.
  • Guest writers who will contribute excellent articles in their area of gifting or skill sets.
  • Consulting for churches
  • Sponsorship opportunities and additional resources

These are just a few ideas that I have, but what I am requesting is feedback from you, the Church Communications Pro readers. What are your suggestions for improving or building upon the foundation here? What would be beneficial for your church or ministry? How can I make CCP even better? Please think about providing your two cents to me personally or responding here in the comment section. I really appreciate it!

April 10, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging, WordPress

3 Comments 

Finetuning Your WordPress Blog as a Content Management System

Raj at Performancing has a nice post about using WordPress as a content management sytem.

He lists these benefits as reasons to use WordPress as a CMS:

  1. Undated URLs — Change the permalink structure. Click on the “Options” tab then “Permalinks.”
  2. Posts vs pages — On most of the sites I do with WordPress, the permalink structure looks pretty much the same for posts and pages.
  3. Contact forms — I use Chip’s contact form and love it … I think I’m getting more response from people as you don’t have to copy and paste an email address, etc.
  4. About Us page

See also how to finetune your WordPress blog with this excellent article.

You might also check out the whole series on using WordPress as a content management system I did recently …

March 17, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging, WordPress

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One Rockin Site Map Generator WordPress Plugin for Your Blog

Check out this rockin plugin for your WordPress-driven blog or church website called Really Simple Site Map.It lists every post and page you’ve ever published and a solution to a more polish sitemap than the Google Sitemap Generator plugin (which still rocks).

See how it works by looking at my site map — and every post I’ve blogged about here.

I get dizzy looking at it … lots of sleepless nights!

[Found via Weblog Tools Collection]

Update: Lorelle of the famous and insanely useful Lorelle on WordPress blog stopped by to correct some things about this post. She gave me an education … and I’m just honored she stopped by! Here’s what she said in the comments that I don’t want you to miss:

Just a little clarification is needed here. There is a LOT of confusion between the terms “sitemap” and “site map”.

A “site map” is a listing of your blog posts on your blog, like a table of contents. This is what the poorly named “Really Simple Sitemap” does. It should be “Really Simple Site Map”.

A “sitemap” is a hidden XML file that is read by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines as a guide to all your blog posts. It isn’t “readable” by humans since it is inside a bunch of code. That’s what the Google Sitemap Plugin does. That’s correctly named.

You might want to fix your post to correctly label what does what. You offer such great information, I’d hate to see this confusion be perpetuated.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

March 12, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging, Blogging Tips, WordPress

1 Comment 

Free Contact Email Forms For Your Church Website

If you’ve been following my Using WordPress to Run Church Websites series, then I need to add an additional plugin that allows you to easily put a contact form on your church website.

Here are two plugin options that automate the form and process:

March 4, 2007 · Filed Under Church Marketing, Church Websites, WordPress

1 Comment 

A Small Church Pastor’s 5 Reasons for Using WordPress on Their Church Website

This is a guest post written by Micah Fries

As a pastor of a small church who feels like they are slightly more adept at handling technology than the average pastor, I still recognize that there is an enormous gap between what I am comfortable dealing with and what is available in the world of technology, particularly as it relates to the setting of the local church.

If I, who utilizes technology fairly often, find it to often be confusing I can only imagine that it must be almost dizzying for most church leaders, particularly leaders in small churches who often feel technologically inadequate.

So today I want to take just a few minutes and share some personal motivations for using WordPress as our church’s website management system. I hope that if you are a pastor a small church and/or ministry, these reasons will help motivate you to choose WordPress for you website needs.

Here’s my five reasons for using WordPress on your church website: Read more

February 27, 2007 · Filed Under Web Site Design, WordPress

9 Comments 

Great WordPress Themes Designed Just for Churches: Tim at LivingOS

Tim at LivingOS has some additional comments on my reasons to choose WordPress for your church website.

Also, if you haven’t check out his free WordPress themes that ROCK for churches, you need to go there now. I really like how he’s laid out some of those templates.

Check out his list of WordPress-driven church websites.

February 23, 2007 · Filed Under Web Site Design, WordPress, WordPress Themes

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