Every church needs a useful website, but few have a big budget. What does a church have to do? My favorite solution is one that I have seen hundreds of churches change in recent years: WordPress. It is a low cost solution (typically less than $ 100 to build and $ 10 / month to host) that is simple to use but flexible enough for the needs of most churches. A staff member or volunteer can build and manage the site without having any coding or design skills. You can even hire a professional and still save money because WordPress is free. There are many reasons why I recommend WordPress to churches, take a look below!
Why use WordPress for your church site?
- WordPress is free thanks to many web developers who voluntary your time and skill
- There is a good selection of themes made for churches to give your site the look you want.
- A staff member or volunteer can build it or you can hire someone to do it for you.
- WordPress makes it easy for multiple users to manage website content
- No coding or design skills are required to build or update a WordPress site
- There are hundreds of plugins to add additional functions to your website
- Your church owns the website because it is self-hosted (more on this later)
- Your church can do anything with the website because WordPress is open source
What's what: Hosting, WordPress, Themes and Plugins
Here's a quick glossary explaining what's what to explain things as we go along.
accommodation
Hosting is where your church website is located on the Internet. yourname.com targets your hosting in order to serve your website to visitors. You can select which hosting provider to use. A typical hosting price is $ 10 per month. R Marketing Digital has some hosting recommendations. Also consider DreamHost's free accommodation for non-profit institutions and Hosting Flock it has no cost to the churches.
WordPress
WordPress is a content management system (CMS). You install it on your hosting (similar to installing a program on your computer) and then log into your management area to build your site and manage its content. Please note that themes cannot be installed on the WordPress.com service except with their expensive business plan. I recommend installing WordPress on a more typical hosting account. Read WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org for more details.
Topics
Themes control the design of WordPress sites. You may prefer a theme with a modern look like Anniversary or one with a minimalist style like Maranatha. Some themes will allow you to adjust things like colors and fonts to match your church. I recommend paid themes (ranging from $ 30 to $ 130) because they generally have a better design, more features, and include manufacturer support. You generally get what you pay for.
Accessories
Plugins are optional and add features to WordPress. WordPress itself allows you to do basic things like manage your pages and menu while leaving more specialized functionality to plugins. A plugin can add functions like sermons, events, newsletters, contact forms, etc. There are over 50,000 plugins and some specifically for church websites.
Build it yourself or hire a professional?
We see two types of clients on ChurchThemes.com: churches that use our WordPress themes to build your own sites and professionals using our themes to build sites for your church clients.
I recommend building your own site because it is something most people can do and it saves your church money. In addition, you will feel more comfortable managing the site and teaching others to do so after having the experience of building it. There are many themes created specifically for churches, even though you are not limited to specific church themes. A good theme provider will have complete documentation and support for your product.
You can save time by hiring a professional to create your church website instead of doing it yourself. This requires a larger budget, but is usually affordable when using a predesigned theme (compared to a fully custom theme which would be very expensive).
Let's go into more detail about these options.
Option 1: Build your own church theme site (recommended)
I'll give you a better idea of what my recommended approach looks like by guiding you through it.
Step 1: choose a church theme
Keep these things in mind when selecting a church WordPress theme.
Design
You will want something that matches the personality of your church. Some themes have customization options for color, font, and background. Test the theme demo on your phone to make sure it is mobile friendly and loads reasonably fast. Cell phone web browsing is extremely common right now.
Features
WordPress allows you to create custom pages (ie Ministries, Statement of Faith, etc.), run a blog, and post photos. Choose a theme that integrates with plugins for church content such as sermons, events, locations, and team profiles.
No blocking effect
Avoid topics that register their own types of posts for content such as sermons and events (you will have to re-enter the content when you change the subject). Some content functions belong to a plugin, so I developed the Church content plugin (compatible with themes from different developers).
Support and documentation
WordPress is a do-it-yourself solution, but that doesn't mean you have to be alone. Choose a theme provider that has complete documentation and supports the theme they sell.
Money refund policy
Some theme sellers will refund your money if things don't work out, so check their money back policy. I think every theme seller should provide refunds no questions.
The following themes and providers avoid the blocking effect by using the Church Content plugin. They meet most or all of my recommendations.
- ChurchThemes.com it is my theme store. We've been at it since 2012.
- OneChurch from UpThemes uses the Church Content plugin.
- Topic forgiven by Justin Scheetz also uses the Church Content plugin.
- Wise church It is a fully featured theme for live streaming.
- Sedate is a free, well-coded theme available at WordPress.org.
Step 2: Sign up for hosting
Inexpensive Linux-based shared hosting is sufficient for almost all church websites. This is the most common type of hosting and will cost you around $ 10 per month. Check out R Marketing Digital's hosting recommendations (these include a one-click WordPress install feature). Also remember that DreamHost has free hosting for non-profit institutions. Your church may qualify if it is registered as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization in the United States.
When registering for hosting, you will be asked to choose your domain name (i.e. yourname.com) and provide billing information. They will help you use your existing domain or register a new one for yourself (usually around $ 15 / year). You will be given access to your hosting control panel after completing the online registration procedure.
Step 3: install WordPress
Log in to your hosting control panel to use the one-click WordPress installation feature. Your host will be happy to direct you to the location of this feature if required. Many hosts have the convenience of one-click installation, but if yours doesn't, you can still do a standard WordPress installation.
If you already have hosting, you may want to do a fresh WordPress installation in a directory like yourname.com/new to build your new site while leaving your existing site online. When it's finished, you can move it to yourname.com using various methods.
Step 4: install your theme
The next step is to install your church theme on your new WordPress site. Your theme provider should have instructions similar to these:
- Log in to your WordPress management area at yourname.com/wp-admin
- Go Appearance > Topics > Add new > Upload topic
- Choose the zip file of the theme you downloaded, then click Install Now
- After installation, click Activate
The topic or documentation may ask you to install one or two plugins (such as for sermons and events) in a similar manner. Many themes also include starting content that you can import to use as a solid starting point.
Step 5: customize the appearance of your theme
WordPress has a great feature called Customizer that support many themes. You can go to Appearance > Personalize then choose options for colors, fonts, background image, etc. (depending on what the theme provides). A live preview is shown as you make your customizations. The nice thing about the themes that support this is that it doesn't require graphic design or coding skills to get your site to match your church brand. And it doesn't require paying a lot of money to a web designer.
Here is a screenshot of the Saved Theme customizer to give you an idea of what is doable.
Look below to see how Anniversary The theme can be customized to make it look different. This illustrates why I recommend using a theme that takes advantage of WordPress's customization feature. A flexible and easy-to-customize WordPress theme makes it easy to create a church website.
Step 6: publish your content
After logging into your WordPress management area, you will notice that there is a menu on the left to manage the content and settings. WordPress provides ready-to-use blog post and page content management features. If your theme uses a plugin for other types of content, you may see menu items such as Sermons, Events, People, and Locations.
The screenshot below shows how the content of a sermon is handled using a theme that supports the Church content plug. Note that the menu has not only pages and posts, but also post types for church-oriented content. The "Contact" menu link comes from the Contact Form 7 plugin. These are all examples of things that should come from plugins rather than the theme itself to avoid the blocking effect mentioned above.
Step 7: prepare for launch
There are a few things that you will want to make sure have been resolved before considering your site finalized. Read Nine things to do after building your WordPress site for quick tips on security, backups, updates, settings, spam prevention, and search engines.
After that, you can announce the launch of your new WordPress church website!
Option 2: hire a professional to build your site with a church theme
Pastors, staff, and volunteers are successfully building their own church websites with WordPress themes. We have a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee at ChurchThemes.com that only a small percentage have used. I am convinced by our low rate of repayment of the money and by what I have been listening that WordPress and a robust customizer-friendly theme with full documentation and support is a solution that many churches can handle.
Having said that, it is an alternative to hire a professional to help you. There are different types of WordPress solutions for different needs. You can select what best suits your needs (save money and gain experience or save time and gain comfort). Hiring a professional to use a premade WordPress theme for churches can cost several thousand to several hundred dollars. Having an absolutely custom theme developed just for your site will cost more and is not recommended because it is basically not profitable.
Below are the professionals I trust to help build your website using a church WordPress theme.
- Mere agency it does fine work and is owned by a pastor.
- Five more talents has built many WordPress sites for churches.
conclusion
I hope this has given you an idea of what it takes to build a church website with WordPress. Finally, I recommend creating your own site, but hiring it can also be a good option. Whichever option you choose, you will almost certainly save money compared to other solutions because WordPress is free open source software. Consider the opportunity to select a theme that is made for churches, avoids the blocking effect, is compatible with the Customizer, and includes full documentation with developer support.
It depends on you and your thoughts. Have you built a church website with WordPress? Share your experience and advice.
