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HTTPS for WordPress: Auto-enable SSL for Free

HTTPS for WordPress Cover

HTTPS for WordPress is critical today. Your WordPress site should always load via https:// instead of http:// because the HTTP protocol is inherently insecure. Installing an SSL certificate to enable HTTPS for WordPress can be costly and overly technical, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ll tell you how to use a free and autosmatic method so that you can easily begin serving WordPress securely.

Let’s cut to the chase. I’ll start by explaining how to auto-enable HTTPS for WordPress in three simple steps. You can keep reading after that to learn why HTTPS/SSL should be used on every site. In a nutshell, it’s a security necessity. WordPress recommends HTTPS and Google is penalizing sites that do not have an SSL certificate. The time to start using HTTPS on WordPress is now.

See Our New Theme, Saved — Get 25% Off

Saved Church WordPress Theme

There’s nothing more exciting for us than to launch a new WordPress theme for churches. We quietly released Saved last week and are making the big announcement today. This is hands-down our most sophisticated WordPress theme — yet it’s as easy to use as our existing line of themes. To make things even sweeter, we’re also offering a 25% discount to the first users.

Church Websites: Beautiful and Effective (40 Examples)

Church Websites

Church websites should be well-designed and effective. There is no need to discuss the importance of having a great church website. This is an element that can significantly help your church reach more people. Many people will not visit your church without first checking your website. These days it is a church’s website that acts as the front door so you must ensure that your website will help people enter your real door.

In this article, we are showcasing 40 of the best church websites. We link to each church’s website, show a screenshot and provide a short analysis to point out what is excellent. Take a look at this compilation as a source of inspiration and to learn more about how to make your church website beautiful and effective.

Best Church WordPress Themes

Best Church WordPress Themes

The best church WordPress themes follow standards and best practices. They do this by supporting a WordPress plugin like Church Theme Content to avoid theme-lock in. Theme lock-in is a common problem that most church WordPress theme buyers are unaware of. It’s a problem that can create hours of extra work down the road. The purpose of this article is to present you with the best church WordPress themes — those which avoid this problem.

When a church WordPress theme is made following best practices, your church-centric content like sermons, events, people and locations are associated with a plugin instead of the theme itself. Imagine your content disappearing when you switch themes. As a result, you might find yourself manually re-adding 327 sermons! Instead, content should be associated with a plugin that remains active when changing to another theme that supports it.

Cyber Monday: 30% to 65% Discount

churchthemes.com Cyber Monday Discount

Reminder: This deal continues through Wednesday, November 30 — two days after Cyber Monday.

This year we’re offering a Cyber Monday discount. You probably know that this is the day that online stores offer deep discounts. We’re offering discounts on everything from 30% – 65% off. This discount will be automatically applied at checkout (no coupon needed). Our deal runs from November 28 – 30 (Monday to Wednesday, Central Time). Here’s a breakdown of the discount you’ll receive.

Using Tithe.ly’s Online Giving with WordPress

Tithe.ly Giving with WordPress

Online giving is critical for churches. This is not news. But how do you set it up? Or, maybe a better question to ask is how do you set up online giving easily? Many of our church WordPress theme users have already discovered Tithe.ly. Now we want to make sure all of our users know about it. First I want to tell you what is great about Tithe.ly then I’ll walk you through setting up your account with them and adding a “Give” button to your WordPress-powered church website.

New Features for All Themes

New Features for All Themes

A series of new features and improvements to all of our church WordPress themes has been completed. We spent the last few weeks focusing on theme updates after finishing a set of map improvements to our plugin. The new features include sermon index and child page templates for Exodus and Resurrect (from Maranatha) and an event registration button for all themes. We also updated our sample content to give you a better starting point for your church website.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new with the themes.

Church Web Hosting Rated and Ranked

Church Web Hosting

Which church web hosting providers are the best?

We surveyed customers using our church WordPress themes to ask them to rate and provide feedback on different aspects of the web hosting company they use. 200 churches responded, giving us plenty of data to rank web hosting providers with. This list of hosting companies will help your church make the best choice and avoid getting stuck with a bad host.

We are including web hosts that received at least three responses for in our survey. Most of the churches are using providers that are not specifically church web hosting. By that, I mean they are hosting providers in general. There are very view church web hosts. What a church needs is good hosting, so let’s take a look at who does and doesn’t meet that need.