.church domain names became available this month. This has reminded me of the importance of picking a good domain name for your church website. It’s literally your address online so it must be memorable. You want it to be easy for people to recall and punch in so they don’t get lost. Here are some tips for picking a domain name.
We love to see how churches are using our WordPress themes to build their new websites. What Joe Mendes has done with his church’s website really caught my eye. Joe is the Media Director at The Tabernacle, located in and around Clarksville, TN with multiple campuses. He had no prior experience with WordPress and yet he built something very nice with ease.
I had no experience working with WordPress when I took on the task of creating the new site. The good news; however, was the Resurrect theme had virtually no learning curve. Joe Mendes
Joe was generous with his time in allowing me to interview him for this latest of our Showcase posts. Learn from Joe what it’s like building a church website with one of our WordPress themes.
Much work is done to prepare for Sunday morning. People show up and it’s worth it. But how many people are not showing up because your church website left them wanting?
Grey Matter Research conducted a study two years ago and found that millions of non-churchgoers visit church websites every year. A huge number of people visit church websites before church buildings so let’s make sure our websites are effective.
The Jetpack plugin has a module called Publicize. It automatically shares your new posts on social media when you publish them.
It works for blog posts out of the box but not for custom post types. Custom post types must specifically support Jetpack Publicize. Version 1.1 of our Church Content plugin adds this support. Now you can automatically share new sermons and events on Facebook and Twitter.
If you follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter, you know that we’ve been producing video tutorials. We’re happy to announce that they’re done and ready.
Now you can find 20 video tutorials peppered throughout our Guides. Most videos are about five minutes in length. They show you exactly what to do, step by step. You can find a complete listing on the Video Tutorials page.
Outdated: Please see the Disabling Comments section in out Comments guide for more up-to-date information on disabling comments in WordPress.
“How can I disable comments?”
That’s one of the most frequently asked WordPress questions I hear.
Comments are great, but you probably don’t want to use them everywhere. Here’s a video showing you how to disable comments in WordPress for new posts, individual posts and all posts in one shot.
Are visitors finding what they’re looking for on your church website?
The purpose of your church website is to provide information. If essential content does not exist or is hard to find, your church website is failing.
Custom church website design is an expensive service. In the old days if you wanted a unique look for your church website, you needed web design skill. If you couldn’t code, you had to pay a church website designer to do it for you. Those days are over for many churches.
Our church WordPress themes take advantage of one of the best features in WordPress, the Theme Customizer.
You can customize design elements like colors, fonts, logo and more using the Theme Customizer — no web design skill required. Changes are shown in a real-time preview. This lets you experiment and get everything right before unveiling the design customizations to actual website visitors.
Update: We no longer recommend this plugin. It was acquired and the new owner made changes we are not happy with. See our new recommendation.
When someone enjoys a sermon or blog post on your church website, will they share it on Twitter or Facebook?
Make it easy for them to share by adding social share buttons to your content. The easier something is for someone, the more likely they’ll do it. The mere presence of social sharing buttons also acts as a suggestion to people who otherwise would not have considered sharing your church’s content.
I’ll show you how to add social sharing buttons to your church website.
There’s an old adage that you’ve probably heard more than once.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Written instructions are helpful. Written instructions with pictures are even more helpful. We’re happy to announce that we’ve added more than 60 screenshots to our guides.