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News

Stay up to date with the latest happenings at churchthemes.com. This is where we post announcements relating to our business, products and website.

Theme & Plugin Updates for WordPress 5.9

WordPress 5.9 is now available and we’ve made updates to each of our themes to maintain compatibility. These theme updates mainly concern block styling. Changes were made in WordPress 5.9 that required us to update our styling for blocks in the editor and on the frontend.

Update: Church Content plugin 2.6 was subsequently released on January 31 to resolve an issue with WordPress 5.9. Exodus 3.3.1 was released to resolve an issue with the Gallery template.

[Expired] 40% OFF: Black Friday & Cyber Monday (2021) – First 99 Customers

ChurchThemes.com Black Friday Cyber Monday 2021

Updated: This promotion has ended. Thank you to all who took advantage of our 2021 deal!

It’s that time of year again. We’re jumping on the bandwagon and beginning our deal early. We offered 30% off in 2019 and 35% in 2020. This year we’re offering 40% off which is the absolute biggest discount ever offered on ChurchThemes.com. If you’ve been waiting to get started with your new church site or have been considering upgrading, this is the best time.

All-around Improvements (Update Now)

Each of our themes and our Church Content Pro plugin have been updated for a better experience with WordPress 5.8 and PHP 8.

The core Church Content plugin did not need to be updated. Everything was reasonably compatible with WordPress 5.8 and PHP 8 before these updates so we waited a bit to release them after WordPress 5.8 came out in order to run through a list of minor bugs reported by users over the months. There are other improvements such as automatically linked phone numbers.

Deepest Discount Ever Offered for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

35% Off Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Deal Ended: Thank you for participating!

“Black Friday” seems to start earlier and earlier each year, doesn’t it? That takes away some of the magic but the good news is that online discounts are as strong as ever – at least here at ChurchThemes.com. So, here we are just slightly early having a lot of fun giving our biggest discount ever. Never have we created a coupon that saves this much. I hope you will take advantage of it by upgrading or joining us for the first time.

Best Sermons Plugin for WordPress: Building It

WP Sermons WordPress Plugin Development
WP Sermons logo and plugin development in Steven’s “kitchen office”.

There is no ideal sermons plugin for WordPress. The plugins that exist now are either unattractive in appearance, lacking features, buggy and unsupported or don’t work with all the WordPress themes that are available. This is what I’ve observed and this is what I’ve been told by people over the years. The sermon WordPress plugins available now are not useless, but they are not ideal. Churches using WordPress deserve a sermons plugin that meshes perfectly with their theme, that is easy to use and that does everything they need.

We are working on such a plugin and it is called WP Sermons. This is our vision for it.

Theme Updates for WordPress 5.5 and Bug Fixes

WordPress 5.5 is out. It has some neat new features like automatic updates for themes and plugins and in-block image editing. There are also changes to the block editor’s HTML markup which means it was necessary for us to update the styling for all of our themes in order to maintain compatibility with WordPress. This update also helps keep our themes’ dropdown menus working on newer versions of iOS for iPhone and iPad.

PHP 7.4 Compatible

We have confirmed that our themes and plugins are all compatible with PHP 7.4.

We recommend updating to PHP 7.3 or 7.4 if you are using an older version. You can do this in your hosting account or ask your host. Versions older than PHP 7.2 have reached end of life are are no longer maintained. PHP 7.2 itself will be maintained only for security through November.

Live Streaming and Online Giving in the Wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Morningstar Online
An example of a church moving to online-only meeting

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic are reaching churches worldwide. Here in the United States, our president has asked that people not attend gatherings of more than ten people. Similar requests and restrictions are reality in other parts of the world. Every church needs to consider setting up a live stream and online giving. I want to share some resources to help you get started.

Your church can do this. Our church had its first online only service this past Sunday and the number of people who attended was encouraging.