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Church Website Tips

Make the most of your church website with these tips and tutorials.

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.

Free Church Websites (Entirely Free Forever)

Free church websites are possible. I’m talking about a free site with no setup fee and no monthly or yearly costs for hosting or domain name. Some might think I’m crazy for writing this because we sell a church website solution (an inexpensive one) but I have observed that most churches do not want a free website. Most want something of high quality that is supported and maintained. There are situations in which a free church site is needed, however, and I want to show you how.

It’s no secret that there are many churches struggling financially. Our solution is ideal for many churches with a low budget because it weighs in at only $32/month with hosting and domain considered (we also offer a 20% off coupon). Still, we hear from churches every now and then that have absolutely nothing to budget for a website. If this is your church then know that you can still have a website and you can have it entirely for free.

Sermon WordPress Plugins (10 Options Summarized)

Sermon Plugins for WordPress

Publishing and podcasting sermons is a great way for churches using WordPress to reach more people. If you’re using one of our church WordPress themes then you have our Church Content plugin which makes publishing a sermon archive and podcasting sermons a piece of cake. Churches using a generic theme can choose from several sermon WordPress plugins. Let’s take a look at those options.

Improvement Opportunity: Chrome Marking All HTTP Sites as “Not Secure”

WP Tavern is reporting that beginning July 24 with the release of Chrome 68, Google will begin warning users on websites loaded over http. The address bar will show a “Not Secure” warning. Since this will be a traffic and trust killer for any website still using http instead of https, we want to make sure all churches using our WordPress themes are prepared for this.

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 automatic 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.

Church Web Hosting Ranked

Church Web Hosting

2026 UPDATE: We launched our own web hosting service called ChurchHost. We’ll be glad to copy your site so you can give it a try on a temporary URL without committing to leave your current host. No questions asked refunds. Generous CPU and memory reserved per site, LiteSpeed Enterprise and a thoroughly modern control panel.

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 few church web hosts other than ChurchHost. What a church needs is good hosting, so let’s take a look at who does and doesn’t meet that need.

Make Google Favor Your Church Website in Mobile Search Results

Update: Since the time of writing this post, Google has begun to roll out mobile-first indexing. This makes having a mobile-friendly church website even more critical.

It is absolutely necessary for your church to have a mobile-friendly website.

According to KPCB Internet Trends, 25% of global web usage is on mobile devices — and the increase from last year alone has been nearly two-fold in some regions. Expect that trend to continue. Statista forecasts more than 200 million smartphone users in the U.S. by 2017. That’s virtually everyone. Google has said 65% of searches begin on mobile phones. That statistic blew me away.

Because of this, Google recently rolled out a new feature for their search engine that helps smartphone users identify which sites are more worth visiting in search results. A mobile-friendly church website is not only convenient for users but is also a factor in search engine optimization.