by Patrick Bradley: If you’re on a budget and find WordPress confusing, there are several other DIY church website options.

I’ve leaned into this a little harder recently because I continue to get calls for help from confused pastors who just can’t figure out their WordPress sites. I know all the arguments about its unparalleled power and customizabilitiness. But at the end of the day, if a pastor and volunteer team can’t make basic changes to the website, it’s a fail in my book.

And the best-but-disappearing argument for using WordPress is that it’s better for SEO (getting found by search engines). These other DIY church website options are now about 95% as good at SEO. So unless you have the time & resources to put into coding to squeeze out that last 5% (which most church plants don’t), then don’t use that as your sole criterion.

What They Have in Common

Each of the following DIY church website options work on the same basic process:

Sign up for their service
Pick your domain name through them (it’s included in the price of packages listed)
Pick a template that has the look & feel you’re after
Start creating pages and menus
Drag & drop elements onto pages and paste in your content
Publish your site

And they offer these same features:

no set-up fee
free domain registration
social media widgets & tools
video backgrounds
custom favicon
buttons for calls-to-action
google analytics integration
custom code (embed YouTube videos, etc.)
SEO tools

Top 3 DIY Church Website Options

Here are the 3 DIY church website options that keep rising to the top as inexpensive and easy to use (pricing as of Dec 2017):

SquareSpace

product: Personal Website ($144/yr)

I’ve supported several church planters that chose SquareSpace even before I floated it out there as an option. Besides the features above, here’s what I like about it:

Custom CSS: you can hire a designer to fully customize the color & layout of your site
They offer unconventional/creative instructions for an easy DIY sermon podcast

Wix

product: Unlimited Plan ($168/yr)

Things I like about it:

Offers a calendar app that pulls in events from a google calendar (and maybe your church database calendar, too?)
Has a 3rd-party app marketplace where other popular services are writing integrations

Weebly

product: Pro Website ($144/yr)

What I like about it in addition to the common features above:

Custom CSS (as above): you can hire a designer to fully customize the site
Also has a 3rd-party app marketplace with a growing number of integrations available

If you’re still not sure which might work best for you (including WordPress), check out this fun & free website builder suitability quiz.

These sites are easy to use, offer the majority of features the typical church needs, and provide more SEO tools than most churches will be able to use. So if you’re looking for something that will be easy to set up and easy for volunteers to help maintain, consider one of these DIY church website options.

full disclosure: this blog costs money to maintain – it’s safe to assume that links to products are affiliate links and I may earn a commission should you click through and make a purchase. That doesn’t affect your price, and you can rest assured that I’ll only recommend an app or service I’ve vetted, personally trust, and would recommend even if there weren’t an affiliate program.

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Source: Top DIY Church Website Options

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by Patrick Bradley: As part of the branding process, you’ll be working with a designer to create a logo. When it’s finalized, you’ll want to get these 12 church logo files from your designer.

You’re going to need to use your church logo in lots of different ways. You’d be surprised at what a challenge that can be. Even just across the social media sites, you need:

one with landscape orientation for banners and headers
a square version for the avatar/thumbnail
one with a transparent background to overlay on other images
and the list goes on…

To be ready for all of those scenarios and challenges, make sure your designer sends you all of the following versions:

Versions of Church Logo Files

the primary logo (typically in color and landscape-oriented)
the reverse logo (if your logo is light-colored, this will be a dark version, and vice versa)
the primary logo in B&W
a reverse B&W
a square version (color)
a square reverse
a square in B&W
a square in reverse B&W
just the icon in color (no words, just the ‘mark’)
just the icon in reverse color
just the icon in B&W
just the icon in reverse B&W

But wait, there’s more!

Different Church Logo File Types

Your graphic designer will probably use either Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop (or less commonly, Corel Draw). They’ll be in file types that us regular folks can’t do much with. But you still need to have them. You’ll want to get at least all 12 logo versions above as master files.

Master File Extensions to Look for:

.ai (Adobe Illustrator)
.psd (Adobe Photoshop)
.cdr (Corel Draw)
occassionally you’ll see an .eps file (not software-brand-specific)

But you’ll probably want them in the following versions, too:

Print-Quality File Extensions to Look for:

.jpg or .pdf (300dpi resolution or higher)
does not support transparent backgrounds
great for printing but not great for online applications because they can make pages. load. s-l-o-w-l-y.

Online-Quality File Extensions to Look for:

.png or .jpg (typically 72dpi but no more than 96dpi – they’ll load faster)
make sure your .png files have a transparent background
great for digital media but not great for print applications because they’re low resolution

You’ll eventually want to end up with each of the 12 logo versions in each of these file formats. That will be at least 36 actual files. Whoa. But trust me, you’ll end up using them in various contexts.

Back Them Up

The original church logo files can be all but impossible to recreate years later (unless maybe you have a simple text logo). You can’t risk losing your originals if your computer crashes, so save all of the original church logo files from your designer to your hard drive and to your cloud storage (iCloud, DropBox, Drive, etc).

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Source: Get These 12 Church Logo Files from Your Designer

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by Patrick Bradley: A church website privacy policy would be a page on your website that explains how your church  collects personal information and how you use it.

Even an initial site for your supporters might be set up to collect information. Most church websites offer some or all of the following data collection forms:

Email newsletter signup
Contact us
Online donation

If someone signs up for your newsletter, do you make it plain what you’re going to do with their email address? Do you set a cookie on their browser (even ethically) so that they’ll see your online ad before a big event you’ll promote?

I’m a little torn on this – on the one hand it sounds a little over-the-top for small, startup, volunteer organizations to go to this kind of trouble. My first reaction was, “For real?!?”

Which is maybe a little contradictory because personally I’m pretty security and privacy cautious. I’m not prone to hand out my own info willy-nilly. And there are even mobile apps I won’t use because they grant themselves way too much access to every bit of sensitive info on my phone.

But let’s take it a step further – do you encourage everyone to fill out a connection card (paper or electronic) and then get that information into a church database? Would guests be creeped out to know you even have a church database that isn’t disclosed anywhere?

Examples of Church Website Privacy Policy

This has never really been on my radar, so it was a little to my surprise that it was pretty easy to find a church website privacy policy on prominent sites:

Elevation Church
The Rock Church
Saddleback Church
North Point Community Church

Resources for Creating Your Own

Make your own decision about whether you’ll include a church website privacy policy now or someday. When you do, here are some FREE resources that should help:

FreePrivacyPolicy.com which I used to create mine
RocketLawyer.com
Better Business Bureau
UpCounsel.com

I’m interested to hear your take on this. Join the conversation on social media and let me know!

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Source: Do We Need a Church Website Privacy Policy?

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