This is part 5 of a 10-part blog series on HOW TO GET YOUR MINISTRY ONLINE. You can follow the DIGITAL SKATEPARK tag or go back to the intro post for links out to the rest of the series.
< See the previous post in the series
CREATE AN OFFICIAL “HEADQUARTERS”
It is worth having one website that becomes the official headquarters (HQ) for your ministry.
There are two ways that you could do this:
- Your own website e.g. www.youthministryname.com
- A section on your church website e.g. www.yourchurchname.com/youth
If you choose to house your HQ on your church website, you will need to talk to those responsible for the site about how to gain access so you can keep the content up-to-date.
If you choose to house your HQ on your own unique youth ministry website, you will need to get it made. You can build it, you can get someone in your church to build it for free or you could pay a designer. Companies like Bridge Element (www.bridgeelement.com) create good-looking ministry websites at a very reasonable price. Likewise you can find others via a search engine or asking other ministries who they had make their website.
However, one of the best tools available for creating an affordable, attractive ministry website is WordPress. WordPress is an easy to learn platform for online website publishing. If you don’t have access to people or resources, this is one way that you could personally get your youth ministry online.
Free accounts are available at www.wordpress.com. You will be given a URL that looks like this:
youthministryname.wordpress.com
That might be sufficient for your needs, but for a small annual cost you can arrange to purchase:
www.youthministryname.com
WordPress will then continue to host your site for free. If you pay a few more dollars a year, you will be able to remove the ads from your site. I think this is worthwhile paying. See here for all the available upgrades. See here for some specific bundles, most churches or youth ministries would be okay with the Premium account for $99 if not the Business for $299 is good value too. The premium templates are really good.
There is another way to utilise WordPress through another site: www.wordpress.org. This site enables you to run with the WordPress management system by self-hosting. While this method provides greater flexibility with your website, it also has a steeper learning curve. There are really useful videos at www.wordpress.tv that can help you walk through this process. But for most youth ministries, using the free account involves less hassle while still providing an adequate HQ.
WordPress isn’t the only way to build an online HQ for your youth ministry, there are other systems, but WordPress is the one I’m familiar with and consistently enables effective web standards.
See the next post in the series >
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This series forms the basis of a chapter I wrote in a forthcoming Youth Ministry book to be published by Anglican Youthworks. The rest of the book is written by Scott Petty (Youth Minister from Christ Church St Ives) and is published here with permission.
What do you reckon about using Facebook as your ‘Official Headquarters’? Have a static page on your church’s website which points you to a publicly accessible Facebook page. It’s easier to keep it updated, make it interactive, etc.
hey tom,
thanks for the comment.
i will talk more about this specifically in part number 8.
i think it can work, but i’d suggest still having a dot com that can be redirected to the facebook site.
stay tuned for part 8!
peace
I think a great option other than WordPress would have to be Squarespace.
Squarespace is easier than WordPress and you don’t have to worry about updating plugins. I’ve used it for a new project and I almost regret not having all my sites on Squarespace.
excellent! thanks calum.
i’ve heard of squarespace, but haven’t really explored.
just spent 2 minutes looking at their template… wow!! really good looking
in my workshop next week at NYMC i was already planning on mentioning some of the options other than wordpress… SS might make it to the top of that list!
can you share the site you’ve got on square space?
peace
I wont share the site publicly as I’m not ready for it to be well known but I’ll send you a message with the site.
Square Space also has amazing customer support. They’ll reply to any support email within 1 hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week!
hey everyone… it’s going to be rad when calum drop this thing on the world!!!!!
well done :)