The Complete Guide to Building Your Church Website For Free is an in depth tutorial on how you can setup your church website without any costs.
Ok so there is some costs like hosting and purchasing a domain name, but that is it. This guide is free to use, but you can help support us by purchasing a downloadable PDF version of it.
Chapter 1
Before you start
Chapter 2
Installation
Chapter 3
Setup
Chapter 1
Before You Start
There are a few things you will need to plan for ahead of time concerning your church website. Lets start off with the only items you will need to pay for and why. I highly recommend you purchase a domain name and hosting for your website. Lets take a brief moment to explain what these are for those new to building websites. Lets imagine you own a business that is located in an office complex. In order for people to find your business you need advertising, word of mouth, a sign in the front of your office, and a building to hold your business. When you build a website, it is much like business. Your business is your website, and it lives inside the office complex. The office complex is your hosting provider, which holds your website. It is a server located at a datacenter connected to the internet. Without some sort of hosting provider, you cannot have a website. But in order to find your business and point to its location, you need a sign out front. This would be your domain name (like yourchurchwebsite.com). This points people to your website at the hosting. And finally, your yellow pages listings, advertisings, and even word of mouth is search engine placement, online advertising, and social networking.
Domain Names
Domains play a large role in your website. They allow users to directly find your website using the browser, but they also play a roll in getting listed in the search engines. Keywords used in a domain play a strong roll in what the search engines thing is important towards ranking your website online. Now just having a good domain name does not get you automatically listed in the search engines, but combined with other steps, it could help you significantly. Here are a few key pointers when selecting a good domain name:
- Try to find a domain name that uses .COM or .ORG. Stay away from unusual domains like .CC or .US.
- Use your church name if available. If not, add your town or city to the domain name. If still not available, try using the acronym of your church name with a combination of the city, town, or region. Our church domain is WilliamsburgCLC.com , since we are Christian Life Center in Williamsburg, va.
- Do NOT put dashes between words “-”. This was an old tactic used years ago that got flooded by spammers. The search engines now frown upon using it.
- Try to keep is short and simple. It should be easy to remember and spell.
Purchasing a domain name
A domain should only cost you around $10 a year. Some domain companies like Network Solutions cost much more without any extra benefit. I recommend either using Namecheap or Godaddy. Both are easy to use and around 10 a year. Namecheap comes with free WhoisGuard which hides your contact information from spammers. Godaddy offers this too, but it costs extra.
Hosting
You will need hosting for your website. Now there are many options out there and even some free ones. I don’t recommend the free ones because they usually don’t allow you to use your own domain name and are restricted on email and what you can use. But hosting is fairly cheap and you can get hosting around $5-$10 a month. I recommend using either HostGator or Site5 for hosting. I have used both these hosting companies for years and they offer great support and affordable packages starting around $5 a month. Plus both come with enough email addresses for your whole church staff and extras! Even better, you can install many different software packages like wordpress at a click of a button. I know some people who also use GoDaddy with success also.
Planning your website
It would be beneficial for you to do some simple preplanning on your website. Think of what you would like to have on the website. What is your target audience. How would you like your website to be used? What features would you like to have. Write all of these out for later use. I also recommend you start writing a site outline of your page structure. An example would be
Home Page
- About us
- What we beleive
- Staff
- Directions & Times
- How to get connected
- What's here for families
- Youth Group
- Kid's Church
- Men's Ministries
- Women's Ministries
- Events/Calendar
- Contact Us
One thing to note is that you should focus your website primarily on reaching people who have never been to your church before. This will help you grow your church and spread the gospel. You can still have the same features that will address your congregation, but doing things like church announcements on the home page could limit who your reach. At GospelLabs, we create a members page that has congregational specific items on it and leave the home page to reaching new visitors.
Selecting a design
If you are really going to not spend any money on your website, design is where your going to be affected the most. When it comes to design, you get what you pay for. But that aside, we have a few solutions for you to choose from.
These few were mentioned on ChurchCrunch’s website a while back:
Boldly by Site5 ( Demo | Download & Instructions | Other Site5 Free Themes )
Kronos by RSUOG (Demo | Download & Instructions | Other Themes)
Hyrdrogenized by Padd Solutions (Demo | Download & Instructions | Other Padd Solutions Themes )
Here are some more websites to find wordpress themes:
http://wordpressthemesbase.com/
http://www.freewordpressthemes.com/
http://www.freewpthemes.net/
http://www.wprex.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/19/100-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes-for-2010/
Not free design options
Ok, I know it’s not free but here are some options you can use for slightly more than free. These are premium themes for wordpress that you can purchase.
Standard Theme
WooThemes
Studio Press
Theme Forest
ElegantThemes
And of course you can get a custom design from a company like GospelLabs (our parent company) or someone like ChurchPlantMedia.
Chapter 2
Installation
Now it is time to install your software. We will go through 2 ways of installing. The first method is the easiest and can be done with most hosting companies like HostGator and Site5 while the second method will be a manual installation.
Getting Your Domain To Point To Your Hosting
This part of the can be slightly confusing so we will try to cover a step by step. Your domain needs to point to your hosting provider’s servers so you can access your website. We will cover how to do with both Godaddy and Namecheap. Make sure you have your nameserver information provided to you by your hosting welcome email. It will probably look say something like “NS1.SomeDomainName.com” and “NS2.SomeDomainName.com”.
With Godaddy
If you purchased your domain with Godaddy, then start out by logging into your account at Godaddy. Once you are logged in, click the “My Account” button on the upper right hand part of the screen.
Now click “Domain Manager” on the left hand menu.
The page should list your domains now. Click the 1. checkbox next to the domain you want to use for your website and click the 2. “Nameservers” button above the list of domains.
HMM… a domain called gospelads.com. I wonder what is going to happen with that!
A small dropdown should show up. Select “Set Nameservers” to continue.
Make sure you have 1.”I have specific nameservers for my domains” checked and enter in your 2. hosting nameservers information you received in your welcome email.
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Click the “OK” button to finish. You should get a message stating it could take up to 72 hours for changes to show. In my experience it only took a few minutes. Once the domain is propagating, you should be able to see your hosting by typing in your domain in your browser.
If you are still having problems, try following the steps in the video by HostGator.
With Namecheap
If you purchased your domain from namecheap, the process is just as easy as godaddy. And in my experience the domain propagates faster. Start out by logging into your Namecheap account.
Click the “Manage Domains” in the upper menu on the left hand side.
You should now see a list of your domains. Click on the domain you wish to set the nameservers up on.
Now click on “Domain Name Server Setup” on the left menu.
Now check the 1. radio box “Specify Custom DNS Servers (Your own DNS Servers) and enter the 2. nameservers you received in your hostings welcome email.
Click “Save Changes” and your done. It could take up to 72 hours for changes to show. But usually its within minutes.
If you are still having a problem following, try watching this video by HostGator.
Installing WordPress with One Click
We are now going to install wordpress on your hosting. Log into your control panel (known as “Cpanel”) for your web hosting. If you are using Hostgator or Site5, it is located at yourdomain.com/cpanel.
