Web Site Planning

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When you start web site planning, you'll need to get into everything from the very basics of why your church wants a web site to establishing a standard design. You should also check out the United Methodist Church's Web Ministry "Beginners Guide" for ideas and good starting questions.

Web site goals

A church web site can inform, educate, or evangelize. You may decide to start with one or a mixture of these goals. The United Methodist Church has a Web page devoted to "Web site fundamentals - what every church should have". That page addresses the very basics of content.

Some common church web goals:

Inform

Your target audience(s) may want to know information about your church such as when various groups meet, where you are located, what Sunday Schools classes are available for adults, youth and children, where rooms are located in your church, and what your church address, phone, and email address are. Another way to inform is to provide Christian news and links to religion news.  This is the most common goal and a decent start of a simple web site. But if informing members and site visitors is the only goal of your web, you are missing a great opportunity.

As an example, Avondale Pattillo UMC offers many pages that inform... Sunday Bulletin, newsletter, location, contact information, as well as information about its mission and other ministry and administrative areas.  It even has a special page to inform committee and work area members about their chosen leadership area -- Resources for United Methodist Church Leaders.

Educate

You way want to provide links to Christian resources, provide information about Christian holidays, or explain Christian terms.  All are ways of educating the people who visit your church's web site. One example of a special "Resources" page is that of Avondale Pattillo UMC.

Note that Avondale Pattillo also includes resources in other forms, including  special Advent-Epiphany and Lent - Easter sections, Disciple Resources, Black Religious Leaders, and Bible Study Resources.  None of these were present when the web was first created. They were added over time. You too can start small and build as you go, if educating people is a web site goal of your church.  If you want to link to the Avondale Pattillo Resources page or any of its other web pages, you don't need permission -- just go for it.  But please don't just copy and paste text from those pages.

Don't copy other web page text. If you want to use page on the web as an idea for your own pages, feel free as long as the text is not copyrighted.  But also please realize that if you just copy and paste text from another web page, search engines such as Google will give penalize both web sites by giving both the source page and your page less "ranking". So please ... either strongly adapt the information or else link to the web page that contains the information.  Don't just duplicate the text.

Evangelize

Evangelize.  You can spread the gospel in several ways online. But also remember that on the web, you get people who visit just out of curiosity, members of your church, as well as and people in search of a solution to their problems.  It's not the same evangelism situation as actively seeking out people and talking to them.  Web evangelism is different and in some ways more difficult.

Being "preachy" or using "church jargon" is a sure way to lose visitors. They need to know that you understand the problems they face and are offering solutions.  You need to reach them "where they are" in life instead of trying to make them feel you are forcing them to "come to you" or to become a "Jesus freak". A good resource for discussing where you might want to go in web evangelism is the Gospelcom's "Online Evangelism".  Their Web Evangelism Bulletin is also online.

Target audiences

Choose, but choose carefully. Don't get too ambitious at the very start. Brainstorm with some church members about what each of your audiences might like to see online. Don't try to be all things to all people. Prioritize both target audiences and topics to cover. Start with the high priorities.  Some audiences to consider:

• Your church's members

• Your church's leadership (Including committee and work area members.)

• United Methodist District or Conference members (Curiosity visits, visits to read resource materials, or research of methods your church uses.)

• The local community (Possible visitors)

• The world (Evangelism. Visits to read resource material.)

Keep it current!

Make sure that you have the people and time to keep the web site current.  This factor alone may limit the extent of the web site. The more pages it has, the longer it takes to maintain it once it's "up and running."

Who? When? How? - Develop a written plan

Gather together the people who will provide raw content, help with the design, and who will be approving the files before publishing to the web.  It's much better to get these decided before actually creating a web site. Create a written plan and get group consensus on the result. Detail who will be on the "Web Team" and what their responsibilities are. Your plan should include:

• The Web Team. Who will be members of the Web Team? Natural members of the team include the Communications chair, Evangelism chair, Mission chair, Education chair, and Pastor or Asst. Pastor. You may want to include both some people by church leadership position and others by name. The Web Team members should also be part of the communications committee, as the church web is a vital communications means. Seek out people with an interest in the church web. Decide who will approve content prior to publishing. The Webmaster and any web page editors need to be a part of the Web Team too.

• The content development and approval process. Who writes the basic content? Who are your sources? Who approves it prior to going onto the Web? Content creators can be members of committees and work areas or the chairpersons of those. Look for reliable people who are willing to provide interesting anecdotes about events, not "just the facts".

• Web hosting. How and where will you host your web? The General Board of Global Ministries offers every United Methodist church 5MB of free web space. Note that the commercial E-Zekiel has partnered with the United Methodist Church and has several web hosting options for churches. If you can afford the price for the size web you want to be in the next year or two, and you don't have anyone with the ability to create web pages, this option may be for you.  Avondale Pattillo UMC uses a web hosting company based in Atlanta. It costs about $260 for 500MB of space, 30 email accounts, email forwarding capability, web visit statistics, and more.

• Syndication?  Do you want to use any United Methodist Syndication?

• Upload method.  What method will you use to transfer files from a computer to the web server? A special FTP program? A web editing programs such a FrontPage?  Document the configurations and actual step-by-step file transfer process.

• Web Guide. It's a very good idea to detail exactly who does what when and how in all the aspects of getting material onto the church web site. Also detail any web page design or layout standards, including standard text sizes and fonts for various page elements.

... but how small?

You may be wise to start with a small site, get a good design, then slowly add content. But how small is "small"?  It's all relative to how many people you have to help and how large an operation this will be.  A basic informational church web site can start with about 6 Web pages and a few images.

Establish a standard web page design

Keep a consistent look across your web site. Avoid a "splash screen" that looks pretty but is an obstacle between the site visitor and your home page. Decide on menu type and placement, number of columns, a standard header, standard footers, and so on.

This page is part of the 2005 district training for the
Atlanta-Emory and Atlanta-Decatur-Oxford districts,
North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church

Questions? Contact webmaster @ apmethodist.org (without the spaces)

This page was last edited 01/15/2006 12:24 AM