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WordPress Website Design

Posted on 23. Feb, 2009 by Steve Swisher in Website

WordPress Websites

by Steve Swisher (http://acts18websites.com)

Here’s how I got a great looking website for under $200 total start-up cost and only $50 per year total cost for the life of our church.

Overview

In short: the answer is to use WordPress. This tutorial will give you an overview of how to do it. Keep in mind I am not a web designer and I don’t know html code. Also, I am not a tech support center. In other words, don’t call me to fix your website. Call someone in your church or connected to your church that knows even a little about websites. They will be much more helpful. I am simply a cheap-skate that cares about quality. I spent some time finding out how to build a really nice, but cost effective website and want to share with you what I have learned. This is how I did a website for our church and for the SBCV for less than $200 total cost. If you were able to figure out how to use Microsoft Word, then you can figure out how to use WordPress.

Templates vs. Custom Sites

Custom website designs normally begin at around $1000 and go up from there. Then the website designer will often want you to pay a monthly fee for the life of the site. A template is a pre-designed layout that you can customize with your own logo, pictures, and content. Some church leaders don’t like them because they say they aren’t “original” and if your church uses them you lack “creativity”. My response is you can be creative in how you tweak and customize a template. I have seen ten other churches that use the same template as my church and each one looks uniquely different. Unless another church in your area is using the exact same template, nobody would ever know that your using a template. Besides, I’ve seen tonsof “custom” sites that in my opinion all look a like. Save the $1000 and express your creativity economicallyby going with a WordPress site for a fraction of the cost. The first thing you will need is a web hosting provider.

What is Web Hosting?

In layman’s terms it’s a computer called a “server” that stores the data for your website. When people type in your web address they are actually accessing your data from a web hosting server. There are thousands of web hosting companies to choose from. Here are some things that you want to look for when choosing a web hosting company:

1. Cost per month: This can range from $2-$500 per month depending on what company you go with. Most companies give you a discount for paying up front for a year or more. Take the savings and pay for 2 or 3 years up front. If you’re just starting a church, it’s pretty easy to raise money for a website. Just tell a prospective donor to your church plant that their gift of whatever amount you need will provide your church with a website for the first three years.  You can get 2-3 years of hosting for under $100. 
2. Setup fees: This can range from Free-$500. I prefer free.
3. Hosting Space: This is how many megabytes or gigabytes of file space you get for your monthly hosting fee. Personally I look for host providers that offer unlimited amount of space. That lets you put as many sermons, videos, pictures, etc on your site without ever having to worry about reaching your limit. 
4. Bandwidth: In layman’s terms, this has to do with how many people are accessing your content and how much data they are accessing. If a lot of people are listening to a lot of streaming audio (sermon) or watching a lot of video on your site, then bandwidth can become an issue. If God chooses to allow you to explode with growth, bandwidth will become an issue. Personally I look for hosting sites that offer unlimited bandwidthusage. That way I don’t have to worry about it. Also some companies charge you for going over your bandwidth limit. This can be one of those suprise bills you weren’t expecting and can’t control easily. Just find a company that offers unlimited so you don’t have to worry about it.
5. Email Accounts: most sites give you anywhere from 10 to unlimited number of email addresses. It’s up to you whether or not this is a feature that factors into your decision making. This allows you to have an email address that is yourname@yourwebaddress.com. You want to have at least 50 email addresses available for your use.  There are many host providers that give 1,000 or even unlimited email accounts.  You’ll find uses for them over time. 
6. Hosting Type: To run WordPress you need a Linux Hosting package. Look for something that says Linux or WordPress on a hosting site. Or call and ask about it before you purchase. Some hosting sites have the WordPress CMS already on their system which makes for an easy install when you set up your site. It’s best to call their tech support to ask about it before you purchase. This will let you know a little about the process for setting it up and how good their tech support is.
7. Reputation:All the other features are ones that you can learn from a Web Hosting Company’s website. But what you can’t find out from them is things like: How is their tech support? How is their reliability? Do their servers go down a lot? (this means that your website would be offline until they fix it) In order to find this out, you can look up reports on sites like CNet, TopTenReviews, or Consumer Reports.
8. Extras: What extras do they give you? Things that they might offer are: Free domain name. Free domain name transfer. (If you have your web address with someone else you will have to transfer it.)

The Web Hosting company I use is WebHostingPad (Click here to check out WebHostingPad). They cost between $24-$60 per year, which is $2-$5 per month depending on whether you pay for one year, two year or three years up front. They give you a free domain name. If you already own a name, they’ll transfer it for free and you won’t have to pay the annual renewal cost for the domain name in the future. Domain names normally cost $10-$20 per year so this is a nice perk. There are no setup fees or any other fees. All you pay for is the hosting fee. They also have unlimited file space and bandwidth and a good rating from consumer review sites. WordPress can be easily be installed through their control panel.  They are based in Chicago and havefriendly tech support from people who actually livein Chicago. In the world of computer tech support this is another nice feature. There may be a better deal out there, but this one is hard to beat. Shop around using the guidelines above to find a hosting company that works for you.

What is WordPress?

To explain this I am going to use a little bit of technical lingo. I’ll try to keep it simple, but don’t worry if it all doesn’t make sense yet. Wordpress is a CMS (Content Management System) for web design. A CMS is a type of software that allows you to design a website. Unlike FrontPage or Dreamweaver that you install on your computer, WordPress is software that you access on the internet because it is installed on your Web Hosting Company’s server. If you have ever had a website where you logged on to a control panel to edit content, then you were using a CMS. If you have used blogspot, blogger, or typepad you were using a CMS to edit and post your blog page. If you ever had a site through Lifeway or Ezekiel you were using their CMS control panel to edit your website. Most church website design companies charge a monthly fee for using their CMS to keep your site up and running. They normally charge $15 and $150 per month for you to use their CMS. WordPress is FREE!!! So all you pay for is the Web Hosting service from a company like WebHostingPad. This gets your total recurring cost of a website down to around $25-50 per year!!! 

WordPress was originally created for bloggers. Since it was free and open source (meaning that anyone could create plug-ins and ad-ons for it) it became so popular that people created thousands of plug-ins for the CMS. The abundance of plug-ins made it possible for people to make amazing looking, non-blogging websites with the WordPress CMS. Over the past few years more and more churches have begun to use WordPress. As a result there are many themes that are made specifically for churches or can be tweaked a little to suit a church’s needs.  A “theme” is the WordPress lingo for a template. Some themes are free and others are often called “premium themes” which is another way of saying they cost money to purchase. In the next section I’ll lay out the pros and cons of each.

Why Pay for a Premium Theme?

Free WordPress Themes:

Cost: Free
Pros: They don’t cost anything. With a good bit of talent you can make a free theme look nice. Erwin McManus’ Mosaic Church is probably the best known site that uses a simple looking theme to meet their website need (Mosaic.org). This is proof that the site doesn’t have to be elaborate to work. They let their home page look like a blog page. This goes against more recent design trends that says your home page should be something that you don’t have to scroll down to find anything, see Andy Stanley’s NorthPoint.org or Perry Noble’s NewSpring.cc and you’ll notice that the entire home page is visible on your screen without the need to scroll down. 
Cons: If it’s free, it’s probably rather plain looking and it was designed more for a blogger than a church. But, that might be the look that fits your church. If you are an avid blogger and want your blogging content on the home page, this might be what you want. To make a free theme not look like a plain looking, blog page often requires a lot of customization to get it looking really nice. There are two free themes I have seen that are the exception to this (see Upsilon and Sero below), but it took me a long time to find them. I’m sure there are more out there, but it will require you looking through thousands of themes to find one that works. Another issue with free themes is that the theme designer rarely ever offers technical support for a free theme. Sometimes you can find a peer-to-peer forum that might give you some help, but otherwise you are on your own. If you don’t know much about html code you will have some problems at some point and need technical support. Personally I think these two issues makes paying $20-$75 for a theme that’s ready to go and has some level of tech support well worth it and still a real bargain.  To find free Themes: Just Google “free WordPress themes” and you’ll find 1,000’s of them. 

Premium Themes:

Cost: $20-$80
Pros: You get a theme that’s ready to go from the start. All you need to do is add your content. Over time you can customize them if you want, but you will have a nice looking site from the start. Most premium theme sellers offer technical support and peer-to-peer forums for the theme you bought. You can read about issues and tweaks that other users of your theme have learned. You can also use the forums to see how other churches have customized the theme to give you ideas. Some of the premium theme sellers even have video tutorials of how to do everything.
Using a premium theme, I got my first website up and running in about two weeks. When I started the process I didn’t know anything about WordPress and I didn’t know any html code. I made a few calls and sent a few emails to the tech support people at my hosting site and the premium theme seller to find the answers I needed.
Cons: Sometimes it takes some learning to figure out how to get all the features on the premium site work. Some theme designers make themes that are more user-friendly than others. Unfortunately you don’t really know how easy the theme features are to use until you purchase the theme. I have used two different premium themes from two different companies. Both had a few things that weren’t immediately intuitive. Since both had good tech support, I learned how to get them working pretty quick.

Premium WordPress Theme Sites

Company/Designer:ChurchTheme/ithemes
Themes to Check Out:bSocial, Titanium, iTeam, Tech
Website: Click here to visit iThemes Premium WordPress Themes website 
Review:Themes cost between $60-$80.  There are several themes on here to choose from. I am currently using the bSocial for my website (www.essentialchurch.tv).  The Titanium is also another popular theme for churches. One of the best things about this site, in addition to nice themes is the video tutorials.  Most of their premium themes have some special features on them like scrolling pictures and a youtube video plugin.  One of the things I really like about iThemes is that their special features are some of the easiest to use of any that I have worked with. 

Company/Designer:LivingOS
Theme to Check Out: Mu, Upsilon
Website: Click here to visit LivingOS.com
Review: Themes cost $0-$50. The MU Theme looks really nice and is one of my favorite designs. It was designed for churches and has a really big full width motion frame at the top just under a menu bar. It has a similar look and feel to NewSpring.cc or 12Stone.com. With a little customization you could probably have your home page look as good or better than those churches using this theme.  The UPSILON Theme is the a nice looking free theme. It has a trendy look to it with a motion graphic frame. I have seen a few churches that have used this site and made it look really nice.

Company/Designer:StudioPress
Themes to Check Out: Revolution, Chrome, Corporate
Website: Click here to visit StudioPress website
Review:Themes cost $60.  This site has some themes that are made specifically for churches. You might notice that the LifeStyle, Agent, and the RevolutionChurch themes are the same, but with a different color scheme. This just goes to show you that even though the theme wasn’t originally designed for a church, the theme works just fine for church use. So don’t pick a theme just because it says the word “church” in the title. I have an older version of the Revolution Lifestyle Theme. (The ChurchesPlantingChurches.com site is using this theme.) I got this theme back when it was first designed and the developer offered it for free.  It took a little bit of learning to figure out how to get it working right because I didn’t have access to the developer’s tech support. Now that it’s offered as a premium theme according to some stuff I have read about it, the theme developer has made some improvements to it so it might be a little more user friendly and they offer free tech support and a peer-to-peer forum for their themes when you purchase from them. 

Company/Designer: ChurchWebDeveloper
Theme to Check Out: Sero
Website: Click here to visit ChurchWebDeveloper.com
Review:Theme is free. It is ont of the best free themes I have seen. This looks really nice theme and it although I haven’t used it, I watched the video tutorial about it and it looks to be easy to use and loaded with customizable features. There doesn’t seem to be tech support provided for the theme by the developer, but the video tutorial seems to do a good job of showing how to use it. I haven’t found any help forums for it either. As with most free themes, lack of tech support is almost always an issue. But it’s free so it might be worth the risk of not having tech support. The theme developer does offer consulting services, which might be how he intends to make money from the theme. I’m not basing that on anything other than a guess. 

Company/Designer: Elegant Themes
Theme to Check Out: ColdStone
Website: Click here to visit elegantthemes.com 
Review:This site requires you to purchase an annual membership for $20. I have not purchased from them, but it looks like you can keep the theme you download and continue to use it even if you cancel your annual membership. They have about 25 themes, but the ColdStone theme was the only one that looked like it would be a good fit for a church. None of their themes are made specifically for a church, but could be used with a little bit of customization.

Company/Designer:WooThemes
Themes to Check Out:BusyBee, OpenAir, and several others.
Website: Click here to visit WooThemes.com 
Review:Themes cost $70. Their themes aren’t designed specifically for churches, but many of them look like they would work just fine as a church site. I have heard that the special features on WooThemes are a little more difficult to figure out how to use, but I do not have any first hand experience using them.

Company/Designer:OmniTheme
Theme to Check Out: Omni Theme Professional
Website: Click here to visit OmniTheme website
Review:Themes cost $80. They only have 2 themes. The normal Omni Theme looks a bit clutterd to me, but the Professional one looks nice.  To find it click on the News menu.  I guess it’s so new they haven’t created a page link for it yet. 

Company/Designer:BlogOhBlog
Theme to Check Out: Slurpie
Website: BlogOhBlog.com
Review:Themes cost between $50-$80. I know I have seen a church that used either the Slurpie theme or one really similar to it. I don’t know anything about their themes other than that the Slurpie one looked like another church website I had seen. 

Other WordPress Tutorials and Tips 

There are several sites that offer step-by-step instructions to help you get up and running.  Below are two of the ones that I found most helpful.  If you want to find more just Google the words: WordPress, Church, Website, etc. all together and you’ll find more resources.  There are also some video tutorials out there if you click on the video tab of a Google search.  Also, if you just want to get a feel for how to use the WordPress, go to WordPress.comand sign up for a free wordpress account.  This is a WordPress site that is hosted by WordPress.com rather than a company like WebHostingPad.  Because of this, you will not be able limited as to what you can customize, but it will allow you to use the same WordPressCMS.  You can learn how to post a page and edit content and change a theme with this free account.  Some of the limitations are that you can’t load a custom/premium theme, change out the top banner with your logo, or change the domain name to your own name.  But if you just want to test out WordPressbeforeyoumake a decision it’s free and will give you a feel for how to use it.  
  – Using WordPress to Run Church Websites Tutorial Series by ChurchCommunicationsPro.com.
  – Creating wordpress church websitesby ChurchBlogger.wordpress.com

Help Getting a Website

If you think all of this is more than you can handle, go to Acts18Websites.com and get a great looking WordPress site custom designed and ready to go for $500.

Related posts:

1. Website Design Principles
2. Website vs. Blogging as a Church Planter
3. Website: The New Yellow Pages
4. SEO – Without It, Your Website Is Invisible
5. Great Graphic Design Without a Designer

Tags: Website, Wordpress