by When my husband and I decided to launch Ministrymaker in early 2001, I knew absolutely nothing about HTML, CSS, SEO, or building websites. Since then I’ve learned how important it is to have a professional online presence – not only for businesses, but especially for churches, ministries and non-profit organizations.
Eventually, a few pastors and friends asked me to build websites for their ministries. After spending an enormous amount of time trying to help them learn (in a few months) what had taken me years to figure out, I wondered if there was an easier way to build and maintain an inexpensive church or non-profit website without going through the pain of learning HTML.
I discovered “website builders” by chance one day while doing research for an article. Website builders come in different forms, but are basically template-based programs that allow users to build and maintain websites through an online control panel and/or program installed on their computer.
Website Tonight
While I’ve experimented with several different site builders over the years, one that consistently receives good reviews from our pastors and friends who use it is WebSite Tonight by GoDaddy. We use GoDaddy as our host for Ministrymaker Magazine and I’ve been very pleased with their service, price and products.
To get started with GoDaddy’s website builder, sign up for an account, register your domain name (if you don’t already have one), pick a template, upload your personal information and photos and then publish your new church or ministry site on the Internet. From start to finish it’s possible to have a live website up and running within a few hours.
How much does it cost?
The cost to build a website and have it hosted on GoDaddy starts at $4.99 per month – what many companies charge for web hosting alone. GoDaddy’s Economy Plan is more than adequate for most churches and non-profits. The plan includes a five page website, 1 GB storage, 150 GB bandwidth, and email accounts.
After you pick a template you can change colors, upload photos, and add information about your church or ministry. Once the site is finished, you can add your web address to business cards, stationary, mailers, brochures — and even news releases about special events your ministry may be having.
Click here for more information about GoDaddy’s WebSite Tonight, website hosting plans, or other ministry products.
Seriously consider doing a self heotsd WordPress website. You need a domain name and small hosting account (less than $10 a month). The WordPress software is free. You can do the whole thing yourself and there are literally tens of thousands of free themes to choose from. It’s pretty easy to get going, many of the main hosting companies offer a 1-click install so you don’t need to worry about that end of it and the best part is it’s all under your control. If you want help with a wordpress site at some point there are thousands of wordpress developers out there you can hire. You can have a site up and running very, very quickly and you don’t need to know a lick of HTML, PHP or any other programming language. You can make an amazing website and access thousands of free plugins (additional software features) that expand the flexibility of the site far more than can be explained here. Check it out!
WordPress is a great platform to use for a website. While viewed as a blog platform, wordpress can easiliy be customized as a more traditional website feel. I use the thesis theme which works great.
You might try setting up a blog as a website. I have both websites and blogs. As co-founder and coordinator of the Christian Fiction Review Blog I’ve grown accustomed to Blogger.Com. With a blog you can link other internal blogs the same way you would web pages. You use templates just like you would with most website builders. Bogger has this neat little thing where you can look at the layout and arrange things the way you want to (within reason). The really BIG plus is that there are NO advertisements unless you choose to put them there. The one drawback is it takes a little planning to create a blog that is really a website. You have your main blog, which in a sitebuilder is called your home or index page. From there you have links to other blogs which are really part of the same blog, just as web pages are part of the same site. It can seem a little confusing at first, but it can be done.
I am Rev yousaf musrat I having service to in church 50 year’s ago and I am make to many disciples of Christ and send them for field works they are win thousands souls for Christ, our vision got world wide as his witness, we are believe to Matthew 28:19-20 we are spreading good seed in Pakistan.
bookmarked your page just to find that website builder again