Monday 20 July 2015

Church Growth strategies: 'Be IT Savvy: get a website - part three!'

So here we are with the final part of thinking about getting ourselves a web presence. As we do, Hauerwas' strapline reminds us to avoid the desperation that strategies can sometimes become:

Church growth strategies are the death rattle of a church that has lost its way.

Today was going to be purely about another Content Management System (CMS) approach to creating your own website using a product called Joomla - something I feel sits between the traditional web offering and the simplicity of using Wordpress but brings with it a little more power in the way things appear and the roles that can be passed out to contributors. It was, but I have been encouraged to take a look at something by the name of  WEEBLY, and it looks like something well worth considering because it is as simple a means of getting a web presence with CMS potential added as a bonus.

If you'd like to find out more about using Joomla - take a look at the web site below the video and think about what you might be able to do with Joomla (and the other products here - then either get someone from within your church who is techie to work with you or sign up for a demo site  at Joomlas and have a go at creating a test site yourself (which is a good idea as you'll have some understanding of what is going on.

Now, although I am looking to encourage people to become a little more IT aware, I don't have the time (or the inclination) to reinvent the wheel so instead, here's an outline on Joomla (and a church web site)




Here's a church site using Joomla


And a video (and web site) for Weebly:




and here's a church site built using it



And just to be egalitarian, here's the same agin for Wordpress too:




And a church site using wordpress

So there we go. Hopefully I have convinced some of you out there that being 'IT Savvy' and getting a web site is not the fear-filled task you thought it was.

If I can be of any assistance give me a call.

Thanks go to Catriona Baker, a designer who pointed me to Weebly - It is so very good to have people who will point us to new things and she does that on a regular basis :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks

What's The Score? said...

I've just had a quick catch-up read through your death rattles or gurgles...ending here at what seems like a Guurgle waypoint. As the guy from Belfast said, if Ballinaleck can do it.....

Would it be feasible and useful to design a B2CS focus for Tamworth, where each church would have space to present its Autumn "programme"? This would perhaps depend on a small network of people able quickly to ferret out and develop/upload the content. Then can we get the focus to support a social media "spread" across the town? Have we a recipe for that?

( This is insightfull, albeit in a different setting...
http://www.newdots.org.uk/blog/2015/7/2/how-we-do-concert-promotion.aspx?utm_content=buffer2a734&utm_medium )

This effort is not something that will have massive effect at a first stab, but it would begin to explore what a town church community could be doing collectively to get its message out to 70000, not just 700-ish. And the online stuff will probably turn out to be a small but initiating part of that thinking.