Building Your Website

A church's Internet presence centers around its website. A poorly designed website will fail to provide easy access to current information and will be difficult to maintain. Taking the time to understand the basics of web site design is well worth the effort. These basics are easy to understand and will help you cut through the techno-babel you will encounter when searching for a web developer to create your site.

A web site can be broken down into a few basic ideas involving structure, content, web server, and execution. When reading through this section please feel free to add your comments:

• Structure
• Content
• Server

Getting It Done

Know what you want before you find a developer to create it. Be a good businessman and look at the competition's websites. Write down exactly what you want, complete with references to existing sites. (Web developers love knowing exactly what is expected and will knock down their bid accordingly.) Ask the developer if you will be able to use one, and only one, administration panel for the entire site. Next, ask the developer what tools he uses and how popular they are. (If he disappears from the scene, you don't want to have to start over from scratch just to make a small change in your site.) Expect him to ask you to try to pick from a selection of themes for your site. If you can find one requiring a minimum amount of alteration, his bid may fall over 50%.