Next Level Church Website | CMS Choice

Many of you know that I am a tent-maker as many church planters must be to make ends meet. What that means is that I have two jobs. I’m both a pastor and a web guy. I run my own company that primarily deals with non-ministry clients, but I am in the process of shifting that more and more. In the next year I plan to be involved exclusively in consulting ministries in their web presence.

Over the next couple weeks I want to share with you some resources and tips that will help your ministry team take your web presence to another level. In this installment we are going to take a look at Content Management Systems(CMS). This is the platform or software that operates your website and it is the only way to go these days. A CMS will give you the ability to add content and grow your site on an on going basis. All CMS platforms have a way to login and submit and edit content and some take things to a whole new level.

Like I mentioned, there are more options out there than I could begin to cover in a months worth of posts, but in the end there are really only three and I would argue that there really is only one choice for churches.

These are Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. But what about CMS – X and CMS – Y? These should be the only ones that you should consider for two reasons. Paying for a church specific CMS is also a waste of money.

#1: They are open source
#2: They are the most popular and most supported

• WordPress. The easiest and most streamlined CMS ever invented. I love WordPress and use it for all of my blogs. It is important to get everyone who needs to use the website for communication on board and trained on submitting content and WordPress will present the easiest solution. If you are intending to get more out of your website, then you may find you will hit a wall pretty quick with WordPress. It depends on plugins to do almost everything and does not provide much in the way of user management.
• Drupal. Takes WordPress usability and adds much needed functionality. If you have someone on your team who is more web savvy to handle the heavy lifting, then they may be happier with the expanded capabilities of Drupal. Not as dependent on plugins for simple functions and adds some user management tools. Still living in the shadow of Joomla, but is a step in a more functional direction than WordPress.
• Joomla. I think it is the only real choice for churches. Functionality rules the day. Joomla can do anything you want a website to do. The options for components are second to none and most are open source. Implementing a Joomla may not be something the average WordPress user can do, but it won’t kill you.

Here’s the basics. Out of the box joomla will get you professional contact forms so you can avoid the dreaded mailto: links. Like all CMS’s it will also run a blog/RSS feed for you. The components you install are what make Joomla work hard for you. Do you want a MySpace like user experience complete with profiles forums and more? There are components that will rock that for you. Do you want surveys and polls? Out of the box Joomla has you covered and you can install components to take that to another level. Give your members access to more of the site. Add a forum. Handle your Podcast. Change your template on the fly.

This is step one in getting your church website to the next level. You need a solid foundation for growth and content. I have seen countless churches spend a ton of money on custom systems and flash sites that tie you to a company for updates and give you limited access to content. Communication on the web is as important as your day to day communication face to face with people, and you don’t outsource that. Your communication efforts to to be from you and they need to be frequent and liquid. On top of that, your website needs to be a centerpiece of communication for your team and your members.

Part two we will cover some quick and easy ways to get your site to the top of the search engines.

Tagged as: church web design