Church websites

This cartoon is now available in the latest updates section of CartoonChurch.com and can be republished by subscribers. It is an older drawing, hence the shading. I do not really do shading like that any more owing to the rising price of ink.

Church websites
I have been asked by someone to advise on making a church website. They had a look at the one I did (a few years ago now) in Cookham and asked me how easy it would be to do something similar. I no longer run the Cookham website by the way as I emigrated to Essex. I should also add that I do not hold up the Cookham site as a stunning example of the genre, and if I was doing the site again today I would do some things differently.

I am of the opinion that you do not need to subscribe to an expensive service in order to have a good church website and so (in a following post in a day or two) I plan to show anyone who is interested how you can make a church website using free resources that are available online. The Cookham site was done using Typepad, but there are now equivalents that will do the job for less money or indeed no money. But you can use Typepad if you like. In the meantime these are a few resources I have discovered around the place that might make for useful background reading:

Flickr: Church Marketing Lab
A group on Flickr organised by the Church Marketing Sucks people where church design, publicity and websites can be shared.

‘The Top 20 Web Sites for Church Communicators’ 2007
List by Kevin Hendricks of the same aforementioned website.

Church website design: self-assessment design tool to rate and improve church sites
Various boxes that can tick to see whether your church website is any good or not.

TallSkinnyKiwi: 15 Blogging Tips For 2007
I realise that blogging and church websites are not the same subject, but Andrew has listed some useful thoughts here, particularly about being found on search engines.

Church website and blog ideas
Contains Church website and blog ideas. (Update: David, who runs the site, has gathered some links together specially for us. Marvellous.)