From Chapter 5 of God on the Net - 2000 Edition, published by HarperCollins
You may want to create a web site for your church. It is not difficult, and this chapter will guide you through some of the many choices to be made.
The first question to ask is, ‘Why?’ Why does your church want a web site? Is it to improve communications between the members, so the faithful can log on and check the church council minutes or find the time of next week's choir practice? Or is the aim to communicate with those outside the church, to enable visitors or newcomers to find the building and the times of services?
If your aim is internal communication, the site will be focused on the needs of your members. You can allow a little jargon to creep in, and up-to-date information is more important than style. If you are speaking to a wider audience, pages of information on internal matters may only confuse (or even be off-putting). The site becomes an area of mission.
In all probability you will be trying to do both. The danger of much church communication is that the needs and culture of the saints predominates. One solution is to recognise that your members will be your most regular users, yet make the opening page welcoming to strangers with a clear link to a section of the site which caters for their questions.
You have two choices, with not much in between. You can:
· Put up a simple, seldom-changing information page which tells visitors how to find the church or phone the minister.
· Commit yourself to an active site which needs regular attention – a sort of on-line church magazine.
‘The Web is incredibly exciting because it is the fulfilment of a lot of our dreams that the computer would ultimately not be primarily a devise for computation but change into a device for communication. And with the Web that has finally happened.’
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers.
Every church should have at least an information page. If someone in your church has access to the web, he or she can fill in a form on a Christian web site to create an information page for their church. No technical or design skills are required. If a church can erect a notice board outside their building, they should create a virtual board for the benefit of the web community. Creating an on-line magazine is far more difficult. You will need a church team, and you will need more advanced software than the simple forms used to create an information page.
Many congregations have someone who ‘knows a bit about the internet’ and who offers to put up a site for the church. By all means welcome their enthusiasm. But think the whole project through. Consider the effort that goes into a church magazine: there are contributors to be found and articles to be typed, month after month after month. The enthusiast may set up an excellent web site. The design may be brilliant and the graphics stunning. But when the youth worker's phone number changes or the church council diary needs updating, who makes the changes?
The bigger problem in web sites is not their initial design, but in regularly maintaining them.
We start with an easy one. If your church has taken an account out with an Internet Service Provider, that account usually comes with free web space. The allocation is often more than you need as only 1Mb is sufficient for most church sites.
You may have access to a free ISP. Not all offer web space as part of their package, but most do. Rather than use the web space of the enthusiast in your congregation, open a free account with one of these ISPs. Alternatively, there are lots of sites which offer free web space. It does not matter if the site is kept on a computer in Washington, USA or Washington, England. Check how quickly the pages of the site appear – and check at various times of day as US-based servers can become very clogged in the evenings and weekends.
The snag with such free space is that the name allocated to you may not be as catchy or memorable as you would like. Will newcomers ever find you if your web address is www.doom.com/freepages/AllSaints? There is a way around this called redirection, and we will discuss this later.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML for short) is the format used for pages on the internet and is quickly becoming the format for computer text. You cannot buy new word processing software these days which will not allow you to save your lovingly created article in HTML. The latest version of Microsoft Word uses HTML as one of its native formats.
So the days when you had to call on a computer geek who understood HTML are fast disappearing. The tools required to create and publish web pages are becoming increasingly easier to use. You can choose from a wide range of applications which work much like a desktop publishing programs. Your starting point is, therefore, to check out the software you already use. Does it (or will it if you upgrade) allow you to create HTML pages? If it does, then you may be better off sticking to software you already know how to use than learning skills with another package.
However, word processors will only create basic sites and are not designed to help a complete novice create his or her first web site. You may also be stuck for the software needed to transfer your creation to your web server. This does not use e-mail, but another internet service called File Transfer Protocol or FTP.
What should you do? Here are some of the choices, starting with the most simple:
· Sign up with one of the free communities on the web such as www.crosswinds.com. As well as offering free web space, they provide simple forms or programs which can generate a basic web page. You simply fill in the form and the web server generates a basic page for you and places it within their community. Within 15 minutes you have a one-page church notice board. Some Christian sites offer similar facilities and AOL users can use the popular AOLPress software.
· If you are a charity, look at the service offered by Charity Net which provides free web space and some web page design. Type ‘free web site design’ into a search engine to find other agencies willing to help churches or charities.
· Go to ZyWeb where you can design a site on-line. Their free version must include a small advertisement. Alternatively, you can pay for versions without the advertisement. RapidSite Is another place which allows you to choose from a set of on-line templates.
· Look at pre-designed site designs, such as those sold by Xoom. It is a bit like buying a shirt from a general store: the quality is good, though the range is limited – and you hope no one is wearing the same design at the next office party. These designs may come on a CD or you may select them via the internet. You will need to edit these designs in an HTML editor, but the editor built-in to your browser should be sufficient.
· Buy specialist web creation software. This comes with its own, built-in templates and these templates can give your site a professional look right from the outset. You get a 'look and feel' out of the box and all you have to do is add your own content. The choices here are many. Start your search with Microsoft’s Publisher (a good DTP and simple web site creation tool) or Microsoft’s FrontPage (which is a professional program that adds valuable site tools alongside a sophisticated HTML editor). Moving away from Microsoft, you will find good software in Adobe’s PageMill and NetObject’s Fusion. NetObjects have placed an earlier version of Fusion (version 2; the current version is 4) on a number of computer magazine cover CDs. This is an excellent piece of software; it may lack some of the more recent innovations in web design, but then you should avoid these anyway so that people using older browsers can still read the pages you create.
· Ask a design agency to design a site for you. Here a designer is predominantly charging for time and a web site design will take anything from a day to a few weeks, depending on its complexity. But make it clear to the agency that you need the finished pages designed so they can be updated by you, rather than through another expensive day at the designer’s. For example, if the designer uses FrontPage to set up the site, you could then buy the software and use it to update the site yourself. Be willing – very willing – to sacrifice fancy design for ease of updating.
· If you have a lot of information that regularly changes – but the layout remains consistent – such as a training diary, look carefully at using an on-line database to publish your pages. The initial costs will be higher but the on-going management will be far easier. Although you will need professional help to set it all up, an administrator can routinely update it via simple database forms.
Ten tips for church pages
1. If the site is for the faithful, make sure there’s also a clear introduction relevant for new people.
2. Watch out for jargon or making assumptions about what your audience believes or understands.
3. Keep the pages as clean and uncluttered as possible.
4. Use a contrasting page background (or white) that makes the text very easy to read.
5. Try to keep blocks of text to a minimum as people’s attention span is far less when reading from a screen.
6. Decide on a font (or maybe two) and colour scheme to use and then stick to that theme throughout the pages.
7. Don’t load your pages with unnecessary images as they will slow down the speed of the page.
8. Pay attention to navigation buttons: is it simple to browse from page to page without getting lost?
9. Don’t forget to submit details of your site to search engines, Christian directories and local community directories.
10. Update it. Update it. Update it.
In a web site for a church or organisation, there will need to be articles from a number of people. The youth club may want a regular list of events; the minister may want to place his weekly sermon on the church’s site. This raises two questions:
· How can others contribute to the site?
· Should only one person have editorial control?
A free page on Homestead (http://www.homestead.com) may be set up so that an agreed list of contributors can add to it. Each contributor can use the software provided to make additions and alterations to the site. However, this is not a common arrangement. With most web hosting services there is one account name and password. Others can, of course, edit the site if they all use the one account and password.
You can split your web site into sections. A common need is for the church’s youth group to be able to design their own pages where the style and graphics will be very different. One approach here is to create the main site with separate sub-folders which may be maintained independently. So the church site may have a sub-folder called ‘youth’ to which it links, but what happens within that sub-folder is determined by the person responsible for the youth site. It is possible using a technique called 'frames' to maintain an overall set of navigation buttons which always remain in view.
For your main site you will need contributions written by others. A single editor with control of the site's look and feel (and maybe theology!) is important. All contributions need to be channelled through this one person to ensure consistency. This is the same approach as that used for a church magazine: one person collates and edits the contributions before they are 'desktop published'. Just because the technology allows simultaneous, multi-authorship does not mean that it is a good idea!
Web design tools such as Microsoft Publisher or Microsoft FrontPage can readily import Word documents. Alternatively, ask everyone to use the simple editors associated with either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator. This will require some instruction, as these editors have limitations imposed on them by the web format, but it will ensure that material arrives in a readable form.
Above all there needs to be an agreed house style. This should define the font used for text, its colour and size for various levels of headings. One of the advantages of a tool such as FrontPage is that HTML text imported from another editor can be readily adjusted to take on the overall house style of the site. This is dipping into deep water, but if you want to encourage authors to contribute, make your life easier by using FrontPage and asking for all contributions to be in Word or simple HTML following an agreed house style.
Finally, you will need software to send your files to the server which holds (or, to use the jargon, hosts) your web pages. Again, the choice of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) programs is vast and you can obtain one either via a web shareware site or through the cover CD of an internet magazine.
The theme of proclaiming an eternal message through ever-changing methods is well known. It was faced by the apostle Paul as he confronted Greek culture. The internet raises little that is new, but the on-going commitment cannot be shirked: how can the Church exploit this medium to present the Good News?
Interestingly, in comparison with media such as film and TV, the financial costs need not be a barrier. Internet evangelism is more akin to friendship evangelism, with opportunities for one-to-one contact. Publishing an attractive web site does not require a long print run or a cast list of thousands. Web evangelism is a huge opportunity for both Christian organizations and private individuals, not least those with plenty of spare time on their hands through unemployment, ill-health or retirement.
‘The message of the Gospel never changes – and for good reason: God never changes, and neither does our basic spiritual need nor His answer to that need. But the methods of presenting that message do change – and in fact they must change if we are to keep pace with a changing world.’
Billy Graham Just As I Am, HarperCollins
As with other forms of publishing, we Christians need to learn skills in communicating with those outside the Church. The words we use and the culture we assume may mask the message we are trying to convey. The apostle Paul used the debating theatres of his day and quoted their poets. We need to be just as skilled.
SOON Gospel Literature, a UK-based literature ministry, are convinced that the internet represents an opportunity which Christians are not yet fully exploiting for the gospel. They have produced a ‘how-to’ guide on using the web for evangelism. Take a look at www.brigada.org/today/articles/web-evangelism.html. Any local church setting up its own pages on the web to explain the history of its magnificent building or to list the times of its family services should start here.
“I wrote a memo at one point in 1994 called ‘The Internet Tidal Wave’ that very explicitly said that I’ve told you many times that the Internet is a priority, I’m now telling you it is the priority.”
Bill Gates, Microsoft
Suppose as a church or an organization you have created a gem of a web site. You will want people to visit it. And that comes down to two things: choosing a memorable address and promoting your site via the internet itself or through more traditional printed materials.
For better or worse, most churches or Christian organizations already have an established name. All the St. Mary’s churches up and down the land are known in their communities as, well, St. Mary’s. A web address with St Mary’s in it somewhere is going to help. Yet a quick search on the web showed one St Mary’s in the US at http://members.tripod.com/~pastorsname/index. The church has clearly used some web space allocated to the pastor. But what happens when the pastor moves on?
Of course not everyone can get the address www.stmarys.com, as domain names are given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Most of the nice names have already been taken. One possibility is to incorporate the town name as well, which is what St. Mary’s, Southampton has done with http://www.st-marys-church-southampton.co.uk. (And, amusingly, the bell ringers at the Parish Church of St. Mary’s Church, Aylesbury have used an address beginning http://utter.chaos.org.uk!)
So how do you get an address for your church or organization? Does it cost a lot and is it difficult to arrange?
A domain name is simply a more memorable form for the sets of numbers which specify which computer in the world handles your e-mail and/or web space. Rather than type in numbers, you can type in an address and the numbers are looked up by the computer itself. Names are registered by national and international authorities, and it is first come, first served.
Once you have a domain name it can be used for both your e-mail and your web pages. Suppose you register the domain myaddress.com, then e-mail sent to anything@myaddress.com will end up on the e-mail account to which myaddress.com is linked. Similarly, you can set up a web site at http://myaddress.com or http://www.myaddress.com. The leading www is optional, but can be used to indicate which computer (or server) holds the web pages.
Although you can register a domain name yourself (see http://www.register.com for example), the job is best done via an internet service provider. This ISP need not be the ISP who provides you with internet access or web space. There are two likely scenarios:
· You have an access account with an ISP but want to register your own domain name and use that for e-mail and as your web address. Suppose you want to register st-marys-church.org.uk. Your ISP will do this for you and then arrange for e-mail sent to anything@st-marys-church.org.uk to be accessed via your existing e-mail account. And the free web space that comes with your account would be accessed through the address www.st-marys-church.org.uk. Your ISP will charge you for the registration (both for his time and the central authorities fee) and for setting up the e-mail and web redirection.
· The second scenario is like the first, but you find that your ISP does not allow you to use your own domain name for their standard accounts and requires you to move to their ‘business package’, which is expensive. It may be cheaper to rent some web space at another ISP, say one of the Christian sites, and ask them to register your domain. You keep your first ISP for your dial-up connection to the internet and for your e-mail service, while using the second for running your web site. As before, your e-mail and web site both use the new name, but the redirection is set up by the second ISP.
The second scenario may appear complicated, even wasteful of the ‘free web space’ on your original dial-up account. But it is likely to happen, especially if you are using an inexpensive or even free ISP who is keen to move you on to their more economic business packages.
There is another possibility to throw into the mix. Some organizations have already registered attractive domain names (anglican.org, churchuk.net, parishchurch.org.uk, churchmusic.org.uk etc.) and are happy for you to licence or rent a ‘sub domain’ of that name. So Ely diocese in the UK is http://www.ely.anglican.org.uk and All Saint’s Church, Ecclesall is http://www.ecclesall.parishchurch.org.uk. The cost of these sub-domains is a lot less than registering your own domain, indeed the sub-domain may be free. Your need to ask the organizations holding the domain to set up a sub-domain for you and re-direct e-mail and web calls to the account on your existing ISP. However, the redirection introduces a slight delay (as the user’s browser first looks up the sub-domain and then gets referred to another service to find the site proper). It also reveals the true location of your web site, and it is this location that the user may store as a bookmark in his or her browser. For example, if you look up http://www.ecclesall.parishchurch.org.uk you will be taken to All Saint’s site on GlobalNet with the true address http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~allsaints/. If you now bookmark this site, it is the GlobalNet name which is saved.
One of the best UK internet providers is Demon. They offer a first-rate service and because of this many Christian organizations have signed up with them. Then they find they are embarrassed about ‘demon’ appearing in their address for e-mail or web site. The address www.allsaints.demon.co.uk has a strange ring about it! For this reason, some Demon customers have either registered their own domain or licensed a sub-domain from another existing organization.
People will not always remember your web site address. They will need to find it in:
¨ general search engines, such as Yahoo or Excite
¨ local community directories for your town
¨ Christian directories.
Once the site has been built, you will need to submit details of the site to the most relevant search engines and directories. Some directories require you to fill in a form, allowing you to enter a brief description and specify the category under which you want your site catalogued. Others only expect a URL and will then, over the following days or weeks, trawl through the pages on your site in order to determine what the site is about. For these search engines you need to prepare your site by ensuring that:
· The opening page contains a good description of the site as a whole.
· The titles of the pages are meaningful and helpful for someone seeing that title out of context.
· There are hidden as ‘meta tags’ on your key pages which describe both the page’s content and the keywords under which you want the site catalogued. Look at the details in Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com) on how to construct these tags.
Following a submission, your site should appear on the search engine after a few days. However, if someone simply enters ‘Church’ and ‘UK’ into a search engine because they are looking for UK churches, the search engine will return hundreds of responses. How do you ensure that your church is listed on the first page, rather than the one hundred and thirty-second? Most people give up browsing through search results after three pages or so.
The simple answer is that there is no guaranteed way of ensuring your site is rated among the top 50. In the past, people have submitted their site details over and over again, or placed the description countless times on their opening page (but in white text on a white background so viewers do not see the repetition) in the hope that this would boost their relevance ranking. This, and other ploys, may have worked once but the search engines are also becoming cleverer. Multiple submissions may mean your entry is regarded as ‘spam’ – that is spurious, unwanted, advertising material – and your site will not be listed at all, not even on page 132.
Many web sites and a few software programs offer to take the chore out of submitting to 400+ search engines by automating the process for you. You make one submission to that site and they handle all the other submissions through an automatic process. Usually, they will submit your details to the top 10 search engines for free, but expect a payment if you want comprehensive submission. There is now growing evidence that the search engines, deluged with repeating, automatic submissions, are ignoring this form of registration too. It seems the only sure way is to submit your details manually, using an approach suitable for that search engine.
If you are selling goods on the internet, and your name is not well known, then the elusive search for the number 1 slot may be worth it. But many Christian organizations simply want people to be able to find them if they look hard enough in a search engine, not catch thousands of passers by with no real interest in the organization. So the 132nd page is fine, provided the searcher is willing to invest a bit more time in narrowing his or her search.
Site submission is an art. And the best place to learn the skills and tricks is http://www.searchenginewatch.com.
Copyright 1999 Vernon Blackmore