So I’m embarking on a redesign of our church website…
Our current website has been in shambles for a while now http://thesouthsidechurch.org and I haven’t taken the time to really fix it. However, there are a few things I want the site to accomplish:
- Have an attractive, fast-loading initial page that communicates friendliness and “contemporary-ness”
- Have an easy-access media player to watch video and listen to audio files.
- Have an easy-to-use podcast system for downloading media files.
- Provide a section for standard Church Marketing Documents.
- Provide for blog-style news updates.
The current plan is to implement the site with the WordPress engine. The plan is a work in progress now, but here’s the technical stuff:
- Create a WordPress compatible theme and overall design of the site.
- Use WordPress pages to host specific content.
- Use the blog post system for both media files and for news items. (“sermon” category with subcategories, “news” category, “articles” category, and use the built in tagging system for posts in those categories)
- Use the “Podcasting” plugin to provide separate audio and video podcast feeds.
- Modify the Email-Notification plugin to send out newsletters to our mailing list.
I plan to do this on a test site first to see how it will all work, and if you are interested in giving me ideas or suggestions, I’d love to take them. Here are a few other church websites that you can look at to give me some help.
- http://www.thechurchinwestridge.com
- http://heartlandchurch.tv
- http://www.elevationchurch.org
- http://www.rivervineyardchurch.org
If you have any other church website suggestions, post them in the comments!
The redesign is complete!