Church Websites Need Blogs
Tim Wall argues that pastors should be blogging and that they should be blogging on their church websites.
The absolute best scenario for your ministry blogs is to build them right into your primary website. That way, your website benefits from all of the traffic and content added to the blogs.
To do this, you could build your entire website on a blogging platform like Wordpress, or you could use a website CMS that supports integrated blogging. Cory Miller right here at ChurchCommunicationsPro is an expert on the former. For the latter, I’ll give another shameless plug for my company’s content management system, Sky. It has blogging built right in so you can easily add unlimited blogs to any page in your site (and it also has friendly URLs. Hooray!). There are others out there too. Just look for the ability to integrate blogs with your main site.
Many pastors are blogging, but most are using a hosted platform like Google’s Blogger or WordPress.com (not to be confused with the WordPress software that can be installed and run from your own server with your own domain name). In our previous post, Christian Bloggers Survey, we noted that
most Christian bloggers are senior pastor men in their thirties who in the last year started blogging with Google’s Blogger and post about once per week.
But Tim argues that the ideal situation is for pastors to blog on their own church websites. As he points out, one way to do that is to use a platform like WordPress or Joomla! for your website so that blogging is built right in to the structure of your site. Both platforms are free, but my personal preference as far as ease of use is concerned is WordPress.
Another option would be to install WordPress in a subfolder on your preexisting site. If your current website is www.gracechurch.com, your blog would be www.gracechurch.com/blog/. The two sites could be integrated, but not quite as seamlessly as the former method.
A third option would be to use My PastorBlog, which enables you to integrate your My PastorBlog blog right into your church website. It’s free and easy to use, but not nearly as feature rich as the other options. If you want something simple, this is probably your best option.
Tim concludes with this appeal:
Forget about the mystique and start blogging not because it’s trendy, but because it is communication. Share everything about your church through your blog and use other means of communication to point back to the blog. Educate your church members on how to use and subscribe to your blog. In short, make the blog the center of your church communication. It will benefit your church and also give you a better church website than all the flash animation in the world could provide.
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J. R. Miller
I have to disagree. I have been doing web and graphics design now for close to 11 years and have been in ministry for close to 16. I designed my entire site in Joomla and considered integrating my blog. I did have an integrated blog on an older php based site, but chose the offsite hosting this time.
My Blog: http://www.MoreThanCake.Org
My Church: http://www.OrtingReunion.Org
Here are a couple reasons why I chose not to.
1. Hosting offiste with links back to the church site helps increase my Google rankings for both my blog and my church site.
2. By hosting my blog on a seperate site with a unique domain, it makes it easier for folks to find the content they want and not force them to look at content they don’t want.
3. With RSS syndication, I am able to turn my blogspot into a second hom page for my church site. People can get all the essential calendar details from my blog and link to the church site for more details they want.
4. With RSS I am able to syndicate my blog to the church website and still communicate effectively while reducing clutter.
5. I am not selling something like the guy above by making any plugs “shameless” or otherweise.
6. Using sites like BlogSpot, I am able to create dedicated spaces for specific ministries to showcase their stuff and I, as the web designer, don’t have to do anything to keep them up do date. This is not possible on a fully integrated all in one site. See our starting pages for our MOPS ministry at http://www.OrtingMOPS.Org.
In summary, offiste hosting for blogs and other ministry specific pages allows for
1. Streamlined content
2. Increased Google rankings
3. Itegration through RSS/ATOM.
4. No web professionals need to be hired.
5. Blog software stays updated with the latest technology and no one in the church has to do the work and you don’t have to pay a web guy.
That is my 2 cents.
Jul 9th, 2007 2:52 pm
J. R. Miller
Respectfully, I disagree.
I have done web and graphics design for more than 11 years and ministry for more than 16. I am currently a church planter.
Here are my reasons:
1. Keeping your blog offsite with links back to your church site help increase your Google rankings.
2. An offsite blog can help connect with non-church people who will not go to a church website.
3. Keeing Blogs offsite helps streamline your church site and your blog site.
4. Offsite blogs can have a unique domain that allows people to quickly get to the content they want and not filter through other stuff they don’t want.
5. Using RSS/Atam feeds your offsite blog can become a second, and sometimes more convenient, portal to your church information.
6. Using RSS/Atom feeds, your blog can be integrated back into your church site as I have done on several pages. I just link titles, but using Joomla you can actually integrate the entire blog into the church site while still hosting it offsite. Then your blog gets Google ranked in both places and not just one.
7. Using offsite blog hosting, a church can also create minitry specific sites that target a group and allows them to get their specific info wihtout extra stuff they don’t want.
8. Hosting blogs, for the pastor or other ministries, offsite reduces the need for in-house web management and the need to hire a professional designer.
9. I am not trying to sell anyone anything and my advice wont cost you a dime.
Finally, here are my sites you can check out.
Our church http://www.ortingreunion.org
My blog http://www.morethancake.org
Our MOPS blog http://www.ortingMOPS.org
The blog for our second campus http://www.ReunionWest.org.
Just my 2 cents :-)
Jul 9th, 2007 3:04 pm