Website

BUILDING A TEAM

YOUR PURPOSE?

FUNDING

PRINTING

DISTRIBUTION

A WEBSITE TOO?

GENERATING COPY

How About a
Complementary Website?

Challenges to be Overcome:

1. domain registration

2. technical skills

3. frequency of updating

4. website management

5. legal aspects

6. financial implications

1. Domain Registration

A website is hosted by an Internet Service provider or ISP – that is to say, the files which create your website sit on a large computer (server) owned and operated by the ISP. The owner of the website pays a fee to maintain their site on the ISP’s server. Prominent ISPs include 1and1.co.uk, names.co.uk, godaddy.com, and a host of others (see any PC magazine for their advertisements).

Before creating your website, you will need to register a domain name. ISPs make this very straightforward, and a domain name search facility is usually prominent on the home page of their own websites. The domain name is the unique address that you “own” (i.e., is registered to you) and web surfers will use to access your site (e.g., www.churcheditors.org, www.bbc.co.uk, etc). Unfortunately, the world wide web is an extremely popular medium of communication and has been in operation for nearly 20 years. Hence, many of the most obvious domain names have already been taken. So don’t waste you time looking to register very generic domain names like “contact”, “outreach”, etc. They’re all long gone. Even the vast majority of town and village names have already been registered. You should, however, be able to register something more specific, like StJamesNews or DeneHolmAspect. (NB: Upper case shown here for clarity; domain names are all lowercase.) So, the sooner you register your domain name the better, even if you don’t intend to use it for a while.

Domain names end in such abbreviations as .com, .org, .net, .co.uk, etc. The first three mentioned are the most senior names on a global scale. The fourth one is a UK-based domain (i.e., a national sub-category) and there are dozens of others for specific countries of the world.

The standard pattern for domain names is designed to indicate the type of organisation behind the website. Hence, .com or .co.uk usually implies a commercial organisation; .net usually implies a computer networking or IT based organisation; and .org or .org.uk usually flags a not-for-profit organisation. There are also several other specific sub-categories (e.g., for schools, governmental organisations, etc). If you choose, you could register a domain name ending in .ch (implying church, but this is actually a Swiss domain name); however, Swiss domain registrations are relatively expensive.

As a guide, British churches might choose to stick with .org or .org.uk endings. Whatever domain name you choose, try to keep the actual name length as short as possible, so that first time visitors don’t have to spend 10 minutes typing the address (with increasing risk of typing errors en route)!

Increasing numbers of churches have recognised the importance of having a “web presence”. At the very least, this means enabling those who are looking on the internet for a church or faith group, in a particular geographical location, to be able to find you.

Collective websites such as www.achurchnearyou.com can provide this need and are set up to make it relatively easy for church officers to create a suitable description of your church and its location without having any web design skills whatsoever.

Beyond this, many churches have recognised the extent to which society is moving to electronic communications and the internet for sources of information and entertainment. A dedicated church website is a very natural response, and this can complement the paper publications well by providing:

· more instant and regular updates

· relatively unconstrained space (compared with a paper publication)

· opportunities for interactivity

· a means of publishing colour photographs (rare in church magazines, due to cost constraints)

· a more contemporary look and feel

· other communication options, such as sound and video-clips

2. Technical Skills

Clearly, to be able to create and maintain a website, someone with the necessary technical skills will be needed – either a church member or a willing helper. This skill set does not have to be as onerous as it once was, due to the availability of simple-to-use web design software applications or even template-based approaches provided by the Internet Service Providers (ISP) themselves. The latter tend to constrain the web designer to a limited set of styles and layouts, but the final results can be quite pleasing and are simple for a non-specialist to use. The service offered by www.mrsite.co.uk provides another simple template-based approach that anyone can use.

Web design software applications like Serif WebPlus benefit from relying heavily on a simple wysiwyg interface (what you see is what you get). Its approach is very similar to designing a page in a desktop publishing application for paper-based publication (such as Serif PagePlus or Microsoft Publisher), with the simple difference that the page is published to the web rather than printed onto paper. No programming is necessary.

More complicated web design applications allow the user to create their web site directly using the standard web programming language called HTML. The benefit of this approach is that it affords the designer far greater creative freedom as well as producing much more efficient code – i.e., the web pages will be created from much smaller files, so providing much speedier downloads for those exploring the site. Needless to say, programming in HTML is much more complicated, and does require a much greater level of technical competence on the part of the web designer. The industry standard application used for the most sophisticated websites is Adobe Dreamweaver.

For the record, this website was created and is maintained with Serif WebPlus.

Apart from ISPs own template-based web design services, all other website creation and maintenance methods will require the webmaster to upload his or her files to the ISP’s server. The most common method for this employs a standalone software application that uses the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to send website files to the ISP server. Examples of these FTP applications include the modestly priced CuteFTP and SmartFTP. Free versions of FTP applications are also available on the internet or on PC magazine cover disks.

The Association for Church Editors recommends Serif Software for Ease of Use and excellent Value for Money.

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