Dear Mr Fundamentalist webmaster .....advice for websites and blogs

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Pergamum

Ordinary Guy (TM)
Dear Mr Fundamentalist webmaster;

Your church website was awesome...except that the suddenly-starting Amazing Grace blaring in midi version that I could not turn off interfered with my other music listening and also startled the baby, too.

p.s. your graphics were also a bit hokey, but your Billy-Sunday-ish silhouette of the preacher looking like he is gonna ram the bible down someone's throat or throw it for a 100-yard pass was totally awesome!





-

For those that read blogs and websites a lot, what are the worst and best things to have on a blog or website to attract traffic and to get them to read what you post. What are the the "please don't do this" things that stand out as you look at websites for missionaries or churches.

I am considering creating a new blog. Any advice? How can I create traffic, bless and communicate well and help communicate missions needs in the best way?
 
Don't ask for money; just give the name and address of your mission. No hints either, such as PayPal.
 
I think you identified several things to avoid in your original post. That alone is a good start.

There is a difference in reaching people with God's truth and in reaching numbers. Content that brings clicks and readers may not be especially edifying. If you rest in the Lord and allow Him to direct your content, it will have His intended effect.
 
The best thing to do is to decide what keywords you want to be found by and then make sure you put a lot of text into a site that revolves around those themes. The worst thing you can do is to get fancy at the expense of key words. People obsess all the time about presentation but a website with a huge flash graphic may look nice but nobody finds it because there's no text associated with it.

The biggest websites in the world are nothing fancy to look at (Google, Craigslist, Drudge) but they have the kind of content people want to read. Nobody comes back to a site just because it looked pretty.
 
Church websites are their business cards and street signs. I'd say that in America, it's probably more important to put money into a website than the street sign (for those who have a physical location). I've ended up dong a lot of church research over the years, so here's a few thoughts...

Make your information easily accessible. Nobody really cares if the pastor has a blog, so don't make that central. Everything going on in the church may seem important to you, but put it off to the side, and only highly 3-5 things. Make location and time EASY to find. I can't recount the number of times I've had to search Google because a church didn't make it easy to find their location. If you have child-care, make that easy to know too (especially for families). Don't clutter with loads of tabs. Make sermons easily findable (and probably put them on iTunes or SermonAudio for easy access). If you're Presbyterian, please make it easy to know if you're PCA, OPC, PCUSA, etc. It's super annoying when Presbyterians hide what prebytery they're a part of. Same goes for "baptists". If you have a confession, make it easy to find. If you have leaders, make their picture and bio easy to see. Also, with pastors, don't highlight their families (came across a church website once with a "first lady" page for the pastor's wife). It's great that they're married, but their families don't lead the church. The man is the pastor - not his wife, nor his kids. This is also a safety thing.

All in all, I'd say this: No, seriously, your church may be great, but 1994 html coding is not. So pay up, no really, pay up, and get a really good website.
 
Pergamum said:
p.s. your graphics were also a bit hokey, but your Billy-Sunday-ish silhouette of the preacher looking like he is gonna ram the bible down someone's throat or throw it for a 100-yard pass was totally awesome!
Click to expand...

Isn't this why Crossway made the ESV Study Bible so big? So you can throw it at people who are sleeping during the sermon.
 
FenderPriest said:
Church websites are their business cards and street signs. I'd say that in America, it's probably more important to put money into a website than the street sign (for those who have a physical location). I've ended up dong a lot of church research over the years, so here's a few thoughts...

Make your information easily accessible. Nobody really cares if the pastor has a blog, so don't make that central. Everything going on in the church may seem important to you, but put it off to the side, and only highly 3-5 things. Make location and time EASY to find. I can't recount the number of times I've had to search Google because a church didn't make it easy to find their location. If you have child-care, make that easy to know too (especially for families). Don't clutter with loads of tabs. Make sermons easily findable (and probably put them on iTunes or SermonAudio for easy access). If you're Presbyterian, please make it easy to know if you're PCA, OPC, PCUSA, etc. It's super annoying when Presbyterians hide what prebytery they're a part of. Same goes for "baptists". If you have a confession, make it easy to find. If you have leaders, make their picture and bio easy to see. Also, with pastors, don't highlight their families (came across a church website once with a "first lady" page for the pastor's wife). It's great that they're married, but their families don't lead the church. The man is the pastor - not his wife, nor his kids. This is also a safety thing.

All in all, I'd say this: No, seriously, your church may be great, but 1994 html coding is not. So pay up, no really, pay up, and get a really good website.
Click to expand...

I agree generally with this except for the idea that you need to spend a lot to make this happen. I agree with the important stuff being up front and then setting your content and forgetting about it. Every Church I've attended for the past 16 years has a website built by me and they all bubble to the first page of results for the important search criteria. Pastor of one of the Churches mentioned recently that the website is the single most important thing where people find them. There are some other things but I agree with that.

I also can't underline how important it is that folks don't monkey around with the site layout. I had a friend at a Church in Japan ask me why they couldn't find their site in Google any more and I explained it is because they keep moving the pages around and deleted some keyword content that was critical in being found. They were once at the very top of the search engine results and then somebody thought it would be cooler to have the front page land to sermon videos.
 
I use cologne and bathe at least once a month. My website's traffic works fine.
Click to expand...

The three-way stop in Asotin Washington works fine too. Hasn't had a traffic jam in months. Last time was when the steers got out during the county fair.

Keep it up, brother. ;)
 
Semper Fidelis said:
The best thing to do is to decide what keywords you want to be found by and then make sure you put a lot of text into a site that revolves around those themes. The worst thing you can do is to get fancy at the expense of key words. People obsess all the time about presentation but a website with a huge flash graphic may look nice but nobody finds it because there's no text associated with it.

The biggest websites in the world are nothing fancy to look at (Google, Craigslist, Drudge) but they have the kind of content people want to read. Nobody comes back to a site just because it looked pretty.
Click to expand...

Thanks...keywords...... got it.
 
FenderPriest said:
Church websites are their business cards and street signs. I'd say that in America, it's probably more important to put money into a website than the street sign (for those who have a physical location). I've ended up dong a lot of church research over the years, so here's a few thoughts...

Make your information easily accessible. Nobody really cares if the pastor has a blog, so don't make that central. Everything going on in the church may seem important to you, but put it off to the side, and only highly 3-5 things. Make location and time EASY to find. I can't recount the number of times I've had to search Google because a church didn't make it easy to find their location. If you have child-care, make that easy to know too (especially for families). Don't clutter with loads of tabs. Make sermons easily findable (and probably put them on iTunes or SermonAudio for easy access). If you're Presbyterian, please make it easy to know if you're PCA, OPC, PCUSA, etc. It's super annoying when Presbyterians hide what prebytery they're a part of. Same goes for "baptists". If you have a confession, make it easy to find. If you have leaders, make their picture and bio easy to see. Also, with pastors, don't highlight their families (came across a church website once with a "first lady" page for the pastor's wife). It's great that they're married, but their families don't lead the church. The man is the pastor - not his wife, nor his kids. This is also a safety thing.

All in all, I'd say this: No, seriously, your church may be great, but 1994 html coding is not. So pay up, no really, pay up, and get a really good website.
Click to expand...

Thanks, right now I have a personal/family blog that was designed to show my family pictures, but also supporters visit it as well: TandTfamily

I have a a blog about missions topics that a faithful few follow, but it is not real searchable, here is a sample: Missions - a Sovereign Grace Perspective: Generosity and Dependency in Missions

I try to keep most posts short. I don't solicit funds. I try to focus on recruiting and helping missionaries prepare or try to explain issues. My layout is not real attractive, but I try to make sure every blog post has a picture.

Rich brought up keyword tagging, but I have not yet done that and I am searching now as to whether I can back-tag my previous posts through blogspot. This would help a lot it seems. I am also looking for ways to generate traffic and make my posts more searchable.
 
Use easy to read type faces and colors. Pale type on a light background is a really bad idea, but it's surprisingly common. Stay away from being flash-happy. Flash is a tool that can be quite useful (although it is probably a dying platform at this point), but make the site accessible to those who can't or don't use it on un-trusted sites. Make your site clean, rather than cluttered. Don't put up time sensitive material if you don't have the time to update it.
 
I am starting to use "Feedburner" now....but this is all new to me. Here is the Feedburner site: Missions - a Sovereign Grace Perspective


One question I have is whether my current blogspot blog is enough or if I need a better format or platform? Can I tweak and improve what I have or is it better just to start over?
 
Rich (Semper Fidelis) has some excellent articles that discuss this. I highly recommend reading them:
Make your site Sell
Search Engine Basics

Google is the best source of customers for my wife's piano business, and we don't pay them a dime for it.

If your keywords don't put you on the first page of a Google search, it doesn't matter how pretty your web site is.

Thanks to Rich for all the helpful advice.

Dan.
 
I follow several blogspot blogs but unfortunately I rarely read them because my blogspot account is linked to an old gmail account I rarely use.
 
Bad: Too many ads or links. Some blogs have so many links they have almost no content from themselves.

Good: A nice clean (even simple) blog is better then a flashy one.

From blogs I like reading, the only thing that truly matters to me, is the content. Some people go to sites just for the looks (which does have some value to it, but that's shallow and definitely reflects our culture).
 
KMK said:
What does this mean? Pay who and for what?
Click to expand...

In context, it appears to mean hire a professional to code the site, rather than use self-taught first or second generation coding. (HTML 5 instead of Flash, or automatic recognition of mobile devices and providing appropriate displays and functionality). On a broader scale, it would mean using a real web hosting site instead of only a Facebook page.

I'd take some issue with this. For a congregation with really limited resources, any web presence is better than none, and a simple, free site that gives location, time, and some bare essentials is much better than nothing.
 
Edward said:
In context, it appears to mean hire a professional to code the site, rather than use self-taught first or second generation coding.
Click to expand...

Where does one find such professionals? Is it a one time or ongoing expense?
 
I have redesigned church websites where the incumbent minister has had 22 mentions and God, Christ and the Holy Spirit only 8 between them. It's a surprisingly common fault, as is the lack of a Statement of Belief (not a full confession). I've asked committees how they would describe their denomination from their website and watched them faff about before a final confession of "we can't".

The others mentioned are also great things to avoid: pale text on a light background; text that can only be read by ants; text that SHOUTS at you; appalling navigation (every page MUST be clickable from any other page without resorting to concealed sub-menus); music that blares out without warning; Flash that takes an aeon to load; too many words; the wrong words; badly spell-checked words; poor grammar; pop-ups; lack of maps with location details; lack of church service times; lack of information on the incumbent team; no telephone number; stock images of happy people (use photos of your own congregation - get permission); false or misleading claims (Jesus WILL heal you!). I could go on but you get the picture.
 
I found it surprisingly difficult to get our leadership to give specific guidance regarding audience. I was told that a primary goal for the website is to increase our visibility in the local community and ended up basing our audience upon the general demographics of our area (nerdy, educated, etc). That drives color selection, FOG index, organization, and just about every other decision.

You're also going to want to watch your current traffic. Keep an eye on which pages are getting the most interest and where folks are coming from. (Although I don't quite know what to do with finding out that a top Russian search engine has been making referrals to our page. :think: )
 
Semper Fidelis said:
FenderPriest said:
Church websites are their business cards and street signs. I'd say that in America, it's probably more important to put money into a website than the street sign (for those who have a physical location). I've ended up dong a lot of church research over the years, so here's a few thoughts...

Make your information easily accessible. Nobody really cares if the pastor has a blog, so don't make that central. Everything going on in the church may seem important to you, but put it off to the side, and only highly 3-5 things. Make location and time EASY to find. I can't recount the number of times I've had to search Google because a church didn't make it easy to find their location. If you have child-care, make that easy to know too (especially for families). Don't clutter with loads of tabs. Make sermons easily findable (and probably put them on iTunes or SermonAudio for easy access). If you're Presbyterian, please make it easy to know if you're PCA, OPC, PCUSA, etc. It's super annoying when Presbyterians hide what prebytery they're a part of. Same goes for "baptists". If you have a confession, make it easy to find. If you have leaders, make their picture and bio easy to see. Also, with pastors, don't highlight their families (came across a church website once with a "first lady" page for the pastor's wife). It's great that they're married, but their families don't lead the church. The man is the pastor - not his wife, nor his kids. This is also a safety thing.

All in all, I'd say this: No, seriously, your church may be great, but 1994 html coding is not. So pay up, no really, pay up, and get a really good website.
Click to expand...

I agree generally with this except for the idea that you need to spend a lot to make this happen. I agree with the important stuff being up front and then setting your content and forgetting about it. Every Church I've attended for the past 16 years has a website built by me and they all bubble to the first page of results for the important search criteria. Pastor of one of the Churches mentioned recently that the website is the single most important thing where people find them. There are some other things but I agree with that.

I also can't underline how important it is that folks don't monkey around with the site layout. I had a friend at a Church in Japan ask me why they couldn't find their site in Google any more and I explained it is because they keep moving the pages around and deleted some keyword content that was critical in being found. They were once at the very top of the search engine results and then somebody thought it would be cooler to have the front page land to sermon videos.
Click to expand...

Can you recommend some resources to learn more about using keywords to better place your site in search results. Thank you
 
Dan.... said:
Rich (Semper Fidelis) has some excellent articles that discuss this. I highly recommend reading them:
Make your site Sell
Search Engine Basics

Google is the best source of customers for my wife's piano business, and we don't pay them a dime for it.

If your keywords don't put you on the first page of a Google search, it doesn't matter how pretty your web site is.

Thanks to Rich for all the helpful advice.

Dan.
Click to expand...


Thanks I think this answers my question above...
I missed that while using my iphone to read the thread earlier...
I will take a look at the articles...
 
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