Jan
19
Written by:
host
1/19/2010 7:00 AM
Last week I encouraged you to consider having multiple websites for your church. Although that may seem to be an impossible dream, in reality there are several inexpensive ways to make that happen. First, though, there are some necessary steps to take before launching into the development of the new site...so consider this your assignment for this week.
First, if your current website is less than adequate, work with the site current site developer to quickly spruce up the home page of your current site. Also, do a bit of triage on internal pages by making inactive any pages that are out-of-date (e.g. newsletters that are more than 2 or 3 months old; photos of events in 2006) or that present your church in a less-than-flattering way (e.g. financial reports that describe the church's budget woes). By quickly paring your current site to the essentials, you'll give visitors the information they really need most, for now.
Second, purchase any additional domain names you want to develop from your current domain registrar or a well-known registrar such as GoDaddy.com or NetworkSolutions.com. You may find that your first and second choices are not available, but don't give up—there are plenty of great options if you use a little creativity. Keep your new domains short and memorable, and purchase the .com, .org, and .net versions, if possible. A few examples (note that the capital letters are simply for readability; browsers don't care about capitalization until the parts following the .com or .org.):
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[town name]church.com – e.g. AmesChurch.com
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[youth group's name].com – e.g. XtremeScene.com
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[main word of a ministry]at[main part of church name].com – e.g. MusicAtGrace.com
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[A short, creative phrase or motto].com – e.g. ShalomToYou.com
Third, find out if you can host additional domains for free with your current webhost. In other words, ask if the company who currently hosts/provides your website allows you to have more than one website with your current plan. Some will, and some won't, and some (because of the particular website software they use) probably can't. If needed, you can get a basic hosting package for free at 110MB Hosting, which will be perfectly adequate for most basic sites. Or, get an inexpensive and great “green-powered” website at GreenGeeks.com, which I use and recommend whole-heartedly to clients.
Finally, decide now what sort of budget you have for the additional sites. There are some free or nearly free options that will work well for certain needs, and I'll discuss those in the final segment. But a more advanced or customized site created by a designer will likely cost upwards of $1000, so begin to plan accordingly.
~ by Tim Gossett
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