how hard is it to build a basic website for a church?

Question

I 'd like to build a basic web site for a local church. how hard is it? does it cost much? where do i get the domain? is it free? what about maintaining cost ? i am old but i can work around the computer. Please advise. Thank you very much

Answer 1

I have been web master for my church since 1999.

http://www.tedpack.org/churchweb.html

has some suggestions on content. It has two templates you can copy and alter if you like. They are written in HTML using Notepad, which is as simple as you can get.

Some local ISP's give free space to non-profits. You can ask around. If you find one, your domain will be
www.someisp.com/mychurch
instead of
www.mychurch.org
but it will be free. Or, if a member isn't using the personal web site that comes with his / her ISP account, use it and have
www.aol.com/members/johnsmith/mychurch

If you just buy a domain and rent space you pay a fee every year to register the domain and another to rent space. Some hosts do both for you for a flat fee. Our host charges us $60 a year for both, for 5 MB of space. We have 140 pages and 30 full-page pictures. Our phone company wants $600 a MONTH for a quarter-page ad in the yellow pages; the web site is the price performer.

Maintaining is the hard part. If you post upcoming sermon topics, you either have to get someone to update them every month for the rest of your church's life or your web site will look abandoned.

Answer 2

I’m using a fantastic company called Sitesell. This is the very first time I have ever built a website, so I needed a company who could take me by the hand, step by step!

I have nothing but praise for them! They make EVERYTHING so easy! They supply all of the online training, simple (yet incredibly sophisticated tools) and excellent support.

The cost is just $299 (£170) per year. That includes all of the above plus domain registration. They even supply the templates for designing your site! And don't worry about html coding or other techy stuff as that's all taken care of for you!

My site is only 9 months old. It is already very highly ranked by the major search engines and is attracting up to 1000 visitors a day! Plus it generates an income which not only covers the costs, but actually shows a healthy profit!

You can get more details from my information page at:
http://www.gourmet-food-revolution.com/build-a-web-site-business.html

Best wishes

Answer 3

I belive the web site that you are eying to build is gonna be a information site.
Information sites can do only with basic html pages as there need not be any dynamic activity like communication to the client or a database etc...and can be buitl at very low cost comapred to other huge dynamic content websites.
If you could tell me how many pages you have and what kinda content you need i can help you doing it as i am a web developer.

and if you want a domain, there are many free servers available and if you wish to buy some space that will not cost much as it is a small portal.
shoot me your queiries at
[e-mail]

Answer 4

The best way I have found for building a basic website is to use a company who provide webhosting, domain name subscription and a really easy to use tool to build the site. I used a company called Mr Site and it took all the pain out of creating the site.

My site is www.customgaming.co.uk, although it is not complete yet this was done using Mr Site, there is a link to Mr Site from my page.

Answer 5

Geocities.com Its free, but if you run out of space you can pay a little bit a month to get more space or even a better url name. Paid accounts are between 2.99 and 14.99 depending how much you want. Thats per month by the way. Others would say go with freewebs.com or angelfire.com And there are millions of other options. But I say for a beginner wanting to make a good quality looking website, Geocities is the best option. Geocities works with yahoo so your yahoo account you make for the church will come with all the features your preexisting yahoo account has too.

If you want a bit of help working with geocities I love playing with it, I would be glad to help out or even do it for you. email me at [e-mail] if you wish more information then that which I have provided.