More and more church websites are being made with WordPress.
WordPress powers more than 20% of all websites in the world. This figure is incredible but not surprising. There are many advantages to making a website with WordPress and churches are taking notice. Churches are saying no to expensive proprietary church website solutions and yes to WordPress, a flexible platform that’s easy for church staff and volunteers to use.
I had a great time with Devesh in an interview here on WPKube when I launched churchthemes.com last year. Now let me show you how to get started making a church website with WordPress.
Steps to Making a Church Website With WordPress
These are the steps you’ll follow:
- Choose a church WordPress theme (the design for your site)
- Sign up for web hosting (where your website lives on the Internet)
- Install WordPress on your web hosting
- Install your WordPress theme
- Customize your website’s appearance
- Add your content
- Finish everything off
I’ll clue you in on how to do these things but first let’s look at the cost of making a church website with WordPress.
What Will Our Church Website Cost?
The cost of a church website made with a WordPress theme is usually between $100 and $300 per year, depending on the theme and web hosting provider you choose and whether or not you use any paid plugins (30,000 of them are free).
The biggest reason for the low cost of making a church website with WordPress is that WordPress itself is free. Nearly all church website solutions use their own closed-source Content Management System (CMS), which costs money to develop and maintain. WordPress on the other hand is an open-source project supported by a large community of experienced developers who donate their time.
A church WordPress theme costs less than $100 and that almost always includes support for one year. Renewing support and updates to the theme costs less than the initial purchase. This is not a requirement but is recommended.
A typical web hosting plan costs about $10 per month (I’ll tell you about one that hosts church websites for free) and your domain name (yourname.com) will cost about $15 to renew each year. Most church website solutions require you to host with them but they can’t provide hosting as cheap as those who specialize in hosting because they don’t exist on the same scale. This is another reason you save money on a church website made with WordPress.
Choosing a Church WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme controls how your website looks but don’t pick a theme based only on looks. There are other important factors to consider. Here is my criteria for choosing a church WordPress theme.
- Made specifically for churches
- Provider specializes in church WordPress themes
- Avoids the theme lock-in effect
- Support and documentation are included
- Supports the Theme Customizer (more on that below)
- Has a money back guarantee
- Provider has a sustainable business model
On that last point, what I mean is that the theme seller does not make unrealistic promises like lifetime support for unlimited sites. Imagine how they’ll struggle if an entire denomination or large website building company takes them up on that offer. You will want your theme provider to stay in business for the long run.
All of our themes at churchthemes.com are built with these things in mind.
Exodus and Resurrect church WordPress themes
Hosting for Your Church Website
Every website is stored on a server connected to the Internet. Think of hosting as where your website lives. To sign up, you will fill out an online form and choose or bring your own domain name (yourname.com).
WP Kube recommends BlueHost and HostGator for your WordPress website. We refer people to these hosts at churchthemes.com as well. WordPress.org recommends BlueHost and it turns out HostGator is owned by the same company. They both offer shared Linux-based hosting, which is the most common type and suitable for nearly all church websites. BlueHost bills annually to lower costs but pro-rates early cancelation. You can choose monthly billing at a similar price with HostGator.
Another host to look at is SiteGround. They cost a little more than BlueHost and HostGator but offer free hosting for qualifying US-based nonprofits. This offer can make the cost of WordPress-powered church websites even lower.
These hosts all have money back guarantees and one-click installation of WordPress, which helps you get started faster. You’ll find the one-click installer in the host’s control panel.
BlueHost’s automatic installation of WordPress
Installing Your Church WordPress Theme
Assuming you already signed up for hosting and installed WordPress with your host’s one-click installer, the next step is to log into WordPress at yourname.com/wp-admin/ to install the church WordPress theme you chose.
You would simply go to Appearance > Themes, click the button to add a new theme then upload the theme you purchased.
A WordPress theme after installation
Many themes require a plugin (and they should in order to avoid the theme lock-in effect) and come with sample content. You can refer to the documentation included with your theme for specific instructions for these things.
Customizing Your Church Website’s Appearance
WordPress has a great featured called the Theme Customizer. A theme has to specifically support this feature in order for you to use it (many newer themes do).
Depending on what the theme allows, you can do things like change colors, background images, upload your logo, choose fonts and so on. You choose options on the left side of the Customizer and see real-time changes in the live preview on the right. It’s a lot of fun to play with a theme that supports this.
Here’s a video I produced a couple weeks ago to show how our church themes support WordPress’s Customizer feature.
Publishing Content With WordPress
WordPress really shines with content management.
There is a menu on the left-hand side. WordPress provides Pages and Posts. Pages are good for About, What to Expect, What We Believe and any other type of content. Posts are blog posts, should your church decide to have a blog (or news section). A church theme should have you install a plugin or two to add other post types such as Sermons, Events, Locations and Staff.
Here’s what adding a sermon looks like with a theme that uses the Church Theme Content plugin. Our themes at churchthemes.com support this plugin as well as a couple other providers and more to come.
Adding a sermon using the Church Theme Content plugin
Managing existing content is just as simple. You would click an item in the list for a particular post type. Here’s how managing locations looks with the same plugin.
Managing locations with the Church Theme Content plugin
You may want multiple church staff members or volunteers to be able to manage content. WordPress lets you do that. An Administrator user can do anything in the WordPress admin area (including add other users), an Editor can manage content from all users, an Author can publish and edit their own content and a Contributor can submit content to be approved by an Editor or Administrator.
Adding a user with roles in WordPress
If that’s not enough, there are free plugins like Role Scoper and User Role Editor for super-fine control over what can and cannot be done and by whom.
Finishing Your Church Website
You’ve made a church website with WordPress at this point! There are just a few more things to take care of.
- Make sure your church website include essential content (location, times, etc.)
- Use the Limit Login Attempts plugin to secure your login against brute-force attacks
- Setup a backup solution. BackUpWordPress (free), UpdraftPlus (free), VaultPress ($5/mo) and BackupBuddy are popular solutions. Your web host may also have a full site backup/restore solution.
- Be prepared to check your WordPress Dashboard for WordPress, theme and plugin updates (WP Updates Notifier is a plugin that can send you an email when updates are ready to apply).
- Review settings in your WordPress Settings area (tagline, timezone, etc.) and make sure Pretty Permalinks is enabled
- Take measures to prevent comment spam (it’s easy)
Now you can launch your new church website made with WordPress!
Help with Your Church Website and WordPress
You have the freedom to choose your providers when you go the WordPress route. As such, support will be available from multiple sources. This gives you specialized support.
- Your theme provider will help you with anything relating to the theme you purchase. Pick one with a good reputation for support and that has thorough documentation (videos are a big plus for us visual learners).
- Your web host will help you with anything relating to the service they provide.
- The WordPress Support Forum is available for general WordPress help and help with free plugins.
- If you use any paid plugins, you would go to the plugin provider for help.
- There is also a great wealth of WordPress tutorials that you can find on Google.
WordPress is all about freedom and flexibility.
Final Thoughts
It’s important that a church has a useful website that doesn’t cost more money than necessary.
People often look at a church’s website before deciding to visit the church. If the design is outdated or if information is missing, they’re not likely to step through the church’s doors.
There is little reason for churches to risk thousands of dollars on a church website, even if the budget is that large. I’ve seen churches spend thousands of dollars and end up paying compliments to a $50 WordPress theme. You see what you get before committing any money and with shops like churchthemes.com, you can get every dime back if you’re not satisfied.
Making your church website with WordPress is a solution worth considering.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts and experiences with WordPress and church websites in the comments below.
Wonderful article. Do you happen to make website for other purposes? If so what is your fee?
I’m sorry, I don’t. I build church WordPress themes full-time.
I need to change my theme and get a newer one! Great tip!
xo,
Dee Trillo
@HauteFrugalista
Thanks for reading. I’m glad you found this useful!
I’ve often found working with WordPress hard but with tutorials like this it very makes things go by smother. I’ll definitely be looking back to this post soon!
Step by step and you can do it. 🙂
Great tips for people wanting to start a church website, I’ll need to add this to my favorites to share to other people who are interested.
These sound like great tips for anyone that needs to build a Church website! I have always used Blogger, so I am unfamiliar with WordPress.
Thanks Jessica. A lot more is possible with a self-hosted install of WordPress versus Blogger, especially for non-blog sites.
I have tried using WordPress before and had so much trouble with it! I find blogger to be much more simple to use.
This is quite a detailed guide to setting up a church website. I think anyone could learn a ton about how to set up a website of any sort from this guide.
Great post and tutorial! I never thought of making a church website but this will come in handy for many.
Thanks Bonnie, I hope so.
I am not surprised. I do like wordpress for things, but I tend to hate some of the restrictions that comes with it. Like sidebar adversing not being allowed, or affiliate links.
WordPress itself doesn’t have those limitations. It sounds like you are describing WordPress.com’s service. Choose a regular host and you’re completely free to use WordPress to your heart’s content. That’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
Wow, this was super informative. This step by step tutorial with images is going to be beneficial for anyone making a church site or even regular bloggers. I personally took some tips from here that I might implement in my own site 🙂
Very informative! I’m sure this will benefit many!
Great tutorial. What a fun profession too. WordPress is great for many websites! And BlueHost is who I host with and love.
What a great way to make a site. I love how user friendly it is.
I have never seen a church website before, sounds great and I would love if my parish had their own website
You do a wonderful job building church wordpress themes! 🙂 Great advice for those wanting to make their church more techie and updated. 🙂
Great tutorial, I am working with my daughter this weekend t start her first blog on WordPress. My sister In Law runs a church class, this would be great for her too.
Nowadays it is important to have a church website, people search online for nearby churches they can attend. This is what my church needs, to have it’s own website. I will have to look into this and study further maybe I can help my church in this way.
WordPress is great and so far superior than blogger I don’t understand why more people don’t use it – it isn’t complicated to use at all! That said, there are so many free themes out there that paying for one, especially for a church, isn’t necessary at all.
Free is always an option with WordPress.
If you want a professional design, features made specifically for churches, documentation, support, etc. then spending a few bucks is another option.
What a great idea and great advice. I love this idea of making a church web site. Thanks for sharing advice.
I think it’s great that the cost is so reasonable. I’m sure this post will prove very helpful to those searching for how to do a church website.
I never think that a church would use a wordpress site. But thanks for the tutorial
Great detailed post! I also really love the look of the Church theme.
This is a great tutorial!! Will be sending this to my friend who needs help in doing their church website.
that ressurect theme looks great! Too bad I have changed my theme for a month now. love all the informations!
What a useful post! My cousin is the pastor of a church. I’ll have to pass this post along to her!
Great information about WordPress! What a wonderful service for the churches.
Very nice. I’ve noticed that churches are creating more sites and I think it’s great. My Priest finally update his after years 🙂
What a great idea and business. If I hear of someone needing this service i’ll send them your way.
These are pretty basic ideas for designing any website for any small business.. church. I actually had someone come to me about working with another person for making this church’s website.
Hi – This article is really helpful. Just a few questions. First, are there any church themes that are included with WordPress or are themes in general a separate thing from the actual wordpress application? Second, does your site, churchthemes.com just have the three themes? Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. We are a fairly small church and really just want a very basic website. We might add more as time goes on, but initially I don’t think we’d be posting sermons or anything like that. Mostly we just want people to be able to find out what we believe and the times/locations of our services and activities. We would probably post pictures from events from time to time, but maybe not even that initially. Would greatly appreciate any help!! Thank you!
Hi Judy,
1. No church theme comes included with WordPress (the self-hosted platform, there are two platforms, WordPress.com & WordPress.org, see the difference here). You will have to download or purchase the theme separately.
2. Yes, so far they only have 3 themes, but you can find church themes from other sources. Here is our roundup of best church themes.
If you want the basic functionality, you can opt not to use those features. You should also look at the WordPress respo, if you are looking for a free theme with basic features.
Let me know how it goes.