This document discusses how to give religious organization websites a makeover using WordPress. It describes the speaker's experience overhauling the website for Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Key challenges included reflecting the church's historical values, engaging congregation members, and improving outdated design. The speaker recommends investing in a committed web team, identifying the target audience, and employing typical web design principles. The document provides examples of religious websites and recommends themes, stock photography sources, and plugins to include common religious site content like services, events, and sermons. It concludes with additional resource recommendations.
Automating Google Workspace (GWS) & more with Apps Script
Give Your Church, Synagogue or Mosque Website a Divine Makeover With Wordpress
1. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Presented by Rosemary Jean-Louis
2. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Introductions:
Who Are You?
3. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Introductions Who Am I?
Digital and Community
Manager for Georgia Public
Broadcasting by day.
Content Manger for Our Lady of
Lourdes Catholic Church by free
time. *Paid as contractor to do
this!
4. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
About Lourdes:
Historically African American
Catholic Church
Known for Social Justice mission
Famous for upbeat liturgy with
gospel, contemporary, tradition
professional sounding music
Pastor and Pastoral Associate
members of Dominican Order of
Preachers
5. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Challenge in Updating Site Over the Years
Reflect historical values
Serve “homecrowd”
Welcome visitors and newbies (Catholics and Non-Catholic Christians, Non
Christians, Non-Religious alike)
6. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Challenge in Updating Site Over the Years
Getting help from congregation to give content to update pages!
Everyone has an opinion (usually wrong!)
Bad photos or lack of them.
7. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
What do religious websites look typically like anyway?
11. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Why do they look like that?
Don’t have the money to invest in a professional site
So -so web designer
Using web host template
Website creation and maintenance assigned to secretary or
team of volunteers with no experience
12. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
How do you get the clean, non-cluttered design you want?
Invest in right team - committed person or people to do the
work (as volunteer or paid personnel). Maybe you?
Get Rabbi, Iman and Pastor support (also church council or
governing body council)
13. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
How do you get the clean, non-cluttered design you want?
Employ typical web building principles from “secular world”
Identify main audience: homecrowd, visitors, converts?
Determine what do you want site to say and do?
14. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress:
What’s Common Content On Religious Sites?
What’s Common Content On Religious Sites?
Service times
Address phone numbers
Bulletins
Meeting times
Events
Sermons or messages
Livestreaming
How to become a member/convert
16. Give Your Church,
Synagogue Or Mosque Site
A Divine Makeover With
Wordpress:
Decided to go with pre-fab
theme. Not a lot of options
out there but found these:
On Wordpress.org: Church
by Hans:
https://wordpress.org/themes/church/preview/
17. Evangelist Theme by Theme Fuse
http://themefuse.com/wp-themes-shop/church-wordpress-th
Cost: $55; try before you buy test lab
Cost: $55; try before you buy test lab
Cost: $55; try before you buy test lab
18. Settled on Exodus Theme Church Themes:
http://churchthemes.com/themes/exodus/
Pricier: $78
Pricier: $78
Pricier: $78
20. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Where to get stock photography?
Exodus lists stock photo options both paid and free on their site:
churchthemes.com/guides/user/specific-themes/exodus/
Pro-Blogger.net Blog Post on where to find images:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2015/03/20/where-to-find-free-images-online/
Creative Commons:
http://search.creativecommons.org/
21. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Other Resources - from Melanie Adcock: www.mgacreativedesigns.com
Podcasting Plugin: Blubrry PowerPress:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/powerpress/
Sermon Browser (uploads sermons to site where they can be searched,
listened to and downloaded):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/sermon-browser/
Audio & Video Podcasting Plugin:
http://seriesengine.com/
22. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Other Resources - from Melanie Adcock: www.mgacreativedesigns.com
Events Calendar Plugins:
All In One Events Calendar:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar
The Events Calendar:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/
Events Sign Up Manager Plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/
23. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Other Resources - from Melanie Adcock: www.mgacreativedesigns.com
Prayer Request Management
Prayer Engine: http://www.theprayerengine.com/
Praybox: http://groupsengine.com
Group Management:
Groups Engine: http://groupsengine.com/
24. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Other Resources - from Melanie Adcock: www.mgacreativedesigns.com
Fonts:
Better Font Awesome: https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-font-awesome/
Shortcode:
Shortcodes Ultimate: https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcodes-ultimate/
25. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Other Resources - from Rosemary Jean-Louis
Themes For Purchase:
WP for Church: https://www.wpforchurch.com/
31 Best Church Wordpress Themes:
http://athemes.com/collections/best-church-wordpress-themes/
Real Church Theme:
http://themeforest.net/item/real-church-responsive-retina-ready-theme/4455828?ref=athem
26. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With WordpressOther Resources - from Rosemary Jean-Louis
For Beginner’s - How To Get Started:
Smashing Magazine: Design, Code, Wordpress Magazine
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Coding For Beginner’s: http://www.w3schools.com/
Associated Press Style Guide:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/02/
27. Give Your Church, Synagogue Or Mosque Site A Divine
Makeover With Wordpress
Questions?
Stay in touch and get this presentation too!
www.rosemaryjean-
louis.com
Contact me: 678-641-9020 or rjae71@gmail.com
Notas del editor
Notes:
Lourdes considered the African American Catholic “Mother” church in Atlanta
Founded with funds provided by St. Katharine Drexel - originally mission church to African Americans and Native Americans
Social justice mission
Demographics have changed to be more diverse Caucasians, Asians, Latinos, Multiracial as well as African American base
Greenforest Baptist church in Decatur, Ga
http://www.greenforest.org
Co-workers church home - he’s a developer/designer
Has not been updated with a redesign since 2008
Flash slideshow
Text heavy and busy
Local headquarters of Nation of Islam site - Muhammad Mosque Atlanta
http://noiatlanta.org/
Flyer heavy (pdf that is)
Photo in middle
Flash help support this banner
No real focus
Congregation Or VeShalom
Slideshow mainly flash it seems, several out of focus photos of crowd shots
Our story:
We had a combination of those scenarios - secretary and team of volunteers that boiled down to mainly me.
Got new pastor in 2010 who was committed to refreshing the site; making it more professional.
Did redesign in 2012 with a professional developer/designer member of the parish who wanted to use Wordpress as I did.
He designed the template that we used up until recently
Notes:
For Lourdes - we’ve found our church has grown exponentially (almost like a megachurch light)
Lots of visitors Catholic or not
Need to address new and old and do better with educating people about church history and Catholicism
Clean design for 2012
Slideshow (not flash)
Two columns for info (mainly announcements and underneath events; church service times on left and place to download bulletins
Child theme Church WordPress theme is a Responsive HTML5 Omega child theme for WordPress. Church theme inherits all Omega parent theme capabilities; it’s free mainly a wordpress blog.
Has all of the elements we mentioned that are unique to a church site; very strong responsive design, especially for phones. But I felt the design was too non denominational and too young though we could have tweaked it if we had more time. Required to much content for calendar on slider that couldn’t be turned off.
Also responsive - though cellphone display is not as easy and well done as Theme Fuse’s Evangelist. Working on that. Developed by folks specifically for churches and religious organizations.
Felt site was clean; had good white space, not too busy. Contained a lot of widgets we could use or not. And also could accomodate using stock photography to fill gaps.