If you need a simple and fast web presence, the blogging platforms are happy to accommodate. Wordpress, Blogger and Posterous are making it easier than ever to have your site up and running--even if you have no plans to use it as a blog. Here are some of the advantages:
1. The main blogging platforms make it easy for multiple contributors to edit and add to pages--each with their own login.
2. Design is simple and customizable--even if you don't have web design skills.
3. Purchasing a domain is cheap and hosting is typically free.
While you might not choose to do this for your main site, it could be ideal for ministries within your church such as social justice projects, small groups, youth and children's projects. Here's how to get started:
1. Determine the purpose for the website and assemble your content. Identifying your audience and then tailoring content that will be of interest to them is the most important part of the excercise. The blogging platform will only allow a certain number of sub pages, so think in terms of a home page, and 4 - 6 sub pages. (Note that it is usually easier to sketch this out and bullet point the content on each page than to start building right away.) Once you have a plan in place you can chase down images and start writing your content.
2. Select a platform. Each of the different platforms have different strengths. For example, it is hard to beat Wordpress's dashboard and ease of analytics and responses to comments. Blogger's design interface allows for high customization without a lot of experience in web design. Blogger also has a wide array of widgets to make creating interesting sidebars particularly easy. Posterous may be the best choice if you plan to update the front page of the site regularly, because you can do it via e-mail and Posterous handles the formatting of whatever you attach: photos, videos, mp3's, etc without you having to do anything but attach it to the e-mail. (For more on this, see the Posterous 101 article). Once your purpose and content are outlined selecting your host will be easier.
3. Purchase a domain. Your default domain will be whatever name you select for your site while signing up for the blog along with the extension for that blog. However, you can change that within the settings to either purchase a custom domain, or you can arrange for the domain name you already own to point to the blogsite.
4. Work on the structure. You can adjust the settings of how many posts show up on the home page. You may choose to set this to 1. Note that the home page will always show your latest "post." The "pages" will be what show up in the navigation on the site. (This is where you are limited to a number, and why you will need to think about your content in terms of only two tiers--a home page and a subpage.) If you need a layer of content below that, you can create additional posts and link to them from the pages.
5. Build your sidebars. The sidebars may be determined by the template you select in the blogging platform--such as with Posterous, or may be highly customizable--as with Blogger.
If this idea interests you, the following links are to websites that are based on blogging platforms. Check out the following:
In Blogger, cathyhutchison.net, rescueyoga.com, hopeforgliders.com
In Posterous, smpsdallas.posterous.com
In Wordpress, prestongillham.com, thecrerevolution.com
