Unity Church Marketing

When you say WordPress to most everyone these days, they think blogs. And to some extent they are correct. But don’t sell it short either.

The assumption is, since WordPress is a blogging tool, the only design you can use has to resemble a blog in layout and functionality. While this is the case with most free and premium themes, custom WordPress applications have much more design freedom. But if that is the case, why should your church be thinking about using WordPress?

1. WordPress can meet the website requirements of whole organizations. Most people who know about WordPress think of it as a blogging tool, it has the power to scale up to meet the website requirements of whole organizations. While WordPress may not be perfect for everyone, such as mega-churches who require far more than 95% of the churches out there, it does well for the rest.

2. It is perfect for ministries on a tight budget. That is the beauty of WordPress. If you already have a domain, you can use that or go on the WordPress website for free. There are literally hundreds of free, attractive design themes for WordPress. Most are easy to implement and none take special technical knowledge. And if you decide that you don’t want to use one of the literally thousands of free WordPress themes (designs), having a customer theme made for you will be infinitely less expensive than a full fledged web site design/hosting costs.

3. Vast Number of Themes Available. One of benefits of using WordPress is the vast number of themes that are available. A theme is like a template, but much easier to use. There are literally thousands free themes available, many of them geared specifically for churches. My advice is, if you are new to WordPress, pick a theme to start with and focus on developing your content first. Then as your site matures, you’ll want to improve on the theme, either by choosing a new one or customizing it.

4. It is easy to use. When I think of WordPress, I think of the new Creative Vado HD (high definition) video camera I recently got. It has a lot of cool things and is simple to use. One click install and 5 minutes later you are done. Can it get any easier than that?

If you can type, you can pretty much use WordPress. You can start publishing in 15 minutes or less from start to finish. The software has a simple user interface that makes it easy for users at any level to manage images, content etc.

And the available plug-ins (once again easy to use) can make it easy to add such things as a calendar, comment editing, etc.

Furthermore, if you ever get stuck, the user forums that are available will answer every question that you might dream of. It is rare where you encounter a challenge to which you can’t find the answer with only a few clicks. (I am only saying that because it could happen, although my experience is that I have rarely had to use a forum or help because it is so easy)

5. Google loves WordPress! Having and using a WordPress blog is one of the most efficient ways to increase your website rankings on Google. And there is some data to suggest that the WordPress sponsored blogs (remember those? The free ones for those on a tight budget?) resonate in the search engines even more than websites that use WordPress. Google is the most popular search engine in the world and millions of people use it daily. WordPress can handle most of the search engine optimization requirements that you would normally need help with on a regular website.

6. You can cut the ties with your website designer! Don’t get me wrong here. There is a place for website designers as they serve a valuable purpose. They can definitely help some organizations do better things with design, search engine optimization and other aspects of a great church website. Conversely, there is nothing more frustrating than not being able to get a change made on a timely basis because your website designer/firm wasn’t available.