WordPress in the most popular content management system available and it powers over 60% of websites that use a CMS. If you still wonder how it can help you check out a list of 14 reasons why you should seriously consider WordPress as your church website solution.
1. It’s free
It turns out that you don’t have to spend crazy lot of money when building your church website. WordPress is a totally free content management system. The fact WordPress.org is an open source project and anyone can contribute to it makes it free to use for you next church website project. How would you feel about your website when you know that there are thousands of developers working day and night to improve it providing free security and feature updates? You do need hosting for your website which will cost at least a few dollars. Still WordPress itself is free and what is more you can automatically install is in your hosting dashboard.
2. WordPress is mature
The fact WordPress is free doesn’t change the fact that you need a solution that is reliable. WordPress has been around for over ten years now (started in 2003) and since the initial release has been tested, improved, refined and enhanced. You don’t need to worry that it will crush your website or erase your data. WordPress is a world-class system that you can rely on.
3. You can start benefiting right away
Well, once you get it installed (which you can easily do if your hosting provider enables this feature) there are three preinstalled themes (and a huge repository of free themes). You might not want to use them for your final version but still they might help you to get started especially if you are new to WordPress. It turns out you can make a better church websites with one of these themes than numerous church websites that you can find online. What is more you don’t need to install a long list of plugins and add-ons to get started. Things like RSS feed and comments are available within WordPress itself.
4. It’s more than a blogging platform
As you might know WordPress was created for blogging. Right now hardly anyone thinks about WordPress as a blogging platform only. There quite a few great brands that use WordPress for their website. Have you ever heard about Mercedes Benz, BBC, Sony Music? Sure, you did! They use WordPress as well! But what about some of the largest churches in North America? The Potter’s House, Woodlands Church, First Baptist Church, Central Church, Christ Fellowship – all powered by WordPress.
5. It’s SEO friendly
You don’t want your church website to be out there with hardly anybody visiting it. One of the main reasons you need a great church website is for people to find you. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the terms you will have to get familiar with to make your website a success. Does WordPress help with SEO? Sure, it does! Matt Cutts who has been working with Google since 2000 says, “WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues.” If that wasn’t enough you can get hold of one of the most popular WordPress plugins, Yoast SEO to make even a greater impact.
6. Flexible – you can use it for anything
The examples above prove that WordPress can be beneficial for different kinds of commercial and church websites. What you need to know is that with WordPress comes an extensive list of plugins and extensions that help you with any and all of your needs.
7. Countless themes to choose from
If you want to impress your audience you might not be fully satisfied if your websites looks like many others in your area. Here is a great news – there is a huge market for free (already mentioned) and premium WordPress themes that can help make your church website stand out. You can literally spend long hours trying to pick the one that will give a feel of your church perfectly and at the same time will make people stay on your website.
8. Safe
Since WordPress is such a popular CMS no wonder it’s a target for hackers. It makes the people behind WordPress work hard to make it as safe and secure as possible. There is number of steps you can take to make sure your WordPress church website isn’t vulnerable such as downloading themes and plugins from reliable sources, using secure hosting, installing security plugins and remember to make regular backups. At the same time keep your WordPress installation updated and there is nothing to worry about.
9. Easy to use
If there is a lot going on in your church you certainly don’t want to be left with all the updates that need to be made. This is one of the most important things when it comes to time optimization for you – there is no need you do it alone. WordPress is so easy to manage that you won’t have any problem with training others to help you make you church website fresh and updated.
10. WordPress loves multilanguage sites
If your church is effectively sharing the good news of the Gospel there might be people for other language groups you are reaching. We are living in such a diverse world that you are very likely to have people at your church or in your community who won’t be able to communicate well in English. Here comes WordPress – you can either choose to duplicate and translate your site or use one of many translation plugins that will make your life really easy. Be prepared to welcome those who are looking for a church family but don’t speak your language.
11. Well supported
Have you started using WordPress and there is a problem you don’t know how to fix? No worries, there must have been some else facing the same challenge. The community of developers we already mentioned doesn’t exist only to make sure you receive updates when needed. There are thousands of people who are willing to help others in their WordPress journey. Google knows quite a bit about fixes to numerous problems you will come accross.
12. Well integrated
Okay but what about online giving, mailing lists and other tools your church is already using? Most of them probably provide easy integration with WordPress since as you might already have notices WP is to popular to be ignored. Usually the integrations are really well-documented and easy to install so you can easily get all the features work together.
13. You have full control
There are many companies that brag about their custom CMS solutions they provide. That is really nice. The problem is when you want to do something quickly with no need to pay spend extra money. With WordPress you have a total control over your website and you can literally do anything you want (as long as you have learnt how to it) to make your church website be exactly what you need it to be.
14. Numerous suppliers
We have mentioned plugins and themes you want to use with your great WordPress church website. You know there is great community that can help you. There might come a time though when you figure that your skills aren’t enough to make a totally world-class church website. Then you can easily find a church webdesign agency to help you with your dream website. If you don’t know where to look for help contact us on [email protected]
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