Many church websites are outdated in both it’s design and it’s content. Why? Many times it’s because the church website is done by volunteers or by someone who knows very little about web design. However, there is no excuse today for an outdated, poor looking website. You may argue that your church has no money or no one with experience. Well, WordPress has enabled people with no web design skills to create a good looking church website easily and affordably.
Here are the easy steps to create a church website using WordPress. Let’s get started…
Free Web Hosting (if needed)
First, you will want to purchase web hosting, and I have good news. If you are a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, Dreamhost.com offers you free web hosting. If you are unfamiliar with web hosting, it is basically the place were your website is stored and made available to the world via the internet. To make things simpler, you will want to have a hosting plan that already has WordPress installed. If you like to do things yourself, you can install wordpress on your web server by following these easy steps from WordPress.com. I did this for my blog and it was fairly simple.
WordPress Theme
The next step is to choose a WordPress theme. There are thousands of WordPress themes out there. I’ve listed some here that could work for a church website. You will have to choose a theme that fits your church’s style, budget, and needs.
Outreach WordPress Theme – StudioPress.com
Moses WordPress Theme - ChurchThemer.com
Micah WordPress Theme – MintThemes.com
WP Church WordPress Theme – Themeforest.net
Antioch WordPress Theme – ChurchThemes.net
Install WordPress Theme
Once you’ve downloaded/purchased the theme, you need to install it in WordPress. It’s very simple. Log into your wordpress control panel ( www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/ ) then go to the “Appearance” tab, click “Themes”, then click the “Install Themes” tab, and click “Upload”. Simply, “Choose file” and locate the theme you’ve downloaded, “Install Now”, and that’s it.
Customize Your WordPress Theme
Every theme is created a little bit different, but all themes will allow you to customize your theme from the control panel. For instance, I tried out the theme from churchthemer.com, it allowed me to add my logo, upload sermons, add online giving, create a contact form, and much more. You will need to follow the instructions for your particular theme to customize the look. However, the beauty of WordPress is the simplicity. Updating the theme for your church will not require some special knowledge of web design. If you know how to use your computer, you should be able to update your WordPress theme to represent your church and our Savior well.
So now you are ready to create a good looking church website that can be updated by your cousin, aunt, 80 year old secretary, or anyone else you choose. 
Your excuse is now gone…go create a good looking church website!
I’d love to hear from you. Do you know of other good themes? Do you use WordPress for your church or ministry? Any suggestions? Let me know!
14 Comments
Great article! One of my biggest desires is to help churches with the exact thing you’re talking about. There’s a younger generation that would be thrilled with learning to “create a website” and keep it up as a church ministry, and it’s an amazingly easy way to train and involve people.
“Creating” a website is really so simple it’s almost embarrassing to be proud of it!
Like you said… that’s the beauty of WordPress, and there really is no excuse.
On a side note, just this week I’ve been working on switching a church from Dreamhost to Bluehost, and it’s a little bit of a hassle. Not bad, but if you can afford a better host, I would absolutely recommend it… It’s far better to think of future growth in many cases, but that will be the Pastor’s call.
My plug for Bluehost is that it’s unlimited everything (emails, storage, domains…), and with Dreamhost we were having a hard time loading the sermons. Anyway, the more I’m working with various websites, the more I’m loving Bluehost! Just a thought.
Great job on the blog. Take care,
RR
Your tweet said “more smaller churches should do this.” Do you feel that, for a more highly maintained site, wordpress is not a good option?
Ryan, Thanks for taking the time to read the article and for the insight into dreamhost. I saw that they were offering free hosting to 501 (c)(3), and I thought that would be a blessing to many smaller churches with no budget for web. We use both bluehost and mediatemple to host our websites. You are right about WordPress, it “is really so simple it’s almost embarrassing to be proud of”.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Stephen, we’ve found that we need a very customized solution for our church. WordPress is great, but not for our church’s website. We are constantly adding new pages and sites for conferences and events. As you know, many of our sub-websites are WordPress, like busminsitryworks.com, northvalleynews.org, and this website is also WordPress. So, it really depends on the needs of the church. I think most small churches would do well with WordPress. Thanks for reading the article, and thanks for being amazing!
Thanks for the great article. I have slowly been switching our ministry websites to WordPress. It’s amazing how simple it really is! Especially if the templates are laid out proper. Nathan Allen was the one that got me hooked on WordPress. The new GSBC site is amazing!
I’d love to see a future post on your favorite plugins!
In your opinion, what are the biggest shortfalls of WordPress for a larger ministry? We just switched to WordPress from a site I (poorly) designed in iWeb, and I love how easy yet powerful WordPress is.
Love the blog, Bro. Mike.
Jonathan, I agree; WordPress is amazing. Getting a good template is very important though. That’s why I would use one built for a church if I was going that route. Thanks for taking the time to read the article and comment! I’ll have to remember to do an article on plugins.
I helped my church move to a WordPress based site this past summer. It is definitely a big improvement on what we had. Much easier to customize and easier for multiple people to create and modify content. Thanks for the post Bro. Moyer! (and for the PC session!) This is a great resource. I’m looking forward to a plugin article as well!
Tim, I guess I should clarify. I don’t think it’s bad for big ministries to use WordPress. Some of our biggest online ministries are using WordPress (North Valley News & GSBC). However, for our church website it’s just not practical. We are constantly creating new mini websites and tweaking it. For us, it’s much easier not to use WordPress for it.
So for me, the biggest advantage of using WordPress is the ability to update easily and create good looking websites quickly. The biggest disadvantage is the fact that it is hard to really customize quickly and easily. I hope that makes sense.
Ben, Thanks for taking the time to read the article and comment. I didn’t mention it in the article, but you are right. It’s great when you have multiple people making changes to the content.
This is a great article. I totally believe that many churches have dropped the ball in this area. I know of a few churches that have some person that took html classes YEARS ago and let them run the site. Or a 12 year old that “likes” computers. I know there is a place to let people serve, so this can be a tough area….a needy area!
I am glad WP came out. I have helped several churches get online with WP. It takes a few lessons and they can run the site in-house.
Thanks for posting this!
Great article, Michael! And thanks for including our Antioch theme in your list! It is greatly appreciated.
All the themes you showcased here are very well designed. And you simply can’t go wrong with WordPress, it’s powerful!
//Frankie
Bro. Moyer,
Great post. We have been using WordPress for our sites as well… http://www.mthebron.net http://www.revistamontehebron.com http://www.mhbbi.org and my own http://www.jonathanashcraft.com
We are thinking about designing a website for our publications ministry. What platform do you use for North Valley Publications?
Bro. Ashcraft,
Awesome, glad to hear you are using WordPress for your sites. As far as North Valley Publications, they are using OpenCart. They’ve created a somewhat custom site using it. Thanks for stopping by the blog!