On October 26, 2009 in News
Over the years I’ve made quite a few sites for churches, and now that I have a portfolio full of WordPress themes for churches, people ask me all the time what plugins I use and recommend for their church sites. To help everyone out, I’ve put together this updated list of what plugins I would recommend for your church site.
This is the most used WordPress plugin and for good reason. It easily adds descriptions and keywords to your site’s content and attempts to make the entire site more search engine friendly. I use it on every site that I set up and think everyone who wants their site to be noticed should too. I will say lately the plugin has begun to have more frequent updates without appearing to change anything and each update requires visiting the settings page to reactivate it. A bit annoying, but I suspect it helps the developer get a few more donations. That’s not too bad considering the plugin is free. You can find out more here.
This another plugin geared to help your site be noticed by search engines. It creates a map to show Google and everyone else where your content is located. It’s a breeze to set up and quietly does its job without getting in your way. Find out more and download it here.
I’ve yet to make a church site that didn’t have some form of map and most of them use Google maps to provide directions as well as a visual. While it’s not hard to embed a Google map, it’s generally not very graceful. Now there is a great WordPress plugin called MapPress that will allow you to not only embed a map, but offer directions via Google directly in your site. It’s a great solution. Learn more and download it here.
Most every church needs some type of contact form, even if it is just for sending a basic message. But contact forms have so much more benefit to churches than just sending in prayer requests. Gravity Forms is by far the best plugin for forms available. Since it’s release this summer, I’ve replaced every contact form on my sites with this elegant solution. Now I can easily create small group sign ups. Allow people to write posts that the church can later publish. I work with a mentoring ministry that is using this plugin to collect information on new mentors. Once the mentor is approved, the data doesn’t have to be re-entered. All that is required is to publish the post the form creates. It’s a great solution that I would recommend to anyone looking for a form. Learn more and purchase it here.
Most churches that use WordPress want to publish a podcast of their messages. While WordPress creates a feed that will work with iTunes, it’s not obvious as to how to add descriptions, categories and images for the iTunes store to use. Podcasting steps in and allows you to easily add those items, plus create posts from any category to include in your podcast feed. The plugin is easy to use and is a fix and forget it solution. You can find it here.
Most churches use email newsletters as a means to communicate. While there are many companies out there you can use, I really like MailChimp. They provide a great set of tools that are constantly being improved. They have great looking templates, or you can create your own. Plus the best part is their mailing list is free for up to 500 users and 6 email campaigns per month. For many churches that will be all they need. Plus if you exceed that amount, their prices are more than competitive. They also provide another great plugin called Analytics360 that provides an great view on your Google Analytics data that charts how your email campaigns and posts affect your traffic. You can download Analytics 360here and MailChimp’s sign up here.
You have to keep track of visitors to your site, otherwise you’ll never know if you are being successful or not. There are lots of plugins that can add analytics features to your site, but I like Google Analyticator because it allows you to remove logged in administrators from the tracking. That way you’re only seeing true visitors and not just yourself. Plus it conveniently adds a dashboard widget to show you recent visitors. As an added bonus, this graph isn’t Flash so you can see it even if you view your dashboard from an iPhone. You can download Google Analyticator here.
Mobile devices are here to stay and people expect to be able to view your site from their phones. Personally I believe this is especially true of any place that has a physical location that people visit like a church. If someone is in traffic and they see a bumper sticker with your church’s website on it, they may just look it up while they wait at a red light. If you site can’t be viewed on their phone, they’re not going to bother with it. The WPTouch plugin allows you to easily create a mobile device compatible version of your site. This is a mature plugin that is updated frequently. There are other alternatives out there or you could just make your own, but this is so simple and effective why bother. You can download it here.
So these are the plugins that I always use with a church’s website. Did I leave any of your favorites out? Leave a comment so we can all discover some more great resources.
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On October 21, 2009 in Documentation
Here are the instructions for using Gallery Theme for WordPress. These instructions assume that you’ve already installed WordPress. If you need help installing WordPress, please visit this site.
Unzip the “gallery” folder and upload it to your “themes” directory. If you are using WordPress 2.8 or later, you can use the add new themes menu under appearance and then upload the zip file to install the theme.
In your WordPress control panel, click on appearance, and then themes from the menu that appears.
From the list of available themes, choose Gallery Theme from the list.
Now you will see two new menu items appear under appearance — “Theme Options” and “Front Image”
The “Gallery Theme Options” menu is where you can configure your logo, choose the design style and make other customizations to the site. One new feature that I have added is the ability to have a custom background image for the site as a whole. You can find this in the “Gallery Theme Options” page. Click on it and find the background style box on your right. Here you can place a URL for a new background image (upload it just like you did the image above and copy the URL). You can choose how it tiles, whether or not it scrolls or is fixed and how it is aligned. You can also set a background color too. The colors use a hex value that you can learn more about here. If you’d like you can also set new colors for your links as well as the header and footer text.
You can also add custom colors for your links and the color for the content part of the pages. So now you can add your own background image, your own link colors, plus your own page colors without touching any code at all.
You can add tracking code for Google Analytics or another statistics program like Woopra or Mint. The right hand column adds options for the home page–images and text for the boxes at the bottom of the home page. To add an image, click on media in the main menu and then add new. Once you upload your picture, copy the URL and then paste it into the blanks for the image URL to have it appear there. The images for the left and right boxes should be sized 80 by 80 pixels to fit best.
The last item that has been added is a 468 by 60 ad box for the site’s header. You can paste ad code here to display an advertisement or just an announcement for your site. Plus you can choose to use it or not.
Gallery also features a pull down panel that you can turn on or off here. It features 3 widget areas so can configure it to say what you’d like it to. The “Blog Page Category” option is to select what category is displayed on your blog style page template.
The last major option is for the front image. The menu item in appearance for “Front Image” allows you to upload your images. You can upload only 1 so that it is static, or multiple ones to have them rotate. You can set them to link to URL’s or not. Plus you can set the delay and transition effects as well. Just create your images to be 960 by 425 pixels so they fit and display properly and you’ll be good to go.
That pretty much wraps up the theme. If you have any questions using the theme, please feel free to contact me for support. I’m glad to help.
Thank you for your business and I hope your site exceeds all your expectations.
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On October 18, 2009 in News
I’ve been hard at work on a new theme to be released quite soon, but I can’t resist showing you a bit of what it will look like. I’m calling this one Media Theme. It is going to be available in two versions: one for businesses or individuals, the other for churches. It will feature a built in image rotator that can be swapped for a video player on the front page. Many businesses and churches like the option of having several large clickable buttons to link key areas of the site from the front page. Media Theme will feature three large customizable buttons on the right of the main image rotator.
All colors will be customizable from the control panel without having to touch any code. It will also feature easy connectivity to social media as well. Take a look at the snapshot that I’ve uploaded here. Look for this great theme to be available before November begins.
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On October 14, 2009 in Documentation
Here are the instructions for using Visual Theme for WordPress. These instructions assume that you’ve already installed WordPress. If you need help installing WordPress, please visit this site.
Unzip the “visual” folder to your “themes” directory.
In your WordPress control panel, click on appearance, and then themes from the menu that appears.
From the list of available themes, choose Visual Theme from the list.
Now you will see two new menu items appear under appearance — “Visual Theme Options” and “Front Image”
The “Visual Theme Options” menu is where you can configure your logo, choose the design style and make other customizations to the site. A thumbnail of it is included here on your right.
The “Front Image” menu is where you can upload images for your home page. You can upload a single image and have it remain static, or you can upload multiple images and have them rotate. The transition effects and durations are also customizable here as well. In addition to displaying the images, these can also link to any URL you would like. Very helpful if you are using them for announcements.
Now you can create the pages and posts that will make up your site.
There are 5 page styles that are included with the theme, a default, picture, full-width, blog, and site map. The full-width page is one that does not have a sidebar for when you need more room for your main content. The blog page presents a list of posts from a category you choose in the control panel. The blog page is handy if you don’d display your categories in the navigation menu. The site map creates a map of your site to help visitors navigate.
The picture style page is unique. It adds a large background picture with a semi-transparent panel for your content. It has a slider so you can include quite a bit of content without having the unsightly default scroll bars appear.
Adding an image to the background of these pages is quite simple. Go to media and add new media. Upload your image (it should be sized to be 998 by 620 pixels). Once the upload is complete, you will be presented with a URL for that image. Copy that URL by highlighting it and clicking edit then copy. Now create a new page, or edit an existing page you would like to change. Below the write box, there is another box for “custom fields.” Click on this box and select “enter new” type “background” without the quotes into the name box. Then paste the URL you copied just a moment ago into the “value” box. Click update. Now on the right of your screen, you will see a box for page templates. Choose “Picture Page” from the menu. Now save your page and view it. You will now see your new page with it’s custom background behind the slick looking panel.
One new feature that I have added is the ability to have a custom background image for the site as a whole. You can find this in the “Visual Theme Options” page. Click on it and find the background style box on your right. Here you can place a URL for a new background image (upload it just like you did the image above and copy the URL). You can choose how it tiles, whether or not it scrolls or is fixed and how it is aligned. You can also set a background color too. The colors use a hex value that you can learn more about here. If you’d like you can also set new colors for your links as well as the header and footer text.
If you have any questions using the theme, please feel free to contact me for support. I’m glad to help.
Thank you for your business and I hope your site exceeds all your expectations.
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