The only problem I had was with the Featured Content Gallery that I use on this site.  It was not compatible with version 2.7.  The plugin was unable to save settings and as a result it would not function with the new version.  Jason Schuller, the plugins author said he would have a revised version out in time for 2.7’s release and he has delivered. 

If you are using my Northridge or my Cross Gate themes, then download the update to the plugin here.  I will be updating all of my themes to take advantage of all the features in 2.7 in the near future.  

I hope you enjoy WordPress 2.7 and if you are ever in need of help, please don’t hesitate to ask.

The bottom line is, if you are depending on this plugin as I am, don’t upgrade to WordPress 2.7 when it becomes available until the Featured Content Gallery plugin is fixed.

This plugin has now been fixed.  You can find out more and download it here.

This theme is being released as a beta version.  There is still some work that I would like to do to it, but it is usable out of the box as is.  I have put in these features to get you started.

• Unique design
• Announcement ticker at the bottom of home page
• Podcast page to list your podcasts
• Search, 404, archive, home, and page templates included

A few notes about the design.  I have not included a fix for the Internet Explorer 6 transparency bug.  From my point of view IE 6 is 7 years old, and there are several free alternatives that people can use (including two newer versions of Internet Explorer) so I’m not going to add support for it right now.  The site will still be functional on IE 6, but it will not look as good.  You can add support for IE 6 if you don’t mind getting into the code of the site a bit yourself, or you can hire me to customize this theme for you and I’ll add it in for you.  Just contact me and we’ll set out to make what you’ve been wanting.

You can see a demo of Mountain View Church here.

If have any suggestions on how I can improve this theme for the future, please leave me a comment and I’ll try to incorporate them into the final release.

1.  WordPress.com Stats.   This plugin is made by Automatic the company behind WordPress.  It requires you to create a free account at WordPress.com and get an API key which you will find under your user profile.  (This is the same key you use for Akismet comment spam if you use that service).  Once you’ve downloaded the plugin here and installed it, it will begin collecting information on all visitors who are not logged in.  That is a consideration if you plan on having people who are a part of your community sign into accounts on your site when they visit.  You will not have a record of their visits, what they read, how long the stayed, or how many pages they saw during their visit.  

The WordPress.com Stats plugin provides basic information about visitors to your site.  It adds a small stats panel to your dashboard that looks like this.

Click Here to See a Larger Picture of the WordPress Stats Dashboard

It also adds a link to your admin called “Blog Stats” where you can get into more detail about visitors, search terms, trends and so forth.

2.  Google Analytics.  The amount of free services that Google offers is truly staggering.  I use analytics on Organized Themes because I find the details it provides quite helpful.  One of the interesting features is the mapping of your site’s visitors.

Click the Image to See a Larger Picture

You can see where your visitors are coming from, actually from anywhere on the planet.  It breaks visits down by country and then into state and/or city.  When I started this site, I never dreamed that churches beyond the US, much less beyond the English speaking world, would have an interest in my site and themes, but people have visited from over 50 countries.  To be honest, that just blows me away.

I also use Google Adwords for advertising and analytics connects into my adwords dashboard providing me with even more information.  It’s easy to see how many of my visitors are there because of an add that I placed versus finding this site by more traditional means.  Google also provides suggestions on how to improve your site so that you get a better rank in search listings.  Since Google is the king of search engines, we all want to take their advise on how to improve rankings in their system.

You can find out more about Google Analytics and how to install it here.

3.  StatPress.  This is a simple plugin that provides basic information about number of visitors, page views and more.  What it offers is a glimpse of not only actual visitors, but search engine spiders and RSS feeds from your site.  While I still recommend using Feedburner for your RSS feeds, you can get a quick indication of new subscribers and total number of subscribers.  

Click Here to See a Large Picture

The information on spiders is useful because both analytics and WordPress Stats don’t provide it and it lets you know that search engines are checking the content on your site for updates.  If they aren’t checking, then you probably aren’t going to be listed very highly.  You can download StatPress here.

There are other options out there, but these three will get you started.  I should note, that it will take some time for all of these systems to gather information, so don’t expect much in the way of useful information on day one.  Give it a bit of time and watch as trends develop.  Then you will be able to make more meaningful strategic decisions.

As always if you need customization for your theme, I am here to help.  Since I created these designs, it’s a simple and quick matter to take one of them and turn it into what you are looking for.  Just click here to learn all about customization.  If you want something completely custom, I can help you with that as well.

Thanks again for helping Organized Themes launch so successful.  I here to serve you guys so don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Take the Northridge Theme. On it’s own it is rather plain, but the framework is easy to alter into something totally different in feel. Here is one of the alternates that I created for the Northridge theme. You can see that the framework bears a lot of similarity to the original, but this concept would better suit a church seeking an edgier feel. If you are interested in this “Church on the Edge” concept, just fill in a comment and I’ll get in touch with you about turning this concept into your new website.

While customizing the theme, I can add not only style but extra functionality. Everything from Podcasting, online calendars, and newsletters can be added to your WordPress site. To be honest this can save you quite a bit of money. Take the newsletter. Constant Contact is a great company that I have used for church newsletters in the past. They charge $15 for most medium sized churches to use their service each month. In one year you would save $180 just in newsletter fees, more if your email list is larger.

After we finish customizing your site, we will set it up on your web server and make sure everything functions as it should. We’ll even import the content from your old site. At only $250 this is an incredible value.

If you are interested in having one of our themes customized, just fill out the form below and we’ll get in touch with you about your vision for your new site.

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One of the main goals of their website was to feature a weekly podcast of their sermons.  To help facilitate this, we have a dynamic listing of the most recent three podcast episodes on their front page.  This list updates automatically by just adding a new episode in their control dashboard.  If you can use email, you can handle WordPress.

The site also features dedicated areas to help people who are new to VCC learn about the church before they visit.

If you would my help in creating a website to fit your needs and goals, just fill out the contact form below and I’ll get in touch with you.

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We choose to stay away from cheesy preschool graphics and instead go with black and white photos of children with a soft pastel color scheme.  

This site is based on WordPress so all of the content is updatable by the end user independent of me which is quite nice for all of us.  If you are interested in a site like this, just fill out the contact form below and I’ll be glad to assist you with whatever your needs are.

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Vineyard Family Services had many goals in mind when we sat down to plan out their site.  They wanted to be able to list their programs, inform the community of resources available to help, provide registration for events, collect donations, and thank their sponsors.

Obviously this is a site that will feature a great deal of content and will have to be editable by the staff.  To facilitate this, I created their site to run on the WordPress content management system which has worked well for them.  If you would like my assistance in creating a website that fits your needs and wants, just fill out the form below and I’ll be happy to contact you.

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Technically this site features real time statistics so Ellen can see how many people have visited her site and also gives her a wealth of information about her visitors.  It also features a image display system so Ellen can upload as many pictures as she wants and have them displayed as thumbnails as well as full size images.

If you are in need of a website that you can update yourself, I am here to help.  Just fill out the form below to contact me and I will be happy to assist you.

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What I didn’t understand at the time was that this was not keeping with the free, open source spirit of WordPress. This wonderful blog and content management system is offered free of charge, no strings attached to anyone who wants to use it.  Not only that is regularly updated and improved.  WordPress is not the only CMS of this type that is free, but the only ones that rival it’s quality are not free.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to offer my themes for free and only charge if people require my expertise in customizing a theme, for hosting or having something custom created.  It keeps me in line with the broader community of WordPress and that is important for the continued growth and development of that community.

Go by and visit Revolution 2. If you like any of those themes, I’d be glad to help you with any customization or support you might need to use them or any of the themes I’ve created here.

I love the look of Flash, because it can do so many great animations and user interfaces, but it doesn’t work on the mobile browser on my iPhone.  Most of the time this limitation doesn’t bother me–it’s often just filler.  But lots of sites out there use flash for navigation.  I’m leading the children’s ministry at a new church plant and we use a curriclulumn from a company called Kidmo.  We are so pleased with the quality of their materials, but their site uses a lot of Flash, so I can’t use it on my phone.

To help all of us with WordPress based sites out, Dale and Duane from BraveNewCode.com have created a plugin for WordPress that uses a different theme when the site is viewed from a mobile browser.  This theme has your site name at the top with a pulldown menu of your pages on the right.  A search feature is also clearly marked at the top of the page.  Then comes a list of your most recent posts.  If you have an iPhone or a touch you can see an example of this by looking at my site.  

One reason why mobile browsers are so important for churches is helping potential visitors out.  If someone has a hard time finding your church and they have one of these devices they will likely use it for help.  If they can’t use your site or find the information they need because of poor formatting, they might not visit.

It may seem obvious, but most of us don’t make websites that only we will look at.  We make ones that we hope will benefit others in some way.  This plugin is easy to use and helps people better access your content.  What else do you need?  So head over to BraveNewCode.com and download it today.

Well the hangers did not ship on Wednesday as their 48 hour guarantee told me they would.  So I opened a support ticket for some help.  I promptly received a call saying they were closed on Monday and that delayed printing a day.  As a result I would need to pay an additional $57 to receive the hangers on time.  

The problem is no where on their front page, or any of their order pages did the site say they were closed on Monday, the day I ordered the door hangers.  I went through their site and the only place it mentions it is on their contact page.  In effect they won’t tell you when they are closed until you have a problem with something.

This brings up the importance of anticipation and good communication.  We all need to anticipate what kind of information visitors to our websites will need and provide it to them in an upfront and clear way.  Churches should provide clear links for people to find directions, service times and ideally at least a page dedicated to helping them understand what to expect when they come to your church.

My 48 Hour experience reiterates the need to think through our communication plan clearly from the point of view of a guest.  Otherwise they may have a regrettable experience at your church that could have been prevented with a bit more forethought.

Write me a comment below with some good examples of church website communication and any bad ones you can think of.

The top features the main navigation for the site as well as a search box.  Below the main images is an announcement fader that will run current announcements that can be clicked on.

This site is unique and hopefully will be of benefit to many churches out there.  My plan is to offer it for free as soon as I have all the code worked out.  Check back around the end of October to see if it is available for download.

As always we offer customization of our themes to make sure you get exactly what you are looking for.  To learn more click here.

To make your website the best it can I’ve put together a list of the most useful WordPress plugins for churches.  I’m certain that there are many others that could make the list, but these make a great starting place.

Podcasting:  We have been using the PodPress plugin for some time and have been generally pleased with it.  What you want to provide in Podcasting is a way for people to subscribe to your messages in iTunes, but still be able to download them individually without using iTunes.  PodPress does this well, plus it lets people listen to the message inside of the post without saving it to their computer.  You can download PodPress here as well as learn more about it.

Contact Form:  There are numerous contact forms for WordPress available out there.  I like cformsII quite a bit for several reasons.  It allows you to have multiple forms which is especially handy if you need several sign ups for events or contacts or some other purpose.  Plus it comes with several built in styles that can be adapted to fit the feel of your website.  It allows you to specify what information you collect and whether responses are required or not.  You can put initial information into the form that gets cleared out when someone clicks on it.  It is very professional in appearance.  You can download here.

Content Gallery:  Most churches have lots of information that they are trying to communicate.  Add to that the relatively small space that makes up the front of any church website and you have a disaster waiting to happen.  A great way to get around this is with some sort of content rotator.  Lots of these are available for use with Flash.  Flash looks great, but it tends to be slow and is often inaccessible.  If someone views your site on an iPhone, the content stored in Flash might as well not be there.  Content Gallery is a slick plugin for WordPress that uses a technology called javascript to create an image rotator that links to specific posts on your site.  It’s easy to set up and the effect is great.  I use it on the front of www.organizedthemes.com to highlight themes and services we offer.  Some of my clients use it to showcase upcoming messages as well as large church-wide announcements.  You can learn more about Content Gallery and download it here.

Newsletters:  Many churches like to send out regular newsletters to keep their congregations up to date with what is happening at the church.  There is a fantastic plugin called MailPress that allows you to use WordPress to run your email campaigns.  This is a full featured plugin that allows you to send emails to all users, or just a select number of them.  It also allows you to style the email to look like your website to keep your style consistent.  We’ll go into more depth soon about what the ins and outs of a good email campaign.  You can learn more about MailPress and download it here.

Calendar:  What church doesn’t have some calendar of upcoming events?  Even if it’s just the weekly services, something is planned just about all the time.  One of the best ways a church website can help out a congregation is through the use of an online calendar.  WordPress does have a variety of plugins that can help you in this regard, most of them do have their limitations.  Right now we are setting people up with WPListCal by Jonathan Kern.  You can find out more about the plugin and download it here.  This plugin will allow you to keep an online calendar of upcoming events.  It doesn’t set recurring events, so it’s better suited special or one time meetings than weekly gatherings.  One thing this plugin does well is produce a list of upcoming events that you can easily feature on your homepage or in your sidebar.

WordPress is a fantastic tool to manage your website’s content.  I hope that with these plugins it will be even more useful to your church or ministry than it is now. Part of its great flexibility is its ability to adapt and stretch through the use of great plugins and themes.  Here at www.organizedthemes.com we are committed to helping you make the best use of all these tools.

To make sure you stay on top of all the developments in WordPress and the web that affect your church’s website, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed here.

I understand how much is required in planting a church.  There are relationships to form, money to raise, leaders to recruit, vision to cast, equipment to buy, space to rent, and the list goes on and on.  One thing every church and especially every church plant needs is a website.  There are lots of wonderful solutions out there like Church Plant Media and Clover, but often times these sites are just more money than what a church plant has to spend on a website.

To help make things a bit easier we are offering a package exclusively to church plants.  It includes the following:

• Creation of a custom church website to fit your style and purpose.
• Development of a home page and two interior page styles.
• Installation of WordPress and the customized theme on our server.
• Registration of the domain name of your choice (based on availability).
• Hosting and support for one year.
• Podcasting, newsletters, RSS feeds, online calendar, and more.

Basically I’m offering you a custom website for only $250.  With WordPress as your content management system (CMS) you will be able to update all of the content on your site.  Anyone who can operate Microsoft Word is capable of using WordPress.  Imagine getting the style you want, the ability to update it yourself, and saving a ton of money in the process.  That’s not to shabby.

I’m offering this fantastic deal as a way to help church planters out. You have enough to do in making your God given dream a reality, let me help you out with your site.  Just fill out the form below and I’ll contact you about what your needs are and see what I can do to help.

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We rarely go anywhere or do anything without first checking the net. Why should we expect it to be any different when people are looking for a church?

Most people, especially those under 40, are going to make your church website the first spot they check out first when they consider your church.  They are going to need directions and service times, but they are going to want to know who your church is and what you are all about.  This gets communicated through the language you choose to express yourself as well as the layout, colors and graphics you choose.  All of these together should reflect what your church’s vision and purpose is.  

So one of the main purposes of a church website is to inform potential visitors about your church.

A second major purpose is to provide an information hub for your congregation. Church websites that are consistently updated are a great resource for their congregations.  I say frequently updated because all too often churches have a site that is set up for them, but there is no way for the staff to update them.  So this site that was incredible the week it was launched seems out of touch two months later and is really an embarrassment at the six months mark.  How often does a church have an online registration for an event that has passed still on prominent display on their front page?

If they don’t have a web programmer on staff who could blame them?

But now any church can have a website that they can easily maintain using WordPress and one of the themes we offer here, or by adapting some of the literally thousands of other themes that are out there.

It’s not enough to have a website, or even one that looks good.  It has to be updated both for potential guests and your congregation.  Check back to www.organizedthemes.com or subscribe to our RSS feed as we get into the nuts and bolts of everything it takes to run a top notch church website.

Many churches just want a simple web presence where they can showcase the current message series as well as let members know what is happening.  To help fill that need, I have created the “Modern Church Theme.”  It is a simple and clean design, but still could be used to house a great deal of content.  

The main page it features a prominent spot for this week’s current message, or the current series.  Below that there is a three part section to feature current announcements, recent podcasts, and entries from a blog.  Any of this can be adapted to feature any post category you want.  

For the inside pages, the header is smaller without the current message showing.  I choose a simple one column layout, and by making it wide, you have lots of room available for pictures or graphics to go with your text.  Being one column doesn’t mean the sidebar is missing, it is simply placed below the main content, above the footer.  There is a spot on the left hand side where a brief message from the church can be placed.  On the right is an area for widgets.  Use the widgets section of the design panel in your WordPress dashboard to add anything you would like to go there.

You can see a demo of “Modern Church” here.

I am providing this theme free of charge to help churches all of the world be able to have a website that they can update and maintain themselves.  If you do download this theme and use it, please leave a link in the comment area below.

Like all of my themes, this one is highly customizable.  I would be glad to help you out.  Just click here to learn more about customization.

This theme is presented to you with valid XHTML and CSS.  This is important because by being standards compliant, your website should work for years to come across all major browsers.