Christian blog about church website design
Click to go back to the site, to the collection of free Christian website templates and our nice church website design.When you start a website,prepare to work big time
Websites are not about technical things, websites are not just about design and the way information is presented on the website. No. Websites are about people and traffic. Traffic is the most important feature of a website. Does not matter how beautiful a website is if it gets no traffic. But getting traffic is not an easy thing to do. Getting traffic is actually quite hard, most of the existing websites fail exactly because of this:they can not get traffic in order to achieve the proposed tasks.
If you have traffic on your website, you can do almost anything with your website and a clean design can only help, while only the design on a new launched website does not bring you traffic. So traffic is the king of everything when it comes to websites. Start a website and drive traffic to it. The type of traffic you drive there is also of many types: organic, referrals, direct traffic. Depending on the type of your website, you can have a different percentage of each category.
If it is a site offering repetitive services and people find it useful, probably you will have a higher number of direct hits, while if it is well indexed by search engines but not a repetitive service then you may get more people from search engines, since direct traffic won’t do the trick. Anyway, direct traffic is the measurement of how famous your website is. People know it, come visit it, use it. That’s a good thing!
Referrals are links back to your site, build as many as possible from forums, directories, other websites like yours, etc.But, whatever you do, build a steady traffic on your website. As higher as possible, since any visitor coming to your website is a gain to you.
If you offer repetitive services, send mails to people that purchased something to you so they come back again next time, just remember not to offend them spamming them, this is not a good thing, for sure.
When you have a steady traffic, you can do whatever you proposed to do with your website, there are many ways to make your website work when having traffic, just build the traffic and the rest will follow!
In webdesign, you need to go everywhere before finding your path
When you start designing websites, you need to see things in an artistic way, since website design is an artistic process. There are many ways of designing a website, there are many ways to see the same thing. You need to find your way, to find your path, your artistic identity.
Just that this may not always be easy, since it is not something you decide at one given moment, to say that ok, starting today I will design websites like this, this is my artistic identity. No, you can not do it like this. All you can do is to “travel ” many places, see many ways things are done, build your artistic culture. By doing this, at one point you will see that you start to like a particular style more than others, or even more than this, you realize that you design your websites in a specific, particular style, without trying. This is just the way it goes for you, this is YOUR STYLE!
This is how you can find your artistic style, not by will, but by working and seeing the works of many other website designers. Step by step, you need not to dispair, but to go on day by day. One day you will see that somebody will tel you that he recognize you in your work! That will be a great day, believe me! You will know that you found your own style!
When building your website, choose wisely your color scheme
Depending on your site destination, you should choose your color scheme very wisely! Color scheme of your site is one of those things that influences the overall look of your site. Colors have well known meanings and transmit emotions to people. The emotion that a color transmits must be very well considered when using it. For ex, if you want to transmit the feeling of tranquility, softness, quietness, use a baby blue that won’t stress the visitors. They will all get the feeling of tranquility and security. You could match this baby blue with a soft green in order to freshen up your site. Baby blue - light green is a very used color combination that contribute to the success of a web site.
Also blue stands for security, honesty, so you may use it if you want to transmit this to your visitors. Blue is good, blue is the color that we should consider for a nice and honest website. People trust blue!
Well, if you want to transmit something else, like strength, power, tradition, use a combination of red, black and brown, you know the lawyers sites?Well, that’s the feeling! Dark red and black plus some brown gives you the power and the strength.. Using this color scheme you will not say we are fresh, we are easy to communicate but you will say we are powerful, we are strong, we mean business, don’t mess with us. Hire us to win in business! We mean business!Dark red and black!
Pink, orange, yellow, strong blue, green means girly and sites for teen! Hit me with a pink and match a pink bag and a dress and you get a girly site!!! Use a green button, a pink one, an orange one and you get your teen site! They feel good, teens feel happy, teens feel fresh! Don’t press them with strong colors, no way! Match their feelings! Use happy colors!
Green, well, there is not much to say about green than that it’s a color that have a good impact on your eyes, it rest your eyes, really, green is one of the best colors to use for a background, just be careful what green you choose. The bad point? Well, green is the color of money, think poker, think money, it is like a double edge sword in a way!
The most secure color scheme for a website is the classical black on white! Easy to read, easy to understand. Just don’t have it the other way! Don’t use white on black, this would be a baaaad choice! This is also true for any color scheme: light text on dark background is not a good choice. Period. People won’t read easily what you write. And if you want to convince somebody about something, please reconsider using white on black! People will be busy to read instead of getting the message!
As a short closing be careful what colors you chose since it may transmit other feelings to your users than what you intended to transmit in the first place!
Always put yourself in the user’s place
When developing a website, the best thing you could do is to put yourself in the user’s place. Really, this actually works for any kind of situation, not only related to websites. For ex when you speak to somebody, it would be a great thing to ask you is the other person likes what you are saying/doing. This could save you from some troubles and could help you get back on track when you seem to loose your guidance. Whatever…
When it comes to websites, one of the most difficult things to realize is the fact that your website is somehow…too much and you need to remove something or to stop doing some things. For ex, too much ads… Get it? One of the most difficult decision is to remove some ads from your website. When you have too many, your site may look crowded and people may not look at your site with great confidence. That’s why removing some ads may have a good effect on you website. But how about your earnings, they could drop…yes, I know, this is the thing that you must let go sometimes…you have to let something go, that’s the difficult part.
Well, the good news is that not always removing a block of ads will lower your revenue, not necessarily, maybe it may help you get more, but that is an other story. It is part of those Less is more experiments.
This is just an example of how to let something go in order to get something else, in our case, better quality for ex. The idea however it was to put yourself in user’s place, so you see what a user may find offensive or not quite appropriate. Some of those things may not be easy to change, you like them…yes, I know, just remember that your site is not built for yourself but for your users and visitors, so they should feel good when visiting your site. Putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes is always a good thing because not everybody sees the things the way you do and seeing things through more than a single pair of eyes is always welcome!
Becoming a central point for Christian web templates
Christian WordPress themes
Becoming a central point, a reference point for Christian web templates has been my target from the first day of this site. Now I still have the same target. I realize that it is a long way to go and I need to offer you, my users, things you are interested in: as many Christian templates as possible. For the moment we provide here custom Christian website templates. But a high umber of users have their websites implemented on standard CMS solutions such as WordPress, Mambo, Joomla, etc. This is why at this moment, one of my short term targets is to add a section for Christian WordPress themes. Next, Christian Mambo templates and Christian Joomla templates. But for the moment,just Christian WordPress themes.
But I still have some work to do since I have to adapt the website for this. I have my eyes on some designer providing such WordPress themes, designer that I hope to convince to contribute to the collection. Until then, I will continue to work on the site…
How to become a skilled website designer, part 2.
Flash is a tool to master, even if you don’t use it much
After I saw 2advanced.com, I was amazed by what a designer can do with Flash. I know that not all the websites should be Flash based, and if you want a short observation, I kind of avoid building Flash sites now since I don’t like too much the fact that you need the sources to update them. HTML, PHP is easy to update at anytime, all you need is the files on the server and the editor. I know that this may sound like the most stupid reason for which one avoids Flash but I must admit loosing sources a few times. Yes, I admit. I lost sources. Well, now I said it!
However, when you grow as a web developer, even if you don’t build your work around Flash, you have to know it and work at least a bit in order to fulfill your development.
It’s like when learning to sing(ok, maybe not many of you had this experience) , you need to take those boring classes before finding your way of singing. Flash is a tool to learn because it creates astonishing effects and it changed the way web looks.
Finding you way
After a while I let 2advanced go, or at least I am not checking them as often as before. I remember the moment they launched their 4th version of the site, I was waiting for that day so I rushed in to visit it. The site experienced big difficulties since everybody else seems to rush in also. Well, after a day everything cooled down.
In time I started to do things my way and one of the nicest thing a friend told me is that he recognizes me in my sites, he recognizes that a particular site is developed and designed by me. This really made my day back then. I also realize that this may be a 2 edges sword, meaning that you have some repetitive graphics habits that could make your work recognizable but boring. I hope to not be that case, even if sometimes I realize I am out of ideas…
To be continued…
What it takes to become a real skilled web designer
Phase 1:Being stupid
What I am going to say here is the result of all the years that passed since I started designing web sites. You know that saying that it is not smart to fight the person who only read one book in his life? Well, this person used to be me! What I want to say is that when I started to design websites, I thought I am really good! Really, I tell you, I had this belief! I thought I am the master of Photoshop and stuff!This happened some years ago, about 6, I think.
Phase 2:Starting to learn web design
Well, one day I discovered a great collection of Photoshop tutorials that really changed the way I was looking at
things. I stated to read those web design articles and tutorials, I started and even managed to go through with each and every one of them. There were about 400 tutorials I gathered from the internet. You can not imagine what huge impact they had on me. That was the real moment when I started to understand things. From that moment on I didn’t consider myself that good anymore.
Phase 3:2advanced.com,the way sites should be designed
From that moment on I started to have tastes in design. I understood that I like some styles of web design while I hate others (Note: I hate those crowded 3d web designs). By the way, if you want to hear who I really enjoy watching, consider Eric Jordan of 2advanced.com. 2advanced changed my perception of web design with their 2nd version of website. From that moment on I watched them to see what they are going to release next…
To be continued….
Why purchasing a domain name when building your Christian blog
I know there are so many blog platform out there and that when you decided to start a Christian blog you considered them all , searching for the one that fit you. But in my opinion, the best solution for starting a site, no matter what is the domain, is to have your own domain. Instead of telling your friends that your address is YourSiteName.blogplatform.com you will say that the address is YourSiteName.com, sounds more neat and serious.
Consider investing a few dollars and have your own domain name
Plus that you can do whatever you want on your domain. Blog platforms comes with limitations, they give you rights to do things, but also constraints. When you have the domain name, you can change the hosting platform whenever you want!You can add server scripts, you can change your site to fit your needs.
Maybe that free blogging platform will not be free after a while and force you to pay a monthly fee, so you will be on the same situation as when purchasing hosting and a domain name, but you’ll have a blog under a subdomain name when you could have built your own brand under YourSiteName.com.
So, IMO, instead of using a blog platform install WordPress for ex under your own domain name and have your own Christian blog on your own domain name. It will be a bit more trickier than starting a blog on a blogging platform and it will also cost a few dollars but on long term it will be better.
You can download a WordPress Christian template and use it on your blog. It will be very easy to install and customize. We provide here, on our premium area some beautiful Christian blog templates that you can use. Or if you want, you can use a free Christian template for your blog, it can be easily customized.
Just dare to start a blog and please consider purchasing a domain name, as a long term investment!
Missunderstandings create situations difficult to overcome
Well, it may sound easy after what you have already designed tens or thousands of such designs. But it is not, really! Because each design is unique and so it should be. You should not just change a picture in order to say yo provide a new Christian design. You should think everything from scratch because every church is different, every site and every customer is different.
Customer line:Yes, but it was not that important…
Well, first thing first: talk to your client, see what he/she has to say! How would they like to have their site built? From my experience, people don’t always know what they want. Some of them want some great things and after you struggle to give them what they want, they will say that well, it was not that important.
It happened to me more than once, for ex somebody wanted a nice, beautiful religious site with animation, music, etc and I explained that Flash is the technology to use, etc. They even showed me a site that was made in Flash 100% so I built up a Flash site. After a while they asked me to help them rank well in Google, I explained them that they way the site is built will make it difficult to rank well and we need to build a HTML version of it. They found it difficult to understand and asked me why didn’t we do it in the first place. Well, you required this, I said. Yes, but, you know, it was not that important!!!
After this, I designed an other version, HTML based, that had also a Flash header, so they were happy with the animation, but gave me text to work with for search engines. This was a lesson to learn, for me. It is not always easy to understand the one you are talking to! Always try hard to understand the other, it will save you a lot of trouble later!
Build your work around passion and love, not money, in order to succeed!
When you build a site is somehow like when having a child!You put passion into growing the site, you ask yourself all the time what could you possibly do to make it work better? Your website is like a small piece of you. At least this is how I feel about this website.
Being passionate about what you do
This is one of the best things you could do:to be passionate about what you do. This is the first step to success. If you don’t love what you do, then you will not succeed in what you do. Love your job, put passion into it, have fun! This is one of the things I really believe: why people fail succeeding? Well, it goes like this, in my opinion:
Never chase money, but your passion and love for what you do
Everyday, people try hard to make money, you have to realize that this is what we all do, each and every day. The society force us to be integrated and comply to the same values the society complies to. If you don’t do it then you will have hard times living around. Well, when you try hard to make money, my belief is that there is a big chance that you won’t succeed! Why? Because not money is what should care about the most in your life. No, even if you run a business! Not the money, remember that!
Passion and love for the game, for the business itself, that’s what should drive you around. And if you do this, then the money will come. I know that due to the fact I am running this Christian website I should not make that much fuss about money. But we all do, even if we don’t like to admit. Everybody tries to win a piece of the pie. Even this site does,I am not trying to hide it.
The point I am trying to make here, and it is true for any type of business, for a Christian business as well, is that you need passion to make things run smoothly. Don’t chase money!Never, cause you won’t succeed!Follow your dream, follow what you believe in, make things work because you love it!
I love my work for this Christian site andI love my work as a web developer. Really, I do. This site needs to earn money in order to exist, it has costs that I need to cover, but the most important thing is not to earn money but to have this site more and more known, day by day! Because this Christian site is part of me, part of who I am. This is what drives me and this site around!