Christian blog about church website design

I didn’t know about Christian Blog and Web Awards (http://christianblogawards.wordpress.com), but I have run across it today. It seems that on 24th September, Christian Blog and Web Awards were held in London.

FRIDAY NIGHT SAW the first Christian Blog and Web Awards, held at St Stephen Walbrook, London. Christians from all corners of the industry gathered to celebrate the achievements of those who work behind the scenes on leading Christian websites.

Hosted by internationally renowned author and speaker, Jeff Lucas and Premier radio presenter, Maria Toth, the awards were attended by one hundred distinguished guests, including the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres who opened the award with a blessing.

What I was interested in, were the sites that were awarded. I found operation-greatbritain.com, unfurlingflower.blogspot.com, as well as other websites.

I invite you all to read the list and the whole article since you will find a collection of lovely Christian websites there.

Enjoy!

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I was looking yesterday for church bulletin templates on the internet. I thought it would make a nice blog post to write about church bulletin templates today since maybe there are other people looking for such thing.

How can you get church bulletin templates?

Well, there are 3 ways to do this, to download some for free from sites offering such services, you can purchase some that designers put up in a professional manner or to download/purchase a software package that create church bulletin templates.

You can find on the internet all of these. However, I can not say that you can find that many free ones. The most persistent and interesting information about this subject came from ClickBook which provides a software package that you can download and try for free for 15 days. The software package comes with more than 170 layouts.

As they say, here are the features:

• 170+ different layouts (e.g. bulletins, booklets, planner pages, etc…)
• Create photo posters and banners
• Convert booklets into PDF’s
• Works with any Inkjet or Laserjet printer
• Email converted PDF files to work, family, and/or friends
• Combines files from multiple applications into 1 print job.
• Sample documents that can be used as Templates.
• Saves Time and Money

I am not trying to sell this software package, I don’t have an interest in this, just that I liked the fact that it provides a fast solution when it comes to producing a church bulletin template and that it can save you a lot of time and money by saving you the time spent to find these on the internet.

I consider it to be a nice solution since I don’t provide here on my site free church bulletin templates yet but I will pay some thinking if I should or not.

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While reading something about color theory on the internet I found this post about Christianity and colors. I must say that I found it to be a beautiful article about the color of religion, how they call it. The idea is quite simple and clear: an overview of colors from a religious point of view. I like the way the article is written, it gives me a pleasant feeling, a warmness inside…

The blog also covers Colors Of Buddhism and they also feature a great deal of articles about colors, but that is not the point of this post of mine. I just wanted to share a feeling with you, to point you to some article that I liked on the internet on some Christian blog.

I payed some thinking to this theory of colors from a religious point of view, I must admit I have never thought about it like this. Indeed, we should pay more attention to what it is around us, we should pay more attention to the colors of religion, also to the colors of love, colors of friendship.

Everything has it’s own colors, so everything could be presented in a colored manner. You just have to look around you. Do you know that there are people associating colors to letters and numbers? I am one of those people, really. IMo, 7 is blue. I have no idea why, I just know that 7 is blue. 1 is black I think.

I don’t know if you have such associations between colors and letters or numbers but you should think about it.

By the way…what colors your life has?

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Designing a Christian template means work, inspiration and inner quietness. Really, this is how I feel about it. You can not start designing, especially Christian related works when you are not relaxed and in peace with yourself. If you are struggling inside and you can not find your inner peace, how do you think that you will be able to design religious material?

Supposing that you will be able to produce anything, even IMO the result will not be satisfying at all, do you really think that the person looking at your design will not see the fact that you were not in peace with yourself when producing the design? Because designing is like when singing or acting or performing any other artistic activity: it reflects your soul and the way you feel.

It happened to me many times that when I start a design, to not be in a appropriate state of mind and soul and to not be able to produce anything for almost a week, while in other cases, in a few hours I produce a beautiful design. Considering I am also a musician, I know this feeling from this other part of art too. When trying to write a song, if I don’t feel good about something, I can not do it while if I have the right state of mind, I can produce something that makes me feel good (observe please that I didn’t say something beautiful because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?)

That’s why, first of all start feeling good, start building your inner peace and quietness and then…start designing. You will have the certitude of a thing well done!

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From time to time I like to search on search engines to see who uses my free templates. I can only say that I am thrilled by how people use them. I have seen so many websites built using my Christian templates and I am so happy about it. I know that now everybody is a web designer and not everybody managed to use the templates the right way. Some of the people using the templates didn’t know how to do it. They just used them but not in the best way. Anyway, I can only say that those people deserve all our respect for the desire to dress their Christian website to make it look better and better.

Now by also providing Christian blog themes I hope that more and more people will be able to use them since WordPress themes are easier to install than a custom template that you have to adapt yourself, to fill the text and pictures.

I hope that each and every day, more and more people will find out about MagicTemplate.com and more and more people will come here to use our free services. I would love that as many people as possible come here. And not just because every webmaster wishes such thing for his websites, but because I care about this Christian website very much and I would love that people appreciate it and use it more and more…

So, first of all, I would like to THANK YOU for coming here and use my website. Thank you for downloading templates, if you did or if you are going to. If you are going to tell your friends about us, I will thank you again for it.

So,  thank you, dear visitor for coming here today! I hope to see you back again soon!

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As an observation, I was expecting more downloads for the Christian WordPress themes, but it is not link that. It may be that there are not that many bloggers outthere running Christian blogs on WordPress? I doubt that.

Come on, dear Christian bloggers, now you have the place where to download Christian templates for your blogs from. Take it, don’t wait! I will upload as many as possible here so you will have where to choose from.

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One of the things I am thinking about these days is how about a Christian web directory here on my site? How about it? I think it would be good, considering the fact that I have a PR 4 on my site, I think it might go well. I will think about it. A Christian web directory…wouldn’t you be part of it?

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When you start a website you don’t know if it is going to work or not. You don’t know if it is going to be good or not. Of course, you want to feel it, you want to know it since you work on it and you believe that it is good, I mean, your website MUST BE GOOD, right?

Well, actually nobody tells a website is good or bad, nobody but the public. Depends on how many visitors you have, depends on what people think of it. The most important thing to consider when developing a website is how it will serve the public.  If the public feels that the value they get from your website is good, then the site is good. Otherwise, it is not.

Now, if we consider that a website is somehow like a child for the one that built it and maintained it, then you can not contradict me when I say that every one of us is in love with his work, with the websites he/she represents.

I have started this Christian website a few years ago, but for a while it was not that important to me. Starting last year, around August, I think, this website became very important due to a lot of reasons. Since that moment, it is like a child to me and I can not stop working on it whenever I have time.

At one point I was asked to evaluate it in order to sell it. But I realized it is a difficult thing to do, even in the eventuality of a good offer. Why is that? Well, because of the long hours I spent working on those free Christian templates that I have shared here, because of the time I spend promoting it, because of everything this site represents to me.

Do you have the same feeling for your websites? Christian or not, no matter what kind of website, do feel the same?

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When you have decided to start a website, maybe you have asked yourself what should you actually base your site? On a blog or on a custom website, built by some designers? Well, what I can say is that it all depends on you. What exactly do you need? If you want a fast and easy to update platform, go with a blog, the engine is already built and it gives you the possibility to make any changes very fast and easy. I know a custom website will give you more freedom on how to structure the information but it will probably be more difficult to maintain.

However, my site here is a custom website, not a blog. But I do have a blog here, you are reading it right now. But the blog on my Christian web design site is just an auxiliary module of it, the site is the main part and it is built page by page by me and my collaborators. I prefer it this way.

You may read also other posts about blogs versus custom websites, see this one here for example  or this one.

So I just  say: if you want that the main part of your website be the content part, if you write often new information on your website, start it using a blog, download a Christian template from MT and that’s all, people, you have your site. If you want more, well, consider a bit of effort and have it built on a custom platform.

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I run this website since a while. I don’t know how many of you know that before being oriented to Christian design, before being a Christian website, I started it as a site providing website templates without having a niche. Back then I didn’t payed much thinking on this matter. I just wanted my site and that was all. After working hard on my site, because this site that you see now has a lot behind it, I managed to put it online, finally. And wait for sales and stuff. Well, guess what! I didn’t sell any product, none, any, no…I was sooo disappointed about this at first. Until somebody I know who works as a long time internet marketer advised me to orient my site to a niche. So MagicTemplate became a Christian website more and more, each and every day. I did it because it was a niche I could support due to my educational background and I managed to make it work so far.

Find your place easier in this big world

My point is that you need a niche when starting a website. I provide free Christian designs, you can find an other one. You can provide templates for music sites, or whatever you want. Just don’t start it big from the first time. Niches rule the internet. If you want to find your place, start a niche site and that is that! Try to find your place in this big world of websites. It will not be easy to succeed if you try to take the world by storm. Even if you are a big company, with a lot of resources, always find your niche and go with it. Try to make it stronger and stronger each and every day! This is how I would do it if I would start again an other website in this direction.

Each company needs a niche because the market competition is smaller, the people is more oriented and you can easily put yourself there where the position counts. Let’s see: you want to sell website templates, well, you may be amazed of how many sites can be found selling website templates. But if you narrow your search to music website templates, then you may have a winner. The market is way narrower, right? I know that people search less, way less for music website templates than for the general search but people looking for music related design will probably buy if the find what they need, while people just looking for the general term, well, may be just looking around.

Why niches convert better?

Niches convert better , statistical studies say that people performing 1 and 2 words searches are just “shoppers”, people looking for information, to see what they could find, without having a clear idea about what they need (yet), while people going for 3 and 4 words searches, they are buyers, people that are already oriented and are probably turning into buyers if they find what they need.

Now, what do you think? Are you going to pick a niche or what?

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