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.How about a Christian community site?
Some time ago we decided to add a section to this website so we allow our users to upload their own Christian templates on our site so our users can download them for free. I can tell you we worked a bit to develop this section and we were proud to add this feature to our site. However, I can tell you that there was not a very successful thing to do and I don’t know why is that.
The initial intention was to allow people to add their own free website templates so we expand our collection fast, cause there is not that easy to maintain such a website on a small team.
The fact is that there are enough people registered on our site, as designers that showed their intention to participate, since they created an account, just that they don’t upload templates. The process is very simple, so I can not tell for the moment why this is happening, but I promise to find out and do in such a way that the collection expand.
I would love that this site expand and grow from a small team (2 people) operating it to a community based site where people contribute. I have at this moment a very interesting base of visitors and email subscribers so I ask myself how could I grow this site into a community?
Any ideas?
Are Christian MySpace layouts going down as well?
As you probably remember, I was telling you about little traffic over summertime. Or springtime for the moment. And I am right, people are less interested in internet when the sun is shining outside. Religious website templates don’t look that interesting when the sun shines in your display, right?
However, seems that the interest for Christian MySpace layouts is still high even if comparing to the beginning of 2008, people searched less. Seems that for 2006, Christian MySpace layouts had a massive growth, 2007 was a constant year while on 2008 they begin to decrease. At least this is my impression looking to Google trends statistics.
I ask myself if it is still a springtime temporary thing or they are going down. I ask this because it may be a general trend, where all religious based products and services lower a bit over summertime, but may also be an issue with layouts for MySpace in a general way, not only with religious ones. Maybe people got tired to look for them or maybe the new interface of the site is enough for people? Who knows?!
Anyway, I will watch these searches on medium term to see how they are doing and what is the trend. Maybe it’s a temporary thing and Christian MySpace layouts will come back as well as church website templates and everything related to religious design.
Everybody has a site that is dearest to his/her heart. This is mine…
Over time, those of us that are involved in developing websites build a small fleet of them but everybody has one or two that are very close to their hearts and mean the most to them. For me, this site about Christian web design is the one that means the most. I have more websites, on various topics, but this one means more than all the others put in one place.
Over time I watched it grow step by step and earn each of the visitors coming here with cold sweat. I worked for this growth and every visitor coming to this website meant something to me. You, reader of this post, too. I designed a handful of church web templates that I delivered for free. Everyone of these free website templates means something to me.
It does not necessarily mean that this site is the most important from all the points of view, or that it is the most beautiful or that it has the highest traffic. No. It just mean that this website is the dearest to my heart.I guess it is because of the religious niche too, because every time I work on this site I get a warm feeling of belonging.
I love this site and I am pretty sure you have your own websites you love, sites that you have worked on and that means something to you. Am I right or what?
Our religious templates may be used for other websites too
Our niche is Christian templates, free religious web templates, yes, I know it. But this does not mean that you can not use our free website templates for your sites, if these sites don’t have a religious specific. You can use it to anything you like, just keep the link back to us. Of course, the sites you use our free templates on should not have offensive content of any kind and should follow Christian beliefs. It is that simple.
After that, no matter what domain of activity, what niche your site has, you can use out free website templates to dress it. If you sell books, it’s ok. If you sell cars, it’s ok. If you have a personal site, no problem, just please remember to keep the link back to our site here. It is that simple.
People ask us all the time questions like: could I use your template for my site if it is not a religious site? Yes, as long as it follows good will rules and does not offend anybody in any way. That is the only thing we ask and of course the link. After that, use our religious theme to whatever you like, to build a site that is religious or not. Be our guests!
Custom church websites for low prices
The same idea that I have exposed here some time ago comes back to me again and again: how about offering payed services for developing full websites for churches, Christian organizations, etc, at low prices and use this site for this? I ask myself if I would offer such a service, if people would like it. A lot of my searches come from free website templates so there is a big chance that people don’t want to invest much money.
But I look at the fact that a lot of the Christian templates that are downloaded from our site are not well implemented on customer’s websites: people rely on their college HTML knowledge to do it or ask somebody from the church. But how would be if you would know that after you have downloaded the template, we can add the information in it for you for a low price?
Have your website up and ready with just a little bit of money? Wouldn’t this be great?
We started to advertise on GuitarFlame.com
Lately I have decided to put a banner to our site on GuitarFlame.com, an other site (blog) that I own. GuitarFlame.com is a blog about electric guitars, with a lot of information about music. I have decided to add this banner there because I want to increase the exposure of MagicTemplate.com site as much as I can. It may bot be a niche that have so many in common with free church web design, but people there appreciate art and I think it will be well received.
As an observation, beside the advertising opportunities on MT site, consider GuitarFlame.com as an other alternative for purchasing private ad spots. The site is continuously growing in traffic, has a PR 4 and a steady reader base, which makes great conditions for advertising there.
I think that Christian music sites will find it to be a very interesting place to advertise and also a very nice to read blog, with a lot of interesting information.
Give it a try!
Church WordPress themes are easy to install
I have decided some time ago to provide here, for free, a collection of church WordPress themes so everybody willing to start a church blog based on WordPress to find some free themes to design his blog. It is not difficult, our church WordPress themes are designed in such a way that all you need to do is to copy them to the folder where your themes are located, in wp-content/themes folder on your WordPress installation folder.
Than, after logging in to your administration account of your blog go to presentation or design tab, depending on your WordPress version and change the current theme to the church WordPress theme you have downloaded from our website.
After this, you are allowed to change it as much as you want, in order to fit your church design: you can change colors, you can change pictures and of course, you can and you need to change text. You actually need to add text as often as possible on your church blog, so people visit it often.
It is that easy to have a nice church WordPress blog based on one of our themes!
Religion and spirituality, not very hot during summer, am I right?
I know I said it a couple of days ago, but indeed, I think during summer period, Christian web templates are not a very hot subject people search for. I know that probably people think more and more about summer, holidays, beach, etc, and less about religion, spirituality and web templates with Jesus images. I know that there are periods for everything and periods where certain things don’t go well, and I think that the summer time is one of those periods when Christian web design is not the hot subject around.
However, I consider that even in such cases, people need to focus and think a bit forward. When religion and spirituality will become again the subject to think about for most people, try to be prepared. There is a saying with the smart man who builds a sleigh during summer, I think it has a point. Build your religious web site now in order to have the time to promote it and rank it well in Google for the period when the subject will be hot again, meaning a couple of months from now.
You know that there are some cycles when certain topics work well and certain topics don’t go that well. Religion does not go so well from the point of view of people interest, over the summer. I guess it is not only something specific to websites but also to churches, probably church members go to the church less during summer than during autumn and winter, for ex. It would be interesting to know. However, in just a couple of months we will be back on top!
Should a Christian website have email lists?
People asked me if they should have an email list on their church website. I say yes, yes, yes! People should have such email lists everywhere, church websites don’t make any difference form regular sites.
Start your email list on your church website and maintain a close relationship to people coming to your church. Let your church site become your virtual host, your virtual church, don’t just treat it as a magazine, treat your church website as a living entity, where people come and read information.
No matter what site you have, Christian website or not, you should maintain a mailing list for a close contact to your people, it always help. Think about this and start sending email to people with the most important information. Never send unsolicited emails, always assure that you only send emails to those people that subscribe to such a service, because otherwise you will find yourself in a situation where your email will do more harm than good, people will look at it as being malicious and this is the last thing you would like, right?
But the power of email marketing is huge, you can always tell your subscribers when there will be your next church meeting, what to expect, the program, something you think they would be interested in, this kind of stuff. And also remember to monitor how people received the email. Did they open it? Did they read it? Did they just delete it? Is the email good or is a broken email that nobody reads?
All these things should be considered when handling your email marketing list for your church website. I will tell you more about it in a next article so stay close!
Lower traffic for Christian websites during summer period
I think in this period of the year, Christian activities are less intense. I experience a traffic that went down a bit. Comparing it to last year traffic in the similar period, indeed, seems that exactly one year ago, from May to August, the traffic decreased a bit. Comparing it to Google predictions, I think that indeed, there is a lower traffic for Christian web templates and any related materials.
However, I expect it to be even better in a couple of months, actually starting from August I expect a traffic increase. My current positioning didn’t change and Google still loves me, he actually has no reason to not do it, so, I am quite convinced it is because of a lower need for Christian related materials.
How is on your side? Do you own a Christian website? How is your traffic compared to last months? Do you feel any increase or decrease in traffic? I know I am steady for a long time and I feel when something happens. How do you see it on your side?
Did you experience similar things?