Christian blog about church website design

These last days I kept on thinking about what should I do to create a community here.

Theory on what to do to grow a site

From the point of view of how to make a site popular, theory is simple: make it useful, easy to use and send to others and in time it will grow. Well, that’s the theory, indeed. How about the practical side of this story? I started to analyze these last days MT site and ask myself what could I do to make it more useful and easy to use? How could I make it user driven instead of being run by me?

Make the site useful. Period.

I think that the first answer I could think of about making it useful is to have more web templates published for free and the only way I could do this is to have people submitting such free website templates to be published, because without support from people all around the internet, it is not easy to grow.

Get help

So, in my opinion, the first thing I should do it to make more designers submit their work. This way, the collection of free religious templates will grow and the site itself will become more and more useful. Right? This is what I think about as a first step then, I will operate some changes(actually enhancements) on how the site operates, so you, as a user of this site to find the templates easier. When there will be more templates, there will be more difficult to find them. So I am thinking about a rating system, selection by author, by downloads, etc. I will see…

I also have other ideas, I wish I only have the necessary time for this since changes require time and this is something I don’t have much on my hands lately!

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I was thinking these last days, when I started to speak about religious tattoos, how would it be to provide templates for such works here. I think it would be interesting, just that I would need to document a bit about it. When I started to provide Christian web templates, I knew I am informed about this business since it is my main job. The same with Christian MySpace layouts, I knew about them quite a lot, but about religious tattoos, well, I don’t know that much.

So, in order to have the job done right, I would need to get informed. I don’t know if I will do it, but I surely consider it.

I think I will start discussing it with a few religious tattoo artists around, maybe they will want to start a collaboration of some sort, to upload such artworks on this site. In the end, what you need to have, I guess, are some pictures cleared of background, in a few colors that can be easily reproduced on skin.

I will think about it and if I will start to put here religious tattoos, you will be invited to contribute also!

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I am thinking to add a collection of church Flash templates, a separate section, to separate religious Flash templates from the rest, because they do stand out of the crowd. People interested in motion graphic religious websites may be very interested by these templates. Also why not having here a section of religious Mambo templates or Christian osCommerce themes?

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When I first started to provide here Christian web site templates, I have also thought to expand a bit by adding related items, such as free wedding website templates, charity templates and other types of templates that go well with church design. We offer a lot of wedding website templates on our site at the moment and a lot of charity web templates also so if you want, you can easily find what you are looking for.

Soon we will be adding family website templates, a powerful collection of family related templates so you can build family albums, child birth album, etc.

It is not something out of my niche, if you think about it. Family is the base of Christian society and wedding is one of the most important moments in the life of a person and a Christian can not conceive wedding without religious ceremony. Maybe there are other design areas that I could experiment with, but for the moment this is what I am thinking about. What do you think?

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You know, I imagine a website as being one big factory of some sort. Imagine this starting from the results it delivers. Think about serving 50 000 people per month, selling things to them, providing free website templates, etc. How many people would you need when running such a business? For 50 000 people or more you need a lot of workers serving your business in order to make it work. You would need people to arrange the merchandise, to show it to customers, to entertain and to explain what is needed, etc

Think now about a website. If you build it right, it works like an automated factory, company, showroom , sales force, etc. Just build your site the way you should and the site will run by itself. I think like this because I know this site and the way it behaves. It works great with so little effort.

All you need is to build it right from the start. This should be a new post, actually, how to build a site right from the start. A website should automate sales, should automate the presentation of your business, actually a site is a virtual robot working for yourself. If you want, a website is a personal factory. You won’t need tones of people to sell website templates, for ex, or to give them for free, all you need to do is to have a well planned mechanism that allow the user to get what he needs. This is my personal opinion on websites, it is an opinion developed in time from experience.

What do you think,am I  right?

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What I like about websites is the fact that they are self-standing businesses. Yes, and that is one of the most important aspects of the internet environment. Did you see people on TV presented as the manager and founder of somewebsite.com? They are not presented as being the CEO of the company behind, but as the manager of a website. That means that the website is a business by itself. And that allows it to grow and develop.

I also know and I have previously spoken about this here, that they say that a businessman in order to succeed in a business usually starts a lot. Well, with websites sometimes is easier to do it than in an offline environment and sometimes it allows you to test it better. The fact that you have access to a number of marketing tools is an other great thing because you can predict the way your business may grow.

How about a Christian business?

Also with Christian websites is the same. You should not limit yourself to build a website for your church and stop there. Just think about the opportunities of a Christian business. There are many possibilities to start a Christian oriented business, such as a website for Christian communities, you could start a web design business oriented to Christian market, you could start a website for Christian singles, you could start a website for counseling Christians in need, etc. OK, maybe the last one may not be such a great business, since the idea is to help people in need not to ask money from them when in need, that should be the spirit. But think about it and come with ideas, you could do so  much with a Christian website. You could start a book store and sell religious books or how about a religious antique store? Just think about it!

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Because I run this site that delivers free website templates for religious websites, I think about starting a new category here, Adobe Photoshop tutorials. I don’t know if I will find the time for it, but it sounds interesting. And this way, people downloading my templates will have some tutorials to read in order to customize the templates.

I don’t know if this is such a good idea since my target is not represented by designers, but by regular people wanting to start a Christian website and they don’t even own a Photoshop copy most of the times. I will think about it.

I am a designer, along with 10 other things so I can put up nice free Photoshop tutorials here in order to have a nice base of material to present to you, my visitors. You can trust my knowledge of Photoshop, I know my way around it.

What do you think, is this a good idea or should I let it for an other time?

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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 I launched this website I didn’t think of a community, but now I think more and more about it. A Christian community of website designers. I would like that people come here and meet, speak, etc. This requires a forum. A forum would be the best idea. Well, just that I had a forum and all I could say about it is that it got fast filled with spam comments. And I don’t have the time to clean it everyday.

However, I am not sure that this is the idea that I like about a community, I think I would like first to have people joining my site and upload Christian templates, like an open design community based on religious themes. This is what I would like to have here. Of course that people need to interact in order to call it a community. A Christian community, that is.So I would need a way to make people discuss…and I come back to that forum that I don’t quite like.

I thought about this blog as starting a community but I realize that I am using it more and more to transmit ideas, to tell you what I do and how the site’s been. And that’s about all! No community, right? Well and I come back to my forum again. A Christian web design forum.

A Christian forum would be a time eater

However, a forum is not easy to start and grow. One thing that you really need it is time to make it work. And that is what I miss here: time! I never have enough time for it. What I like about a website is that is a bit less of a time eater and more of a resource that needs boosting when you have a bit of time and you struggle to push it forward and let it go further. This is the way I am doing it now. I know that the best thing to do for a website is to always work on it, day and night and to maintain it every single moment, so the site feels “alive”! That is one of the best things to do for a website, just that this requires that the site bring you enough revenue so you can live out of it. And this site doesn’t bring me that much.

However, I like to grow it for the future. Considerings the (small) boost I’ve felt these last days, I think it is a good way to go.  Just that I come back thinking about that forum and about a community and about Christian designers interacting here on the site.

What do you think, would it be good to have a forum?

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Yep! This is what I was speaking abut yesterday also. I need my step forward. The first phase of this step forward was implementing users on MT and allowing people to sign in and upload their own templates so people download them. This is a first phase.

Separating content, Wordpress themes, Joomla, Mambo, etc

As a next stept I intend to add separated pages for Christian Wordpress themes, Christian Joomla and Mambo templates and maybe other CMS systems such as Pligg or PHPBB themes. This way I hope to become one of the most known sites providing such services. Of course, I hope that our users contribute as much as possible to this so our database of free website templates to grow faster that at this moment.

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