Christian blog about church website design

I have started this website about Christian design and stuff. I have started it because I believe in Christian church and because this is my religion and I believe that many webmasters which are the leaders of this internet generation represents the Christian church but they don’t just say it out loud. We need such an internet Christian church resource.

I know that there are many resources for web design but not all those people representing these websites are members of te Christian church community and not all of them represent well the Christian church.

We speak about website templates, well, ok, but the Christian church is more important that the way it is represented, in this case, on the internet through our website.

This is just a way of serving or Christian church our way of being and expressing. I know the way I am. I know the way I am built and this website is just part of what I am.

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I think I posted about this before but I feel the need to post again about it since it bothers me for some time. I am speaking from my experience, I tried something to test it and now I am sorry for it. Ok, it goes like this: a few weeks ago I started a blog on Blogger about baby products. It was ok as long as it was under blogger.com domain. Then I purchased a custom domain and everything just collapsed starting that very moment I purchased the domain. I purchased it through Google Checkout and the application behind configured the domain to work fine (theoretically) with Blogger. Well, theoretically is the word since it took me almost 2 weeks to figure it out how to fix an error that I had nobody to report it to. By the way, they provided me with an error code…what should I do with it since I don’t have where to send it?

Anyway, today I managed to forward the domain and I thought the pain was over. Well, if you consider the problems appeared when saving the template, if you consider that famous error with the number 502…server error, if you consider the pain of editing anything there, if you consider…I just started to feel bad about starting it there.

I should have purchased the domain, start a blog on it on WordPress, use a nice template that I could find anywhere on the internet and THAT SHOULD BE IT, PEOPLE!!! No, instead I am blocked by this Blogger thing. And I can not even move it since I don’t want to lose the file extensions and all. I mean I have the site indexed by Google, I don’t want to change the file names by starting a WordPress blog.

I should have purchased a hosting package and install WordPress there. Everything should have been fine! So, people! Please remember this when considering starting a website: domain name, payed hosting, WordPress! Domain name, payed hosting, WordPress! Domain name, payed hosting, WordPress!

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I ask myself if I should also host/deliver Christian clipart. I see that there is a need for Christian clipart, people use such graphics all the time for building all kind of things:websites, blogs, prints, Christian PowerPoint templates, etc.

Where do you get Christian clipart?

The only issue with this is where could I obtain such Cristian clipart for free distribution? I am a designer, I design templates and I also obtain them from the internet. But I can’t draw so I could not start drawing myself such Christian clipart the way I started with templates. The only this is to rely on users to upload such graphics but I think that there are not that many people drawing out there so the chance of uploading Christian clipart that you don’t own the rights for is really big and I wouldn’t like to get into legal things. I will think on it anyway…

What do you think, should I also deliver free Christian clipart? That is after I put here more Christian blog themes, Mambo and Joomla templates and other similar designs.

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Saddleback Church as a subject of web marketing research

My Christian website got to a point where I need a step forward. I am not yet sure how should I do this but I really need it. A few days ago I had a post about Saddleback Church which got me in 2-3 days on the third page in G for this criteria. It was not an intention of mine to get there for it but it brings me visitors. So, why am I speaking about Saddleback Church in this post? Well, I only speak about Saddleback Church as a part of a process that I need to start. I need to start to blog more about long tail keywords. I need to write more since I need more traffic and blogging is a great way to build steady traffic. “Saddleback Church” proved to be a long tale keyword that brought me some visitors that I really needed. So I am thinking to do a bit of research about long tail keywords in this religious niche and write about is.Like with Saddleback Church, right?

Plus that by building your traffic by a lot of small pieces, it will never let you down on long term. If you build your traffic only on some highly searched keywords, but not too many keywords, if you lose your rankings you will lose big time while if you have a lot of less searched terms, if you lose the traffic for some, you will still have plenty to work with. Saddleback Church is not very searched for. But it is searched a few times each days. Ranking well for it is good. Once you rank well for Saddleback Church, move forward and look for an other long tail keyword. And so on…

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To be honest I didn’t know anything about Saddleback Church. I didn’t even know there is a Saddleback Church or anything like it since I am not located in USA. I was looking on the internet for some information and I found something about Saddleback Church. I looked some more on the internet about it and I can tell you this:

What is Saddleback Church?

Saddleback Church, or Saddleback Valley Community Church is a Southern Baptist church in Lake Forest.
Wikipedia told me that Saddleback Church is one of the largest churches in USA with a weekly attendance from 12,000 to 15,000 people. This make it one of the largest, indeed.

I have also found that  Saddleback Church has a great website that tells me they have a real interest in promoting the church and they don’t miss anything in this area. That is probably why people come to Saddleback Church.

The pastor of Saddleback Church is Rick Warren which says he had a vision at the age of 19 and since then he continued his job as God’s man, preaching and building one of the largest churches in the USA.

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That’s a question I have for some time now. When things gets tough, I mean really tough and there is a way out of there just not the normal way, forward. Let’s put it in a technical way, even if the reason I started this post is a more personal one, not necessarily related to websites.

Let’s say you try something for a few years and  you worked a lot for it hoping it will work. Let’s make things even more complicated: not succeeding would mean a lot for you and for people around you. But things are getting more and more complicated, started to create problems in your life. People tell you that you should drop out of it, to let it go. Warning: I am speaking about a positive situation here, one that in a normal situation would not happen. OK, but let’s go back to my website issue. Let’s say you work for one of your websites day and night, invested a lot of time and money working for it, but it just doesn’t want to start, doesn’t bloom in any way.

What would you do? Let it go and move to an other one? Or tell yourself that it has to bloom at one moment and work more and more and more without results? What would be better?

I know that my education and culture would tell me to go on and not drop it, but the already spent volume of work without desired result, people around me, common sense, friends, tell me to drop it since it only makes me tired and wastes my resources. I personally ask myself this  question since a long time. What would you do?

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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!

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Indeed, church website design is a vast topic. So many could be written around this subject. This topic will be probably more of a though of mine. I got comments on posts related to Mambo used on church sites and Joomla. So people use CMS systems to develop their church website. There are many people building custom church sites, and this is shown by the big number of free templates downloaded from MT site. Also there are many people building Christian blogs.

All this show that church web design  is something people care about. It is something people learn about, it is a domain that is continuously expanding. Internet churches, or at least internet Christian sites are growing day by day. Christian blogs build communities, people listen each other. There are many pastors, priests or just religious people willing to share ideas using Christian websites.

Well, I feel good about this. I contribute a bit to this, right? I post on this site free religious site templates that you can download, so I may be contributing to this global Christian community already and I feel good about it! Tell your friends about this, tell them about our site so they tell to others so we keep contributing to this world of Christian friends.

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To all of you using our free Christian layouts: please, read our Terms Of Use and try to understand. You don’t pay anything for our free Christian layouts. You use them on your websites the way you want. Please, understand that the link back to our site that you keep in the bottom of the page is the only thing we ask you to do for us. We provide you free Christian layouts, we give you the right to use them in a lot of ways and the only thing we ask you is to keep that link back.

You, as a Christian webmaster reading these lines have two reasons for which you should understand better what I am saying here:

• You are a webmaster, you have your own site, you know the value of a link to a site, and you know that it is a very little effort to add it, while it is a considerable effort to design and to develop the template
• You are a Christian webmaster, and as a Christian you should have moral values. I can not constrain you in any wa. I can only ask you to understand the reasons. I have the conviction that you will.

Also, if the free religious template that you download from our site is designed by somebody else that bibi, then you should also keep a link back to author’s site. It is a matter of respect for the designer that spent hours designing it.

For bibi, the problem is simple, keep the link back to magictemplate.com and it is enough. It is my site.

That’s about it! I hope I will get your answer by receiving that link back to MT. Thank you very much!

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I ask myself if Christian MySpace backgrounds would make a nice thing to sale. I mean, if you would have high quality MySpace Christian backgrounds, would people come and buy them?

To be honest, I don’t think that you would have to many buyers for MySpace Christian backgrounds. It is my opinion, contradict me, please! Do you sell Christian MySpace backgrounds? Tell me about it! I would really want to know and you will also get a link back from MT to your site, just to see your site.

The reason for which I don’t think that Christian MySpace background would have a great market is that you find so many for  free and with m offer of this dimension, I would not think that too many people would want to buy  something they could get for free.

Plus that Christian MySpace backgrounds generators are killing tools for anybody trying to sell such things as Christian backgrounds for MySpace.

People just go and generate their own background, why bother spend their money for this? I know I wouldn’t, so I would not invest my money in selling any! But, I repeat, if there are outthere anybody selling Christian MySpace backgrounds, please let me know! I wouldlove to hear it!

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