Christian blog about church website design http://magictemplate.com/blog Words about free church templates and Christian design, church web site design, download religious web templates for free Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:40:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 en Build a church website to get more visitors! http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/build-a-church-website-to-get-more-visitors http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/build-a-church-website-to-get-more-visitors#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:40:06 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=273 I was thinking these days if the financial crisis affected churches and their capabilities to invest in a website. I mean, building a site, even with cheaper solutions, needs money and in this crisis, money is not always something easy to find.

People look in every direction nowadays for some extra money, to save and not spend. I have seen people being so affected by this crisis that changed their lives forever.

So,considering this, I asked myself how churches look at this, how are churches affected by this crisis? Do they still find the money to buy a Christian template and build their website?

You know, I actually think that this may be a very good solution for them, because having a website may help their audience grow and more and more people will come to the church. The site will be a tool for promoting church activities and gathering more followers. I actually know this. You should speak to churches that recently built a web site, to see how this affected their overall audience. You should actually ask people that join your church, how did they find out about you, is the website responsible for this?

You will be surprised by how many people found out about you on the internet first!

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/build-a-church-website-to-get-more-visitors/feed Thoughts about Christian web design after holidays http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/thoughts-about-christian-web-design-after-holidays http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/thoughts-about-christian-web-design-after-holidays#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:05:36 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=269 After winter holidays passed, I can tell you a bit about how the internet activity has been and how it is this very day, in January. The fact is that some sales increased in December, it is actually normal, because most sales increase, so Christian web site templates also sell better. But in January, things are a bit slow in any business, so I expect that people wake up from this point of view a bit later, maybe now, after the first half of January.

The fact is that winter holidays are a very busy period for Christians and may be that web design and templates are not something very searched in that period, but now I expect people to start getting interested again about their church websites.

The fact is that in December, advertising was lower than usually since people were also willing to pay less for advertising, also possibly because of the general economic situation we are all in. I hope things will be better this year starting right now.

What are your feelings about it?

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200901/thoughts-about-christian-web-design-after-holidays/feed Build trust and the rest will follow http://magictemplate.com/blog/200812/buuild-trust-and-the-rest-will-follow http://magictemplate.com/blog/200812/buuild-trust-and-the-rest-will-follow#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:06:10 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=264 I have just posted an article on another site of mine about what is the most important feature of an ecommerce site and because it really connects to this field, Christian websites, I have decided to write about it here as well.

The fact is that it is not about ecommerce websites, it works great with Christian websites also, and with all types of websites out there. It works, because the most important feature of a site is not the look, not the most shiny template, not the most expensive engine, but the most important feature of a website is the level of trust you manage to transmit to your visitors. It works with ecommerce because you have there a measurable target, but it also works fine with all kinds of websites, because, even if you don’t realize, each site has a target. Like a Christian website, for example, the target could be to bring more people closer to God, to church, to faith. Isn’t this one of the greatest goals? Like another site I have, www.exersaucers.net that I am trying to build right now, exersaucer oriented, where I do my best to have an open relationship with my readers.

For this, people need to trust you and the site. People need to understand you are a real person behind the site, you need to understand that a site is a virtual world and the human touch sometimes is not there as it should be.

Maybe you are into blogging, well, in that case you should ask yourself why bloggers have so much success.It is because of the human touch most blogs transmit. A blog represents people, more than a regular, static website, so people will easily connect to a blog, because they understand the real people behind the site and will connect to them. It is all about trust, after all.

So, in order to have a successful site you need to build trust. That’s all it takes!

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200812/buuild-trust-and-the-rest-will-follow/feed How about if I simplify the process of uploading free templates? http://magictemplate.com/blog/200811/how-about-if-i-simplify-the-process-of-uploading-free-templates http://magictemplate.com/blog/200811/how-about-if-i-simplify-the-process-of-uploading-free-templates#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:45:44 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=262 These days I keep on thinking about how to simplify the process of you sending templates to be published on this site. It should be as easy as possible, but so far I have understood from you that the process doesn’t seem straight forward, considering the fact that you need to register before sending anything.

The fact is that I prefered this because all the templates are displayed under a certain user credentials, the designers has the right to add and edit templates. But I just ask myself if it wouldn’t be easier to just let you send templates without any other data needed. No account, no nothing, just send the design you want.

I think that this way, the collection of Christian templates will grow easier than so far, because more of you will send free templates here.

What do you think, would it be better?

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200811/how-about-if-i-simplify-the-process-of-uploading-free-templates/feed Religious website templates started to be a pretty crowded market http://magictemplate.com/blog/200810/religious-website-templates-started-to-be-a-pretty-crowded-market http://magictemplate.com/blog/200810/religious-website-templates-started-to-be-a-pretty-crowded-market#comments Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:02:29 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=260 Well, yes, this is what I have observed in the last period of time, people look for religious website templates every day and more and more websites started to provide church templates and other Christian resources. Day by day, more websites get buit and give free religious templates.

This is a good thing since more and more people can find what they are looking for, more and more people can build their religious websites using free website templates downloaded from the internet.

However you need to ask yourselves about the quality pof such templates, given the fact that the number starts to be high and as you may know, the more you have, the less quality you get. But OK, being a lot, you can pick a few good religious templates from there and this is good.

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200810/religious-website-templates-started-to-be-a-pretty-crowded-market/feed 2 easy ways to make your Christian website grow http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/2-easy-ways-to-make-your-christian-website-grow http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/2-easy-ways-to-make-your-christian-website-grow#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:40:53 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=259 One of the best advices I have heard about how to make a site grow is to make it useful and easy to spread and people will grow it. Well, doesn’t work just like this, but it helps a lot. Imagine you have a Christian site, well, you probably have already if you are here looking for some free Christian templates, and you want to grow it day by day. Then you would need to have an easy way to spread on the internet and the solution would be to have on each post a “send to a friend” option so whoever finds your site useful to send it easily to whoever might be interested. This way, without doing any effort, you can have your site promoted by your users wherever you wouldn’t expect.

Also, have the possibility to send your site to social media sites. If you have a free web template that you want to go public, just add buttons for voting it on Digg, on StumbleUpon and people with the same interests as you, religious websites will vote it. These are just 2 possbilities to make your site grow. Think about them!

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/2-easy-ways-to-make-your-christian-website-grow/feed Internet activity for Christian websites increases at this time of the year http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/internet-activity-for-christian-websites-increases-at-this-time-of-the-year http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/internet-activity-for-christian-websites-increases-at-this-time-of-the-year#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:21:53 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=258 Now that the summer is gone, I see that people came back and traffic is increaqsing, it is that autumn increase that we all love! Especially myself and my websites! The fact is that it depends from topic to topic, but the same thing applies to almost all websites, no matter they are Christian websites or not.

Over summer time, the internet activity slowly decreases and internet businesses also decrease over summer time, but now everything is back to normal, people start working on their websites again, they start promoting, start looking for web templates to build their websites, everything is better.

That is why, to all of you coming back to the internet at this time of the year, I just want to say Welcome back! It would be interesting to ask yourself how is your topic of the website doing, how it fluctuates over the year. If you have never asked yourself that question, ask yourself now and you may understand why your traffic goes a bit down over the summer.

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/internet-activity-for-christian-websites-increases-at-this-time-of-the-year/feed How to build a community of Christian web designers? http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/how-to-build-a-community-of-christian-web-designers http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/how-to-build-a-community-of-christian-web-designers#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:27:34 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=257 As I said this before, one of the things that really run through my head is how to make this site more of a community, so everybody contribute to it. I think that if everybody would contribute to it, it would grow easier, the collection of Christian web templates would grow easier and more and more people will come to this site to download free templates.

If you have any ideas about how to make this community grow, I would be more than happy to listen to you!

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200809/how-to-build-a-community-of-christian-web-designers/feed How difficult is to build a Christian web template? http://magictemplate.com/blog/200808/how-difficult-is-to-build-a-christian-web-template http://magictemplate.com/blog/200808/how-difficult-is-to-build-a-christian-web-template#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:58:38 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=256 Well, belileve me or not, it is not an easy thing to do. If you build a custom theme, without a particular constraint, such as a particular engine, CMS or an already established site, it is easier, your imagination is the limit, but if you need to respect some constraints such as building a religious blog theme based on WordPress or a Christian osCommerce template, or a Zen Cart template, etc, then things will be a bit more difficult because you will have some particular structures that you need to include and respect, like for ex blog posts, archives, you need to include tags for best offers, etc.

These days more and more people use predefined CMS engines such as WordPress so Christian WordPress themes are very demanded these days and designing them is not easy to to. What you can do to start working on one is to take the default theme WordPress comes with and start adapting it.

I guess that no matter in what domain of activity you work on, you know that is always easier to adapt somebody’s work than to start it yourself from scratch. The same with Christian WordPress themes here…

]]> http://magictemplate.com/blog/200808/how-difficult-is-to-build-a-christian-web-template/feed Christian announcements were invaded by spam http://magictemplate.com/blog/200808/christian-announcements-were-invaded-by-spam http://magictemplate.com/blog/200808/christian-announcements-were-invaded-by-spam#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:06:28 +0000 magictemplate http://magictemplate.com/blog/?p=255 One of the areas that I really like on this site is the Christian announcements area, because it is interractive, people get to submit their announcements, it is that easy. But at one moment I had to close that area down due to high number of spams, meaning fake announcements with adult content.

So I closed it at that moment, but I always felt sorry for this since I really loved that part. A few days ago I reopened it, without enhancing it in any waym hoping that the submit form was forgotten by spammers. Well, not quite since I have started to receive spam announcements again. That is something I don’t like…

I think I will spend some time to add a captcha there so people be forced to answer a question or something similar, in order to not send spam comments.

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