Envisioning healthy congregations
engaged in effective

Christian Ministry
locally AND globally.

A Word about Your Domain Name and Site Maintenance

Make your name short. This rules out making it "firstbaptistchurchyourcity.org"

 

Start with the least and work up: FBCCity.org or CityFBC.org or even something that you are know for. Could you guess what Cherry Hills Baptist Church has as their web name? Here it is: cherryhillsfamily.org. This fits their "culture" and mission.

 

Once you have 3 or 4 possible ones, go to Whois.org to see if anyone owns that name. If not, sign up with a web hosting company quickly and ask for that name during the registration process.

 

Maintain your site. The real work in web ministry is to maintain it an make it ever better. It is an iterative process; that is, you compose - review -update then compose - review - update, ever repeating this process.

 

Update it at least once a week. A site never updated might as well not exist, for fewer and fewer users return after the second or third time they find nothing has changed.

 

From time to time ask persons to give you feedback about your site. Specifically ask about useability, design, and content. Ask person who are not from your church to give you this feedback, too.

 

Maintain your account standing by paying your fees. If you let your payment lapse there are 2 consequences:

 

1. Another organization may get your web name. Recently, a church let their ownership of their online name lapse. When they checked later, ready to maintain it again, they found that the address led to a porn site.
   
   
2. You will not be able to upload your updates. Only the old information will continue until the hosting company purges your site from their computers.

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