After last week’s webinar on Technology (which should be posted online in the next couple of days), I have decided to do a series of blog entries over the next couple of weeks on ways to leverage technology in your sports ministry.
Today I would like to talk about websites. I know a lot of you cringe when hear the word ‘websites’ because of the negative history you’ve had with them. Hopefully, though this blog entry will help ease those negative feelings.
As someone who has been in local church based sports ministry–I feel like I have a good handle for what a sports minister needs in relation to a website: Control, Efficiency, and Ascetics. With that in mind, I’ll give you four options that not only meet those three standards but also are very inexpensive and/or free!
1. WordPress: “WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” If you have a web hosting plan, you can download WordPress onto your web server in a matter of minutes. From there, you can download a free theme from WordPress or purchase one from another provider (themes can go anywhere from $20-$250). Once you’ve decided on a theme, you can begin to add content and in a matter of minutes, you can have a website.
The great thing about WordPress, other than it being free, is you don’t need to know any programming language to build a site. The interface in building the site is very intuitive. If you have even a moderate competency in using something like Microsoft Word–you could pick up WordPress in just a matter of minutes.
2. Drupal: Drupal is “equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites. Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.
3. Joomla: Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
4. Homestead: “Anyone can build a website [with Homestead] in minutes! Even if you’ve never tried to make a website before, you’ll find Homestead’s design tools easy to use. And seasoned website builders, you’ll love how powerful Homestead software is. It’s straightforward, intuitive, yet powerful: the perfect combination! Homestead’s free website building software gives you everything you need to create a website yourself; no programming or HTML skills are needed!”
Those are just a couple of options. Any others? What are you using?
