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Building Your Own Web Worship Site

Would you like your church to be on the Web? It's much easier than you might think to create an electronic ministry for your church and post it on the Internet. Here are some sites that can tell you how to do it and provide useful tools for launching your Web ministry.

The Basics

There are many free resources available on the Web. Here's where to find them. We'll start with a basic primer on creating a site for your house of worship:
How-To Guide For Creating Church Homepages: A tutorial for beginners, with answers to many frequently asked questions (FAQs).

An important first step is to learn what skills and resources are available within your organization. How many have computers? Do any of them know HTML? Do any of them have accounts with on-line services (especially America Online, which offers free Web space to members) or an Internet Service Provider? Cultivate these resources.

Christians On The Net

Here are some sites where you can see what other Christians are doing on the Internet and take advantage of some of the resources and free assistance they stand ready to provide.

The Distinctive Church Collection: Megasite profiling the best new church pages worldwide, complete with database of domestic and foreign church sites on the Web. Highly recommended.
GoshenNet: National site offering free server space to churches and web development tools. Highly recommended.
Global Church Web Pages: Comprehensive site "endeavoring to list every single church onthe World Wide Web." One of the most complete church databases.
Church Online!: Christian owned and operated Web server offersing servies to churches.
Computers For Christ: Resources for Christian computer users.
NetChurch: Attractive site, offers to create and post church Web pages for $50 a month.
Christian Interactive Network: Group of mostly radio ministries organized to support Christian initiatives on the Internet.
Christian Connections: Another site offering resources and information for churches and ministries eyeing Cyberspace.

HTML Help

Hyper-Text Markup Language, or HTML, is a computer language that allows Web users to "jump" from one site to the next. HTML supplies commands for your Web "browser" which is programmed to display text, headlines, graphics and photos. HTML consists of a set of commands ("tags") that tell the browser what to do, and is relatively easy to learn. Best of all, there's lots of free help on the Web. Here's where you can find it:

Ahab's HTML Reference: Site offering vast array of links to pages offering tutorials and technical support for HTML authoring and graphics.
Beginner's Guide To HTML: One of the Web's most popular tutorials, and a good starting point.
Bare Bones Guide to HTML: Another good beginner's site.
Complete Web Page Help: Well-rounded introduction to HTML resources.
Writing HTML: Guide to tags and commands and the images and text they produce.

Graphics

The advantage of the Web over the old Internet FTP (File Transfer Protocol, for newcomers) is the ability to combine written content with flashy graphics (and now even audio and video) to produce an effective multimedia presentation of information. Here's where to find graphics:
Rob's Multimedia Labs: An excellent source for multimedia files, including GIFs (CompuServe-format Graphic Interchange Format files) that can be used on Web pages.
Icons & Images Collection: There are many places where you can find icons and images to use on your pages. This site is a good one.

Publishing Your Page

Now you have a page and have posted it on your server. How do I find out how many people are visiting? And how do I let the world know that the site is here? Here are a couple sites that could be helpful:

Publishing Tips: The best way to generate traffic is to reach your target audience. Here are some ideas from SpiritWeb about how to accomplish that.
Web Counter: Create a hit counter to monitor the amount of visits to your site.
Submit It!: Once your page has been posted, this site will allow you to list it with 15 major Web search engines.

NOTE: Any other noteworthy sites or suggestions to help improve this guide? We'd love your feedback.


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