Unless your church has a full-time web geek, you’re probably going to want some sort of content management system (commonly referred to as CMS) that will allow you to update the site. And you DO want to update, the site.

As I said before, I got into this before such things were common, so my main interest is having something that will pretty much stay out of my way. I also have a preference for something that writes fairly clean code; a lot of overly helpful packages generate an awful lot of junk when you go to create something. I’ve worked with several different brands of CMS and find it torture to work with most of them.

For my money, it’s hard to beat WordPress. The price is definitely right: free. (It’s open source software, continually being developed and updated by a group of interested individuals) You could even run your church site off of the WordPress.com site, allowing you to avoid hosting costs. I think a self-hosted installation of WordPress is better. Hosting isn’t all that expensive these days, and some companies, like Dreamhost, offer free hosting to non-profits.

WordPress is easy to use and easy to customize. There are literally thousands of templates available. There are also web professionals who can design a personalized website for your church. When we were redesigning our www.hopeforlife.org, we contracted with Travis Langley & Associates to custom build the site for us. That cost a fraction of what we might have paid to have the site designed in other ways, yet the site looks professional and attractive.

There are others who can explain it better. I highly recommend looking at the “WordPress For Church Websites” series over at Church Communications Pro. It’s a helpful group of articles, even if you’re thinking about using WordPress for a personal site.

Has anyone used WordPress to set up a church site? Do you have other suggestions as to a good content management system?