Using information obtained from Treasurers, FMS has been able to provide feedback reports on both financial and statistical information. E-newsletters, Treasurer’s Survey results and published reports can be found here.
The Board of Finance and Property has changed its name to Uniting Resources. Read the Insights publication
Having a Church web site is a great way to make available information about your church to the community. Many people when moving to a new area or thinking about joining a church will search for churches in their area.
But setting up a website is not the most simple thing and often requires technical expertise.
Use Resources Within your Church
Do you have anyone in your congregation with web development skills? What about technical people? Often young people pick up these skills as a hobby or in school.
It is by far better and cheaper if your website is maintained and developed by members of your congregation. Encouraging people to use their gifts in this way will benefit the church and enable these people to serve their church.
Designing your Web Site
If you do not have any members with web development / technical skills then you will need to find someone to do a design for your website.
IT Services does not offer website design, however the Communication Unit offers this and has many options that could help your congregation.
Communications Unit Congregation Templates - these templates are offed cheap. You may want to get them to do a unique design to fit your congregation. If so go to the Communications Unit Web Design
Hosting your Web Site
Once you have a design you will need to host the site somewhere so that people can access it on the Internet.
Free Hosting with unitingchurch.org.au
The Uniting Church offers free hosting for congregation using the domain unitingchurch.org.au eg www.yourcongregation.unitingchurch.org.au.
Free Hosting with your own domain
It is also possible to use the same service with your own domain. Simple Sign up for free hosting then when your account is setup email us with the domain that you have registered. We will then send you instructions on how to configure the domain properly.
To do this you must register your own domain. We recommend using the .org.au domain suffix. For you to use this you will need the ABN of your congregation. A good place to register it is www.planetdomain.com.au the cost of this is about $20 for two years.
Type of Content on your site
Here are some tips for the type of content you should put on your site:
- Service times, and the type of service it is (eg. traditional, modern, youth)
- Contact information
- Address of Church and instructions on how to get there
- Services that you offer, (eg. Youth groups, respite care, community programs, etc)
- Staff information, brief description of staff and roles.
Below are some further tips to keep in mind
- Keep all content up-to-date at all times
- Keep all text concise, people do not read large amounts of text on websites
- Use headings and sub-headings
- If the site is not going to be updated frequently do not put content that refers to dates
Content Management Systems
If you want to be able to edit your site easily, quickly, by multiple people and in multiple locations then a Content Management System is what you need.
This enables users to edit the content of the site through the web browser over the Internet.
IT Services is experienced in offering complete content management solutions
