Our March edition of YCW eNews contains this article:

It's quite possible that there is no better internet marketing tool than the very powerful "blog." Short for WebLog, a blog can be used for anything from a collection of links, to commentary on current news, to a place to post regular devotional thoughts, to an online journal or diary. Why should you (or your pastor) have a blog? Here are just a few reasons:

1. Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.
2. Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that informational websites usually don't.
3. Blogs will help your community get to know you better.
4. Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic.
5. Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet.

I'd like to take some space here to expand each of those points, and to invite you to add your comments about how you have used blogging to expand your internet ministry:

1. Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.
Anyone who can write an email can write a blog entry. Yes, it will take a little technical expertise to setup your blog on your website, but once you've done that, you can just give a username and password to the blog owner and let them start posting. They can write and publish, without any intervention from the webmaster!

2. Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that an informational websites usually don't. Blogs have developed a reputation for being a more informal means of communication than a polished, published website. Authors have more freedom to be personable, and to share details from their lives. You might use a blog to show the development of a sermon or sermon series, allowing people to see the questions that you are asking, and the lessons you are learning.

3. Blogs will help your community get to know you better. You might use a blog to talk about your interests and hobbies, thus helping people in the community see you as a real person. You might talk about community events, or something your kids did. You might use your blog to invite dialog from the community, or to provide answers to Biblical questions.

4. Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic. Often, a scripture passage that you might preach about on Sunday morning will be far to complex to share all of the lessons that you learned in your study. You could use a blog to develop those concepts further, for those that were interested in going deeper. Or, you might choose to write a devotional blog--I know of one pastor who is "blogging through the Bible," sharing the lessons that he's learning as he reads.

5. Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet. Because blogs are content-rich, search engines love them. If you are using blogger (this blog was created with blogger), then you can quickly notify Google of new posts. You can set your blog up so each post gets its own page, and is somewhat optimized for search engines. Done right, a blog will help improve your visibility to search engines, which will also expand your internet ministry.

What other ways are you using blogging tools to enhance your ministry? What questions do you have about getting started? Go ahead and post a reply, I'd love to hear from you.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: blogging, design, purpose, quick blog, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 2:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Are you subscribed to YCW eNews?

YCW eNews is yet another way that I hope to improve communication with churches, ministries, and their webmasters. This monthly newsletter will contain tips, some new ideas for you to consider, and information on any special sales we're having. YCW eNews will (generally) come out on the first day of each month.

Because you should be in control of your subscription-based eNewsletters, you must subscribe to YCW eNews. (Prior customers have been sent a confirmation email, and need only confirm their intent to remain subscribed). If you are new to YourChurchWeb.net, (or even if you're not a customer, but just want to receive the newsletter), you can subscribe here.

Please note that reading YCW eNews is not the same as reading this blog. Our newsletter will contain only a few short articles each month, and will be delivered directly to your inbox. You might also think of this as a great way to get an automated reminder to update your website! :)

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: design, products, Sales, YCW eNews

posted by PastorJon @ 9:33 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

There was a day when churches were the centers of their community. They were the social services, providing help for settlers who hadn't yet built their houses. They were the town meeting hall, where business was conducted. They provided space for education, weddings, family reunions, and more. When a group of people settled a new town, the church building was often one of the first to be built.

While this may still be true in some parts of the world, I find that many churches are no longer considered an integral part of the town around them. Residents of the town use the public schools for education, the town hall for town meetings, and the local Elks Club for their family reunion. Government agencies and other non-profits have taken over the task of social services, and non-Christians have fewer reasons to walk through the doors of your church.

The greater problem of churches being essential and relevant to their community is one that each church must consider...and it's also outside the scope of this blog! However, I'd like to brainstorm some ideas about how we can make our church websites be an integral source of information to our community.

Search Engine - In order for this to work, you've got to take the time to properly optimize your site for search engines. Your goal is make your site visible, not just when someone searches for the name of your church, but when they search for your town, county, or even your state. The more traffic you can attract to your site, the better opportunities you'll have to become indispensible to your community.

Content - Are you providing content that is useful to your town? How about people who are interested in moving to your town, or coming there on vacation? Can you provide a section of pages with information about schools, real estate, community events, and tourist attractions? What about a calendar of events, or a place to list important updates? When you provide this sort of information, your site becomes a destination that contains indispensible information.

Questions and Answers - What would happen if churches moved beyond simply putting a "statement of faith" on their website, and answered the questions that people are asking about life? (Not to say that they don't care about our statement of faith...but I think that most non-Christians care more about whether or not God is real--and if He cares about them, then they care about our understanding of justification or sanctification). What if your pastor began a Question and Answer section? You could solicit questions from members of your congregation, and post them (along with answers) on your website. Once you got this started, you could also accept questions from visitors to your site.

Testimonies - One of the most powerful witnessing tools available to us is our own story of how God has worked in our lives. Wouldn't it be great if you had short testimonies of God's grace included on your website? Members of your congregation could write brief stories of what God has done for them, providing real-life stories of God's goodness.

Pastor's Blog - I'll be expanding this thought in a blog entry of its own, but I wanted to mention it here as well. I think one of the best things you can do for your church website is to help your pastor get started blogging. A blog provides a way to keep fresh and interesting content on your site, thus encouraging return visits. You might choose to offer devotional thoughts on your blog, or perhaps you will use your blog as an opportunity to talk about the needs in your community, or comment on news items. However you choose to use your blog, you will improve your sites exposure and visibility--increasing the pool of conversations.

How are ways that you've made your website indispensible to your community? What services can you provide that nobody else can? Feel free to post your thoughts below.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: design, plan, purpose, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 9:19 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Author's note: I wrote this article several years ago in hopes that it would help churches embrace and redeem technology that had quickly demonstrated its power (unfortunately, a power that was often used for evil). During the past years, some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same. When I wrote the article, I was seeing some churches shy away from the internet--in the same way some churches shy away from the movie theater. I do think that churches have made great inroads into internet ministry--but there are more, greater, and more innovative approaches that we should be considering.

My prayer for the future is that God would help us think "out of the box" of simply having a website that tells about a church, and that we would develop powerful ways of ministering to those who find our site. It's far too easy for us to view our website as tool for getting people to come to our church, instead of seeing it as a tool for helping people come into The Church. (I better stop now, this is starting to sound like a sermon I preached a couple of weeks ago! :) )

Curse the Darkness? Nah...

Light a Candle!

In today's world, many people associate the internet with all that is wrong in the world. Unfortunately, the internet is replete with countless sites that espouse evil, provide sinful or tempting material, and run entirely counter to Christian principles. It would be easy for the church to abandon the internet, encouraging people to avoid it altogether. How much more difficult it is for us to effectively infiltrate the internet, illuminating it with the light of the Gospel.

Throughout history, different Christian groups have had choices to either abandon elements of the world, or work to change them. Movies, television, pop music, radio, art, and other elements of culture have occasionally been abandoned by the church in the name of purity. I'm not suggesting that we get knee deep in the crud of the world, but we must occasionally get our hands dirty in order to help clean things up.

In his book, "Roaring Lambs," the late Bob Briner suggests that, as Christians, we ought to actively engage our culture by creating work of the finest quality. It is not the mediums in and of themselves that are either evil or sacred, but the content. As responsible Christians we must push back the darkness with material that is uplifting, positive, and ultimately God-honoring.

As you think about the design of your website there may be a variety of materials and resources available to you that members in your community will find useful. While your site remains distinctly Christian, consider placing material within your site that is of such intrinsic value to your community that they can't help but visit. Within your congregation, you probably have a variety of writers, teachers, musicians, and many other talented individuals who can contribute to your website, increasing its value. Instead of cursing the darkness, let your website be a candle, illuminating the way for many to find God.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: design, purpose

posted by PastorJon @ 10:42 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

If you're anything like me, you love to know how far your internet ministry is reaching. I podcast my sermons each week, and barely a day goes by when I don't check to see how many subscribers I have and where the most recent hits were from. I've had downloads from Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, France, the UK, and most recently, the Islamic Nation of Iran. In a nine-month period of time, I've had over 12,000 downloads of sermon audio files.

If you're a stats junky--and you haven't already found the statistics that are included free with every hosting account, let me tell you how to enable and view them.

You'll need to login to the hosting manager (Go to "My Account," login, and then click "Hosting Account List," and open the control panel for the website you want to manage). Near the bottom of your control panel is a button labeled "Configure Web Statistics." Using this tool, you can assign configure the stats reporting software, found at www.yourdomain.com/stats/. Once you configure your statistics, wait 24-48 hours, and you'll be able to see reports on your website. You can find out how many times a specific file has been requested, the commonly used search terms that people used to find your website, and information on where your visitors are coming from.

You might have more complex needs for statistical reporting. Perhaps you want to know what countries your visitors are coming from, or the paths that they are taking through your website. You might want to know how many page views are in an average session, or how often people are getting errors. If these are the sorts of reporting needs you have, you should consider our Traffic Facts™ package as an addon for your website.

Traffic Facts™ produces visual graphs that you can print or convert to Excel. You can export the logfiles so you can analyze them directly. You can even generate automated emails with the reports that you want to see, as often as you want to see them.

Traffic Facts™ is such a powerful program that it would be impossible to outline everything that it does in one blog entry. If you need more power than our standard Site Statistics, I'd encourage you to give Traffic Facts™ a try. You can give it a three month trial for just under $10.

May your website reach all around the world with the love of Jesus!

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell

PS. You can check out my sermon podcast on iTunes, or read more about sermon podcasting at www.yourchurchpodcast.net.

Labels: products, stats, Traffic Facts

posted by PastorJon @ 7:36 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

In a previous post, I mentioned churches and ministries that are paying $35 a year to register their domain. In most cases, all the registrar does for you is maintain your DNS entry, so that people can find your website. Here at YourChruchWeb.net, you can simplify maintenance of your web-presence by consolidating your domain and your website in one easy-to-manage interface. Plus, you get a free Complete Email Address (25mb) with your domain registration (a $9.99 value).

So, what do you do if you're registered at one of these other registrars? Is there any way out of their high-priced domain services?

Absolutely!

You can transfer your domain to us for only $9 (.com, .org, or .net TLDs). You'll keep all the time on your existing registration, and we'll add a full year to your registration. You'll get the free Complete Email Address (25mb), and have access to our powerful Domain Control Center™.

Transferring a domain can be confusing, and it varies from registrar to registrar. However, we're ready to help with online tutorials, our automated system, and 24/7 transfer support at 1-480-505-8866.

Before you begin your transfer, you'll want to login at your old registrar. Make sure that your contact information (especially your Administrative Contact email address) is up-to-date. You'll also want to unlock your domain in preparation for transfer. And, you will need to request an "Authorization Code" or "Auth Code." This will often be sent to you by email--hang on to it for later.

Then, you will begin the transfer with our special online tool. Enter the domain you are transferring, and work through the checkout process. Once you have purchased the transfer, the Administrative Contact of the domain will receive an email containing a Transfer ID and Security Code.

Return to YourChurchWeb.net and login to "My Account." Click on "Pending Domain transfers," in the first column, which will open the Domain Control Center™. Enter your Transfer ID and Security Code. You'll then need to authorize the transfer by entering the "Auth Code" which you retrieved from your former registrar. You may also need to take certain steps at your former registrar in order to confirm the transfer.

It may take up to a week after you've completed those steps, but you'll then receive an email indicating that the transfer was a success and that you can control it directly through your account at YourChurchWeb.net.

Before you start your transfer, you might also want to read our "Insider's Guide," which will answer many of your questions about domain transfers. Our support personnel are ready to help you at any step along the way--you can use the online support system, or call a transfer concierge at 480-505-8866.

I look forward to serving your ministry with domain, email, and hosting services for many years to come!

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: domains, products, transfers

posted by PastorJon @ 8:33 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Once you've settled on a domain name and begun the registration process, you will be provided with a variety of offers which may be useful to you. The purpose of this post is to detail the benefits of each option so you can make an informed decision.

Multiple Domain Names: You may be presented with the opportunity to register additional domain names, sometimes at a discount. Please note that any discounts presented are for the first year of registration only. There may be benefits to registering multiple domain names: helping more people find your site, presenting multiple versions of your site to different groups (teens, college students, members, non-members), and helping those who might frequently misspell your name. While perhaps not as important for churches, businesses will often register multiple versions of their domain name to protect their brand from competition.

Privacy: Before you checkout, you should consider whether or not you wish to register your domain name privately. Since WHOIS records are public, a private registration actually involves a third-party service called Domains By Proxy®. Domains By Proxy® will register your domain for you, protecting your personal information (phone number, address, etc) from the world. While the service does cost $7.95/year, there are some benefits that you should consider. I've seen outside companies attempt to bill churches for their domain in an effort to force a transfer away from YourChurchWeb.net (and charge them $35-50/year in registration fees). I often receive junk mail and spam based on entries in the WHOIS database. And, if you are using your personal address to register your domain(s), you may appreciate the privacy that this service provides.

Renewal Options: I've seen it happen--a church misses a renewal deadline on their domain registration, and all of a sudden their website disappears. Often, the domain can be reinstated, but sometimes there are extra fees for buying the domain back. And sometimes, if you go well beyond the expiration date, another company will buy your domain simply to "squat" on it, and then try to charge you an exorbitant price to purchase the domain back. To prevent that from ever happening, we recommend that you select the "Auto" renewal option for any domains you intend to keep long-term. You will get renewal notices 90-, 60-, and 30- days away from your renewal, so you can always change your status before your payment method is charged. (Besides, auto-renewal doesn't cost you anything! And it will protect your domain name from expiring.)

Certified Domain: Demonstrate that you are who you say you are. A domain certification seal allows a visitor to know that your domain belongs to your church, and that valid contact information was supplied with your domain registration. Cost: $2.99/yr. Do you need it? Probably not...unless you are going to operate a store (although at that point, you'll also need an SSL Certificate), or are concerned that another group is attempting to impersonate your ministry. If your site is going to collect a lot of personal information, it might be important to protect against a potential phishing scam. In which case, this might be a useful add-on for you.

Email: You will be given the opportunity to add email to your domain as well. You do receive a complementary 25MB email address with your domain, (and 500 10MB addresses with your economy hosting package). However, if you want a lot of online email storage, or are not purchasing a standard hosting plan, you might want to purchase an email package to go with your domain. Read more about choosing the email plan that's right for you.

Set Nameservers: If you're hosting your site elsewhere, you can enter the appropriate nameserver information right from the shopping cart. You'll get this information from your webhosting company. If you're hosting your site with us, don't worry about this, you'll take care of it automatically when you setup your hosting space.

Hosting, Quick Blog, or WebSite Tonight® : If you haven't purchased hosting (or another product to go with your domain), you may do so before you check out. While you may "park" your domain for free, you'll eventually need to purchase something that your domain points to: Online Photo Filer, Quick Blog, a WebSite Tonight® account, or a standard hosting account.

Business Registration: You can opt to purchase an enhanced WHOIS listing that is customizable. You can provide links to your website (or particular pages on your site), your church logo, and detailed contact information. While this is a product designed primarily for businesses, you may wish to consider if it will benefit your church's visibility. Once you've registered and paid for your domain, you can do a variety of things with it, including: assigning it to hosting space (or other product), parking it, creating a (free) starter webpage, forwarding it to another website (or a subfolder of another site), or assigning a third-level domain (subdomain) to point to another website or online service.

As you can see, YourChurchWeb.net offers a variety of options to help you customize your domain registration to suit your needs. If you are unsure of which options would be beneficial to you, feel free to send me an email at sales@yourchurchweb.net.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: domains, privacy, products, renewal

posted by PastorJon @ 7:44 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

In my last article I mentioned the old numbered email addresses that were given to the original CompuServe users. Can you imagine meeting someone who moved to your community, talking about your church, and then telling them your email address--when that email address was a long string of numbers? Aren't you glad you can have an easy to remember email address?

Now, imagine if domain names didn't exist, and instead your website was identified by a long string of numbers and dots, called an Internet Protocal (IP) address. You'd never be able to get the word out about your website--nobody could remember how to find it. While your website still lives on a computer that's identified by its IP address, everyone expects you to have an easy to remember domain name that will help other computers in the world find your webserver.

An essential part of any website or web application is your domain name. Your domain name is the first part of your Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URL points to a specific file or resource located on the web. For instance, this blog is located at the URL: http://www.yourchurchblog.net/index.html. The domain name that begins that blog is www.yourchurchblog.net.

A domain name is divided into three parts:

1. Top-level domains (TLDs) refer to the last part of the domain name: .com, .net, .org, etc.
2. Second-level domains refer to the middle part: yourchurchweb, yahoo, msnbc, etc.
3. Third-level domains (commonly called sub-domains) refer to the very first part - www, email, blog, etc. For instance, your email will be accessible at email.yourdomain.com. If you had a blog, you could assign a third-level domain to that folder, so that it appeared at blog.yourdomain.com.

Top-level domains (TLDs) are controlled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN provides accreditation for registrars, which register domain names to end users. YourChurchWeb.net uses an ICANN accredited registrar for all of your domain purchases.

At YourChurchWeb.net, you register your domain name in the name of your church or ministry. While you register it through us, your church retains ownership over the registration. You can transfer it to another registrar, point it to another web-host, forward it to another domain, or (as most of our customers choose to do) continue to register/renew it through us, and point it at one of our other products (Web Hosting, WebSite Tonight®, Online Photo Filer, Quick Blog, etc.)

Registering a domain is fairly simple--as long as it's available. You'll want to have payment information available when you start your search (I've seen domains get registered by someone else between the time a customer found the available domain and was ready to purchase it). You'll start your search by using our domain search box (either at our home page or in the bottom right corner of this blog. Enter the domain name you're interested in, and see if it's available. If it is, simply choose it and begin to work through the checkout process.

If the domain you want is not available, our program will tell you if it's available in any other TLDs. (For instance, you might not be able to register yourchurchname.org, but yourchurchname.net might be available.) We also have a tool that will suggest other possible domain names for you to consider. You might want to brainstorm with other leaders in your church to see what other names you might consider.

YourChurchWeb.net offers one of the lowest domain registration and renewal rates in the internet industry. I'm always amazed to visit websites of other registrars and see prices like $35 a year, when we offer our domain registrations at $9 a year. And then I stumble across the occasional registrar that doesn't even make their prices publically available. We make our prices available to you before you setup your customer account, so you know what you're getting.

From time-to-time, we may even offer some special pricing on new domains. Promotional and sale pricing will generally only be available for the first year of a new registration, but your renewal rate will be the standard retail price of $8.75/yr (plus an ICANN mandated fee of $0.22/yr). You can't go wrong with registering your domain at YourChurchWeb.net.

Once you've registered and paid for your domain, you can do a variety of things with it, including: assigning it to hosting space (or other product), parking it, creating a (free) starter webpage, forwarding it to another website (or a subfolder of another site), or assigning a third-level domain (subdomain) to point to another website or online service.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the registration process. I'd also be happy to help you brainstorm a domain name which will work well for your church or Christian ministry.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: domains, products, renewal

posted by PastorJon @ 7:29 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

I remember when internet email addresses first became widely available. I always felt bad for those poor CompuServe users who had a long number instead of a standard username! Since then, email has become an essential means of communication for anyone who uses a computer. It's very likely that you already have at least one email address (and maybe several!).

Sure, you get an email address from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). And, you can get a variety of free email addresses from a number of websites. But are you able to pick the email address you want to have? Are you tired of using that same email address that includes your high school graduation date? Can you access your email through both POP3 clients (like Outlook) and a first-class Webmail application? Does your email provide comprehensive phishing and virus protection, as well as spam filtering?

YourChurchWeb.net offers a variety of email solutions that offer all that and much more!

For starters, you'll get a minimum of 500 (10MB) email addresses with every hosting purchase, and 1 (25MB) address with each domain purchase, transfer, or renewal. In addition, you can purchase either our Deluxe or Premium plans, which allow you to divide 1GB of disk space among 5 addresses, or 2GB among 100 addresses, respectively.

Every email account features virus protection and spam filtering. You'll need to have a domain name to use with your email, but that means you have complete control over your personalized, easy-to-remember address. By matching your email addresses with your website domain, you continually remind people of the existence of your website. Our email addresses can be accessed through popular POP3 clients like Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Entourage, Apple Mail, or Evolution. You can also access your email from any internet-connected computer using our popular Web-Based Email.

Web-Based Email (WBE) lets you do just about everything your POP3 email client does. (To be honest with you, since April 2006 when I set up my 200MB WBE account, I haven't even used Microsoft Outlook). You can store your address book, inbox, and sent mail online--accessible from any computer. Powerful search features allow you to find any email message quickly, and an intuitive filing system helps you save the messages that are important to you. You can setup mailing lists, schedule message delivery, and even send greeting cards right from WBE.

One of the best features of WBE (in my opinion) is the ability to check your other POP3 email addresses at the click of a button. Instead of taking time to log into multiple email addresses, you can check them all at once and have them automatically delivered to a separate folder. Automatic filtering allows you to create rules to sort your incoming email. And, the ability to manage multiple identities from one WBE account allows you to also send using multiple email addresses.

Let me caution you to not expect to use some of these advanced features with the free 10MB accounts that you get with your hosting account. While the features are available, you may find it difficult to stay within the 10MB size limit. If you're using our free email addresses, I recommend using a POP3 client to regularly download your mail (and be sure not to check the box to "leave a copy of messages on server"), otherwise you will quickly fill your available space. However, even with a 10MB box, you can check your email from the road and stay in touch with church and family members.

So, what do you need for email? Most clients will be satisfied with the 501 free email addresses that come with their domain and hosting purchases. You can give the 25MB box to your pastor, give email addresses to every department head, set up a prayer chain, give a few to some church member or teenagers, and still have plenty left over.

However, if you spend a lot of time travelling, regularly work on multiple computers, want to store a lot of email on the server, or want to be able to manage several addresses from a single interface--you might want to consider purchasing one of our extended plans.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about what to choose--send me an email at sales@yourchurchweb.net. (You know I'll be using my Web-Based Email to check it!)

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: email, products, web-based email

posted by PastorJon @ 8:20 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

It's well-known that providing up-to-date photo galleries on your website is a great way to keep people coming back. Your teens will want to see pictures from last winter's snow camp, and your parents will want to see their four-year-old covered with blueberry pie at last week's Sunday School picnic.

Certainly, there are lots of products that you can purchase, and some products that you can use for free. But maybe you don't have the time (or know-how) to install an opensource