Church websites are an essential piece to the church communication process. In fact, The Pew Research Center states that 64 percent of the nation’s 128 million internet users use the web for religious or spiritual purposes – and nearly 6 out of 10 Protestant churches now have a dedicated website.

If church websites are one of the most effective ways to reach our audience, wouldn’t it make sense to create them to meet the viewer’s expectations?

As a designer, I could write about how a majority of church sites make my stomach turn because they were designed poorly, but during this three part series I really want to focus on the backbone of a website which is the Content Management System (CMS).

We know that content (along with great design) is extremely important to keeping your audience engaged and coming back. It’s like a garden. If you keep it cultivated, watered, and weeded it will bear fruit or vegetables. If not, it will become useless and waste space. The same goes for your church website.

What exactly is a content management system?

A content management system, in general, is a computer software system for organizing and collaborating in the creation of documents and other content. The content management systems I will be discussing are web applications for managing websites and web content.

CMS provides a structure by which churches can use templates to control the “look” of a site; it allows multiple users at various administrative levels to organize the content while maintaining quality. CMS programs are available in various price levels, complexity, and features. They are an optimal choice for large churches (with various departments and potential administrators including volunteers and paid webmasters) and for small churches alike.

There are also advantages and disadvantages to using CMS’s to manage a church’s web site, which I will discuss in part two of this three part series.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Chuck Scoggins is the Creative Communications Director at Calvary Church in Saint Peters, MO. He also contributes at Church Web Adviser; a publication that provides smaller churches with webmaster tools to accomplish big things with their sites. Chuck is not a Barry Manilow fan.