Resources

Social Media PDF Files

Facebook

Click to View or Download
created by ChurchJuice

Twitter for Your Ministry

Click to View or Download
created by ChurchJuice

Click to View or Download created by ChurchJuice

Click to View or Download
created by ChurchJuice

BeSocial

Click to View or Download

SocialMedia

Click to View or Download

ChurchTech

Click to View or Download

Apps for Graphic Design That You Will Actually Use

  • Canva – a great website and iPad app for creating social media graphics
  • Shift Media Creator – Quick Worship Backgrounds and Graphics
  • Fotojet – Create Photo Collages for Blog Posts or Facebook Covers
  • Phonto – Add text on images quickly
  • WordSwag – Add text on images to share on social media
  • Replay – Make incredible videos directly from your phone using your own photos and videos
  • Animoto – Make great videos from your computer or mobile device
  • Zoommy – Zoommy helps you find awesome free stock photos for your creative product or inspiration
  • Pixelmator – Great photo editing software for macs at a fraction of the cost of Photoshop

 Do It Yourself Website Services

  • Bridge Element – No setup fee and $29 per month. Good service with nice templates
  • Clover Sites – $1000 up front and $20 per month. Good service, especially now that they have moved from Flash based websites to HTML 5 websites
  • ChurchPlantMedia – $1000 up front and $50 per month – additional features for multi-site churches
  • FaithConnector Church Websites – starting at  $250 up front and $54 per month. Full featured with great templates.
  • Ministry Designs – $1000 up front plus $20 per month. Great modern website templates
  • LightCMS – no upfront fee, but price varies by size of website. Very powerful service with great templates. However, it tends to be a little expensive for smaller churches if you need a lot of pages
  • Ekklesia 360 – Starting at $60 per month
  • iMinistries – $700 up front and starting at $39 per month
  • E-zekiel – from $19 to $75 per month depending on features required

Popular WordPress Themes (for self-hosted WordPress.org powered sites)

These are premium themes that have customized features for churches, so they all do have a cost, but the cost is much lower than a full custom design.

  • churchthemes.com – A great theme company focused on Churches. They utilize a church content plugin that allows you to switch themes in the future. See their guide for compatible themes.
  • ElegantThemes – only $69 per year for access to all their themes and support. They don’t have church-specific features, but they are a great starting point
  • WPforChurch – Church Themes and WordPress plugins
  • ChurchThemes.net
  • Themeforest

Important WordPress Plugins for Churches

  • Series Engine – Sermon Manager Plugin
  • Prayer Engine – Add a Prayer Wall to Your Site
  • Groups Engine – List Small Groups on Your Website
  • WPforChurch – Sermon Manager and Church Pack Plugin
  • Time.ly – One of the best calendar plugins for WordPress – I don’t recommend this plugin due to high resource usage. I now use recommend and use Calenderize It!
  • WordPress SEO – A great plugin to help improve your search-engine-optimization
  • Gravity Forms – A great way to collect information
  • Blubrry PowerPress – Powerful plugin to create a sermon podcast
  • Reftagger – automatically create Bible links for all scripture passages

Mobile App Providers

  • FaithLink Apps – a Great solution for mobile apps. They utilize the information you already have on your website so you don’t have to continually update your app
  • Como – What we use at Cornerstone. See here for more details

Recommended WebHost

  • Me 🙂 I do technology consulting and web design and hosting. All the information is at FEDesign.net – I use a customized SSD VPS on the East Coast utilizing. My server has a large amount of memory and processor power. I provide all security, plugin, and theme updates, as well as all backups.
  • Site5 – this is the service I previously used to host all my sites. I used the Reseller Cloud Hosting. I was impressed with their customer support and technical support.
  • I simply can not recommend Godaddy for any services. I have experienced very poor support in the past and I cannot support their lack of morals in advertising. Others have recommended MediaTempleDreamhost, or Hostgator, but I don’t have personal experience with their services.

 Helpful Resources from the Blog

Online Web Services for Churches

  • Planning Center Online – for worship teams and volunteer scheduling
  • ChurchTeams – for tracking and managing small groups
  • YouVersion – Online Bible. Check out YouVersion Live for sharing sermon notes during services
  • PollEverywhere – Real time text message polls that you can do during services
  • RightNow Media – online streaming of Bible Study Material and Training Videos

 

disclaimer: some of these links are affiliate links which means I will receive commission if you choose their service. However, I only recommend what I use and believe in. See my full disclosure policy here.