Ministry Web Tip # 100 (Don't miss the FREE bonus at the end)
What every ministry website should have...but few do. 
Your ministry is growing and so is the work load associated with updating the content on your website. Keeping web content up-to-date and fresh is crucial for a ministry for many reasons. It keeps your visitors & members informed about events, how to contact you, feeling like they are a part of you relationally, connected when not able to attend, etc. An out of date or unattended website is like an abandoned property. It can give the impression of lack of care about your ministry & its constituents, poor leadership, disorganization, etc. You think to yourself, “With all this other work that needs to be done; how can we possibly keep everything on the website up-to-date? Hiring a professional web designer full time is just not economically feasible and we don’t have anyone that could volunteer that much time with the skills needed to do it.”
The answer is a website content management system (CMS)
A good website CMS provides tools where users with little or no knowledge of programming languages & markup languages (HTML) can create and manage website content relatively easy.
A CMS is software that creates and manages the text, graphics, audio, video, and other content on your website. It facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential website maintenance functions.
Most CMS’s use a database to store content and then when a website visitor views a page, the content is retrieved from the database and presented on the web page.
A website CMS provides the following key features
- Easily editable content: Your content is separate from the visual presentation of your site, therefore, it becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content.
- Scalable feature sets: Most CMS’s have plug-ins or modules that can be easily installed to extend an existing site's functionality. For example, the CMS may have user-defined database-driven content including calendars, photo galleries, people directories, recently updated pages, announcements, podcasting, and RSS.
- Web standards upgrades: Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.
- Workflow management: Workflow is the establishing of how an update goes from being created to going live on the website. For example, a content creator submits an update but it is not published on the website until someone else approves it.
- Document management: Managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. Some CMS’s provide the ability to rollback to a previous version of a web page.
- User-defined security permissions: Establishing editors each assigned with specific editing privileges.
Benefits of using a website CMS
There are a wide range of benefits that can be realized by implementing a CMS, including:
- minimal computer knowledge required
- increased user creation and updating capability
- streamlined content authoring process
- faster turnaround time to create new pages and make changes
- greater consistency
- improved site navigation
- increased site flexibility
- support for decentralized authoring
- increased security
- reduced duplication of information
- greater capacity for growth
- reduced site maintenance costs
Beyond these, the greatest benefit the CMS can provide is to support your ministry goals & strategies while at the same time helping to improve efficiency, increase user satisfaction, and assist in communicating with your community.
Wrap Up
So, if your ministry is at the point where updating its website is becoming too overwhelming, a CMS can be your answer to prayer. Freeing up your time to effectively do what you were called to do, reach the lost and minister to the hurting.
Certain portions of this article are excerpted from: source ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system
To help you understand this concept more fully, critique your current site, or help you plan out a new website, please feel free to contact us at 888-997-9947 to speak with a web specialist regarding your specific needs. See website solutions that will help you fulfill your mission and vision. Make Elexio your GoTo web site resource. We can serve all your current needs, and then some.
Elexio.com – “Where ministry clicks.”
• If you found this article helpful or you have comments, please, let us know. (Feedback)
• If you would like to see an article regarding a particular topic not already in our archives, please let us know that too. (Feedback)
