Now that your site is up and running, how do you keep it fresh?  Keeping the content up to date and fresh may be the most under-estimated area of an organization's web presence in terms of resources required.  Have you visited the Ginghamsburg site?  They have a staff of 30 people working on their site.  Establishing your web presence is only part of the process.  Keeping the site's content maintained and fresh is often times the real challenge.

It takes time to instill a culture in your church in which each ministry, department, and program contributes content in a timely manner to your site.  First, determine what information is important and how often it will need to be updated.  Identifying those responsible for creating and providing the content is step two.  Maybe each ministry leader will provide the updates.  Finally, who is going to perform the actual changes to the web site pages?

A). In-House Experts: If you have your own in-house experts, these are the people who will mostly likely perform or oversee this task.

B). Service Providers: Many churches opt to pay a service provider or someone to perform both the weekly or monthly web site updates and administer their email accounts.  Many small church updates only total about an hour's time per month.  Cost here vary, but many contractors will perform this task for $20 or $25 an hour.  Simply Christian can provide you with a list of reliable and affordable contractors who will take care of your maintenance issues.  Contact us for details: or phone 1-877-483-3431.

C). Changing Web Maintenance Forever!: More and more churches are looking to save money and gain control of their web maintenance.  Now it possible for anyone (non-technical types) to update their organization's web site pages!  If you can you a browser and a program such as Word, you will be making changes to your site minutes after installing one of these programs.  The one we like best is Macromedia's Contribute®.   To learn more about Contribue®, click here.   For a one-time cost of about $99 (retail)* you will be able to make all the routine changes to your church's web site. 

*UMCOM's tech shop has secured special pricing for Contribute® and many other products. 

Simply Christian may be able to provide your church with either consulting or recommendations when it comes to web maintenance.  Contact us for details: or phone 1-877-483-3431.

Simply Christian® is a non-profit organization whose mission is to help churches establish, maintain, or further it's Internet presence. Through a combination of education, consulting, and working closely with Conferences, we help churches find the solutions that best meet their Internet needs.