Church Websites - Your Noticeboard.

In my post yesterday, I mentioned the importance of the church owning the website.  When you buy a website, it comes in at least two bits.  You pay someone to hold all the pages for your website on their computer, and you also pay to buy a domain name of your own.  The name, for example www.wikipedia.org is the address someone will enter on their computer to take them to your web pages.  When you buy the domain, you have to register a name and address, and these state who owns that address.

Anyone can buy a domain.  I can buy yourchurch.com.  You can buy mychurch.com.  What often happens with churches, clubs and voluntary organisations is that a church member will buy theirchurch.com, but when they are asked for a name and address for the registration information, they give their own name and address.  After all, it is going to be them that are administering the site.

So what happens if that person becomes unable to update the site, for whatever reason?  Your church will have to takeover the site.  If the webmaster dies, do you really want to be asking their widow to look around their computer for passwords?  There's an organisation near here, fortunately not one I have had any involvement in, the webmaster fell out with and refused to hand over the web domain which was registered in his name. It meant that the official website was inaccessible and looking more and more out of date.  They had to set up a whole new site.

You may wish to delegate the website administration, but the ownership and registration of the site must be in the name of the church.  You need to be in a position where the login information is known to more than one person, just in case.  Your website is as much your noticeboard as the one outside your church giving the service times.  These days, if someone wants to find a new church, they Google for one.  Your website doesn't need to be fancy or complicated, but you must have one, and you must at the very least say where you are, what type of you are and when your services are. 

And just like the noticeboard on the wall, your church has to be fully responsible for keeping it maintained.