Antioch, TN—Free Will Baptist International Missions is pleased to announce a redesigned, interactive, and customizable website. The refreshed site experienced a soft launch April 17, 2009. “The new design is fresh, clean, and exciting” said Deputy Director of Stateside Development Mark McPeak. “We want our website to work for all segments of our denomination and deliver the tools individuals and churches need to be involved and informed.”

An uncluttered front page, as well as new graphics and a fresh color scheme, immediately alerts visitors to the changes. “One of the most exciting features to me,” stated Kiley Hawkins, the Mission’s development manager, “ is the new MyIM settings. Each user can customize the material fed to his home page by setting up a MyIM account and choosing the information in which he is most interested and missionaries he wants to follow.” Preferences and demographic information can be changed and updated at any time. Online giving and ordering is simplified for MyIM users.

Missionaries have more tools to add content to their pages. Streaming video, interactive features, and the personalized settings for each user (MyIM) take international missions communication to the next level. Weekly prayer updates, the latest news from missionaries, and creative ways to be involved are at visitors’ fingertips. Mission history can be read and written on the interactive FWBIM Timeline. Videos about recent mission initiatives, events, and celebrations can be streamed or downloaded. In addition, the site contains basic information about the organization, with links and contact information to help users stay connected to missionary personnel at home and abroad.

“I urge everyone to visit fwbgo.com and set up a MyIM account, browse missionary pages, watch a video, and send us feedback,” encouraged Deborah St. Lawrence, communications manager.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about church websites is that sometimes they are not optimized for search engines.  Here’s a few ideas that may help you out:

1.  Page Titles: Look at the home page of your church website.  What is the title of the page?  Is it New Page 1 or Home?  This seems to be common on some of the sites I have visited.  Page titles help engines to identify your site.  Use something that is descriptive of the content on that page.

2. Pictures vs. Text: Some sites use pictures in place of text so that fonts are not lost and to ensure the same look and feel across browsers.  The problem with this is that Google or Yahoo will not be able to index the text that is created as a picture.  This will make it harder for search engines to index the content of your website.  Do your best to use actual text when possible, it will ultimately help others find your site.

3. Meta Tags: Meta tags can also be of value, though I’m not so sure that they are as important as they used to be.  With metatags you can describe your site by keywords and by phrases.  Click here if you’d like to learn more about meta tags.

4. Site Maps: Sitemaps are a good way to help engines index your site the way you want.  Later on we’ll try to devote a whole post to creating your own Sitemap, but if you’re in a hurry, you can checkout Google’s help page on Sitemaps.

What other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips have you found helpful?

Website Tips

I’ve been looking around the web at some of our Free Will Baptist websites.  (You can check them out by clicking on the “Church Links” above.)  Some are very well done. Others could use a little help. I’m hoping this series of posts will give some tips that can help the average church webmaster.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Travis Penn and I’m the pastor at Calvary Free Will Baptist Church in Salem, Illinois. For a long time I was a bi-vocational pastor serving Calvary as well as working for our local elementary school as their technology coordinator.

I enjoy working on websites and blogging. I’m not a professional by any means. The following tips in this series are just some ideas that I have found useful. I hope to improve some of my own sites with these tips as well.

If you would like to help make some of my sites better, please feel free to check them out.

• www.CalvaryFreeWill.com is our Church website.
• www.ilfwb.org is the Illinois State Association website. It’s about to undergo a massive overhaul.  Ideas would be greatly appreciated.
• www.theHeightsChurch.us is a recent project I’ve been developing.

I hope that you’ll post tips that have been helpful to you in the comments section as well.  Our desire as the Media Commission is to help our churches do better with media. Hopefully we can work together and everyone can improve their web presence.

For starters let’s look for the obvious. When someone visits your church website, can they find…?

1. Your Address. It’s amazing how many websites don’t have their address on the front page of their website. It’s pretty common anymore to put it in a footer; that way it’s easy to find since it shows up on all of your pages.

2. Your Phone Number. Okay, I know what you’re saying.  This is the web, shouldn’t they email me? There are still a lot of folks who want to talk on the phone, and putting your phone number on the front page of your site makes it easy for them to contact you.  And for those of you who rarely check your email, this becomes a high priority.

3. A Contact Email Address. It’s helpful to have a contact email on the front so it’s easy for people to send you a message.  A point of advice here, you may want to use an address besides your personal address. Often these contact addresses receive a lot of spam. I would encourage most people to setup a Google Apps for Your Domain account to handle something like this.   (We’ll get to this in another post)

4. Directions / Map. There are many options here, but a simple link to a map can be very helpful.

5. Service Times. What time do things start? I shouldn’t have to navigate 4 levels into your site to find out when your worship service begins. Again, just make it easy.

You will need: Camcorder with video-output, set top DVD recorder, infrared repeater (if you want to control the zoom feature of the camcorder), and a small TV (19”).

Mount the camera in an unobtrusive location that can easily record the sanctuary.  Connect the camcorder video-out into the video-in of a set top DVD recorder.  For crystal-clear audio, use an audio-out connection from your sound board and connect it into the audio-in of the DVD recorder.  Using an infrared repeater, the camcorder zoom feature can be controlled.  Connect a small TV to the DVD Recorder audio/video-out so you can view the service from your sound booth (or video recording area).

You can easily install this setup for under $500 (depending upon the camcorder and DVD recorder you choose to purchase).  The camcorder does not need to be fancy, just as long as it has video-out.

The infrared repeater can be purchased at Audio General for under $100 http://www.audiogeneral.com/Pointers/IRRepeater.html

This is a great ministry to help the sick and shut-in stay connected with your church.

For less than $20 a year, you could provide a missionary (or yourself) with a local phone number and free, unlimited long distance to anyone in the US or Canada. I’ve been testing an amazing little device that installs quickly, works on almost any computer, and is as easy to use an old-fashioned telephone. It’s called MagicJack, and though it uses the same technology as other VOIP services like the well-known Skype and Vonage, there are no monthly fees for calling folks who don’t have the service. In fact, with MagicJack, you can call any phone number in the US or Canada from anywhere in the world where broadband Internet access is available. You pay only $40 for the hardware device and first year of service, and then $20 (or less depending on renewal term) for each year after that. Yes, these are the annual, not monthly fees. There are no time limits, long distance charges, taxes, or additional costs unless you dialing a number outside North America, and then you must purchase International calling credits. That’s only needed when calling to an International number from this device. With MagicJack, you actually take a US number wherever you go. Incoming and outgoing calles are treated as if dialing to/from any US landline or cell number. Best thing is the receiving party doesn’t need a computer. If you want, you can use a headset/mic with your computer to place a call, but it’s easier just to plug in a cheap phone (like the one I bought at Dollar General for $5.50).

A small USB device (like a flash drive) holds the installation and application software along with your personal telephone address book and call history. You plug the MagicJack into a USB port and a regular, old-fashioned phone into what looks like an ordinary phone jack on the device. After the gadget initializes, you can pick up the phone, hear a dial tone, and dial the number just like old times. Your computer must be on and online in order to send and receive calls, but if you turn it off, incoming calls will go into voicemail which will automatically be emailed to you as a sound file (neat!).

In theory, the device could replace your home or business phone line or even provide phone service to your entire household. I say “in theory” because so far you cannot port your old number to the MagicJack though they say that capability will be available soon. Also, not all area codes are available. For example, I had my choice of numbers in the 615 area code (Nashville area), but could not select a number in Southern Illinois (618 area code). But I could have chosen a Chicago area code (312 or 773) which would have given my old friends in the Windy City a local number on which to call me. One caveat: MagicJack does not always work on fax machines. For example, I can send but not receive faxes on ours.

Sarah took our MagicJack with her to Central Asia and upon arrival called me on my cell phone. The call was clear and crisp with no echo or delay. The call had to be short because everyone on the team was waiting in line to call home. Our missionary friends there asked if we wouldn’t mind leaving our MagicJack (with its Nashville number) behind. I told Sarah to do just that. Forty bucks is a small price for a gift that could help a missionary (or several) keep in touch with the home office, supporters, family, and friends back in the states for an entire year.

Here’s the website where you can order a MagicJack for yourself or a missionary you support (make sure they have high speed Internet; dial up will not work). Don’t let the fact that the website sounds like an infomercial turn you off to this amazing device.