In order to provide you with a website we first need some basic information from you. We recommend a standard format but you are of course free to put things in any order or structure you wish.
Church Name
We need to know the full name of the church that you want to appear at the top of the page, e.g. “St Stephen’s Ambridge”.
If you want to use the free churchsite domain name then we need to know the short name that will be used in your website address, e.g. https://churchsite.co.uk/ststephensambridge/. You can only use letters, numbers and the ‘–‘ dash character for this, although we generally recommend not using dashes.
Alternatively if you have a domain name already, or if you want us to obtain one for you, let us know which domain name you’d like.
Church logos
We have a set of logos from various denominations which we can use in the header bar. We don’t do individual church logos in this header so if none of them is appropriate you can choose not to use one.
Colour scheme
There are also various colour schemes available. Some are designed to match the logo colours, but you can choose any one of them.
Introductory text and photographs
A large, wide-screen photograph often works well at the top of the page. This is what we have used on the demo sites. This can be a single photograph or a montage of several photographs. It could be a picture of your church, or it could be a picture showing people involved in an activity. Happy people always makes for a good photo, but do check that you their permission. Be especially careful about photos with identifiable children in, not only for privacy reasons but also because children grow up fast and teenagers will not thank you for keeping a picture of their 10 year old self on public display.
We recommend using the best quality photographs you can obtain as modern displays show a lot of detail and you do notice when a photograph isn’t as clear and sharp as it could be.
Below this we’d suggest a short piece of text introducing your church and saying what you’re about. This is your chance to welcome prospective visitors and make them feel this is the sort of church they’d like to find out more about.
If a large photograph at the top doesn’t work well for you, you can instead (or also) include photographs within the text. Generally though, this only works if you have quite a lot of text to flow round the photographs. It’s always possible to change things so if the page doesn’t look right first time round we can always move things around, add or remove text, change photographs, etc.
Location
Tell us where you are! An address and postcode is good. We will provide a map showing the location with a link to Google to get directions.
Service times
A table of service times, if these are regular. For most churches there is a monthly pattern even if the services change from week to week. Remember to say what happens when there are five Sundays in the month.
Contact
Give people a point of contact. For pastoral matters that may be the minister, but people also contact you when they are trying to trace the graves of relatives and other more mundane matters. It’s up to you what you put here. Email and phone are usually the most useful.
History
Your building may have a lot of interesting history and it’s good to make this available. Don’t make it too prominent though, otherwise people may think you are buried in the past!
When you have collected all the relevant information, email it to us at simon@skirridsystems.co.uk
Please take note of our Terms & Conditions, particularly in respect of gaining permission for any photographs you do not own.