I have been designing and maintaining websites since the mid-90's, mostly on behalf of music groups I was involved with. More recently I have been in charge of the website of a number of organizations, including the Evangelical Association, Word.ca, and Christian Counsellors.
I have recently entered a partnership with programmer Martin Francis. He had a vision of creating an interactive CMS (Content Management System) for churches that would improve the church's outreach ability and connect various local churches in a way never before attempted. It is called the Ecclesiact system, and the websystem boasts the following features:
When people log on, they find the website:
- Attractive, inviting
- Easy to navigate
- All necessary information upfront, in uncluttered format
Solutions provided by the Eccleciact system:
- Allows new people to find your church (and it's programs) conveniantly
- Attractive & professional looking
- We do the programming, customer just needs to input info with simple interface (similar to Word)
- Interconnectivity with other churches and organizations
System features:
- Multiple levels of access (member only pages, administrators at various levels)
- Group based contents (ie: choir, youth, golden agers, ushers...)
- Protected pages (ie; only members or members with children can see photo's of kids events; only members of choir can see rehearsal schedule). Members can be in several groups.
- Some pages only appear to those with access (an usher never would see a choir schedule)
- Easy to post downloadable sermons, etc.
- Ease of navigation
- Simple page creation
- Event registration
- Newsfeeder
- Googlemap (which automatically provides directions to events - so if there is, say, a barbecue at your house, a map will be generated automatically.)
- Calender
- Eliminates out-of-date info
- Networking with other churches
- No need to know anything about HTML, convenient interface
- Convertable text for users (increases font size for older folks, printable pages, etc)
- Automatically generates sitemap, buttons,
- Members can input and update their profiles
- News connectivity to other churches in your area or denomination
- Search engine
- Editing pages is easy from internet using usual web-browsers
- E-mail "blast" system
- Excell integration (customizable)
- Support for foreign text (chinese, greek, etc)
- Daily Bible verse
- Web visitor stats
- Unlimited pages
Also available:
- Online donations
- Facebook feature, so that your members will have your church's newsfeed on their Facebook page...great outreach tool!
- E-commerce module for sales of DVD's of your programs, CD's, books, tickets to events, etc...
Service & maintenance:
- Inexpensive
- Updates and new features automatically added to site
- Free maintenance, trouble-shooting
- Training
- Set-up of system part of the price
- Lifetime licence
- Utilizes xhtml and the latest versions of all software
- Hosting and domain registration.
The Ecclesiact website is here at their website, and some clients include: The Evangelical Christian Magazine, Westmount Park Church, and Unveiling Live Ministries.
Implementing the Ecclesiact system includes: