If there is one common theme I have seen from church to church, it is the volunteer problem when it comes to website maintenance.  If you are someone who has something to do with your church’s website, then you know exactly what I am talking about. 

A good intentioned volunteer steps forward and builds you a website.  It looks decent, you say to yourself, but it isn’t something you are overly excited about.  No worries though - after all, it was free!  Days, weeks and months go by.  Your snappy and willing volunteer becomes … not so snappy - that is to say, he/she starts churning out updates at a snail’s pace.  Your service has changed times from 9:30 to 10am.  This happened 5 weeks ago, and no word from your volunteer!  Your poor pastor’s stomach churns each Saturday night, hoping and praying that no one sees the false information on the website. 

I hope I am not sounding *too* harsh on your volunteer.  As a matter of fact, I would like to take some time and re-iterate how wonderful I think volunteers actually are.  One thing that you have to remember though, is that the volunteer likely has a family, friends and a job to tend to.  Which is why you let him slip so much.  It is starting to sound kind of like a lose-lose situation, doesn’t it? 

If you don’t have a budget to hire a web firm to build you something powerful, request from your volunteer the ability to make updates on your own.  They will need to build in some sort of WYSIWYG editor into your website that is password protected.  If you do have some sort of budget for such a project, please consider the following:  At Tanner Creative, we have developed an internal web management system that we like to call the Control Center.  This is a powerful system that is used by both our church and business clients alike!  Using the Control Center, you are able to add, edit and delete pages.  You can even add pictures, video and audio - yes, it is a remarkable thing for those who sign up for it.  If you are a big enough, you will even be able to assign specific pages to be edited by specific users.  The best thing about it?  Your website can be quickly and easily updated from anywhere in the world, in a matter of seconds. 

I really didn’t mean to make this article sound like a sales pitch, but you have to plug when you can, right? 

Tags: church website help, tanner creative, tanner creative website tips, tanner jones, tannercreative, tannercreative.com, website tips, www.tannercreative.com

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