The good folks at Trinity United Methodist Church in Elkhart, IN have had a SnapShot Website for their church for the last 5 years.  Just this past month though, they decided it was time for a major redesign of this church website. Since they are using the SnapShot tools to manage their site, the entire redisign process took only a matter of hours as they switched to a different template, make a few custom changes to the new template, then clicked through each page of their site to make sure everything was in place.

Check out the new look and feel at www.3umc.org.

We recently interviewed Justin Davis, the Student Pastor and the Pastor's assistant at The Pentecostals of Pasadena about their new church website - www.thepopchurch.org.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

SnapShot Web: Tell us a little about The Pentecostals of Pasadena.

Justin Davis: Our church has been in Pasadena for 58 years.  In September 2008 our church was severely damaged during hurricane Ike, and we were displaced for 2 ½ years.  Several months ago we finally made it back home to our church building. Everything is new and improved, and we felt like our website needed to be new and improved as well.

SSW: We've seen the new site.  It looks awesome.  How much time do you spend working on your website each week? What changes do you make regularly?

JD: Time spent updating the site every week is a minimum, maybe 3 hours.  And that includes updating our podcast with our latest services on Monday and Thursday.  I also make any changes to the calendar that are needed.

SSW: What kind of feedback have you received from people in your church or community?

JD: Feedback from our church was been great.  The Sermon Archive is particularly popular, especially during a sermon series where you want to catch every message.  They also love having the church calendar online. We pass out year long calendars at the beginning of the year.  But, as always happens dates/times get changed, new events are planned.  With the online calendar it is being updated weekly and everyone is aware of upcoming events.

SSW: Now that you have worked with the SnapShot Tools a bit, If you could share one or two tips or tricks with others who are new to  the SnapShot Web world, what would they be?  

JD: Two words:  Recurring Events.  The initial setup of the calendar was time consuming, but every month got easier, due to the recurring events already being populated.  Also, I spent quite a bit of time reviewing the tutorials that are available.

SSW: Has this been a solo endeaver of have you gotten others involved in the website (either through editing the site or interacting in some other way)?

JD: We have a graphic artist in the church who supplied the slides for our home page slide show.  She keeps them updated with our upcoming events.

SSW: Anything else you'd like to say?

JD: I am extremely impressed with Snapshot Web, the product and the people.  Because they specialize in church websites, they had a module created for everything we wanted.  And most of it came pre-loaded on the site, we just had to edit it.  I have made several calls to them and they spent time to walk me through different questions I had, and made some changes to the site for me. This is their business, but it seems they are approaching it with the heart of ministry.

SSW: What do we owe you for that last statment and where can we send the check.  Just Kidding.  Thanks for the kind words.

Grace for Africa - a beautiful ministry with a stellar website.  They are committed to sharing the love and grace of God with the people of Africa.  They have some amazing things happening.  The recently gave us some specific and flattering feedback about how they are using their SnapShot Website.  Kellie Barrett from Grace for Africa had this to say:

 There are a lot of great things about SnapShot but what I love most about this site is that...

1. It's completely what you want it to be. If you want to choose from their templates - you have a lot of great ones to choose from; if you want to make your own design you can do that too.
2. Any question you have regarding your site will be answered within minutes! Absolutely any questions and like I said I do not have experience in site design so most of my questions seemed very elementary and yet they were answered clearly and efficiently.
3. It's SO easy to learn the ins and outs of the site. The support team is there always but there are also video tutorials explaining every module/option on the site. Very very user friendly!

Sometimes people will ask us "Just how customized can our church or ministry website be if we use SnapShot Web?"  Well, take a look at the new Live Curriculum Site and see what you think.  The designers over at Simply Youth Ministry put the design together and our team here simply dropped it into the SnapShot Web tools. 

Stay tuned in the near future as we are working on some great new templates that you are going to love.

If you are looking for ways to take your design to a great new level, there are lots of great (and free) resources that will help you along the way.  One of those resources is Texture King.  Spend some time on their site and see some of the amazing texture resources that you can download and use for free for your design needs.

A SnapShot Web customer recently told us about a great resource for icons to use on your website.  Spend a few minutes clicking around the Dry Icons site and your see that there are a ton of great options for icons and other design elements to enhance your online presence.  You'll see that you can use many of the resources for free (with a few restrictions) or you can purchase a commercial or extended license for a small fee.

If you are interested in incorporating some of these icons into your site and you're not sure how, let us know and we can talk you through the simple steps to pull it off.

We're always looking for great resources to share so let us know when you come across something that would be helpful for church or ministry website.

We met Matt Swider at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago a few months ago.  He wanted to get his youth ministry set up with a stellar website but he quickly admitted that he was far from web savvy.  "No problem," we told him.  We set him up with a site and he was working on it the next day. 

Here's what's really cool... Matt has a student in his ministry that has some great design and web skills.  This student took one of the SnapShot Web templates and started making custom tweaks to make it his own.  You've got to check out the finished product at www.helenavoltage.com.  While you are on their site, make sure you take a look at their staff page (rollover the images to see some great effects) as well as their photo galleries. 

Well done guys.

What is one of the first things a potential visitor does before coming to your church? Research shows that most people do exactly what I’ve done and look online to find out some information. What times do you meet? Where are you located? What activities does your church offer for their children? Do you have a nursery? Your website is the new entry point into your church or ministry and your first chance to make an impression. A well-designed website can reflect the quality of your ministry and the culture of your church.

Jody Webster is SnapShot Web Ministry Partner that has a great eye for design plus the tools to make it all happen.  Check out his site and some of the ways that he can help with yours.

A letter from a gifted designer, pastor, and SnapShot Web user in Northern Ireland:

Hey, my name’s Neil Young, I am the Youth Pastor at the Causeway Coast Vineyard church, Northern Ireland. Through our youth movement, Destination:Home, we work with a variety of young people in schools, streets, café’s, smallgroups etc and I love what I get to do as a job.

We have been using snapshot web since 2008 and it has been such a valuable tool in communicating why we do what we do and when we do it. We have found a number of things pretty important when it comes to building web sites, especially church based sites.

We came across this great post on Smashing Buzz last week.  It's quite a list of free fonts for designers.  Each one has a quick sample and a link to download.  Some of them are barely intelligible but there are a few dozen in there that will be a great addition to your font book. 

Take a look here and send us a link to some ways that you've used any of these on your website.

We sometimes hear questions that go something like this: "Since SnapShot Web uses templates, how can I ensure that my site doesn't look just like everyone else's site?"  The underlying assumption is that a template is a static entity - something you simply drop onto your Church Website and can never change or customize.  This is simply not the case.

We always tell people that the templates are really just a place to start.  FInd the template that is the closes to what you are looking for and then start tweaking the colors and images and backgrounds so that it will fit your particular culture.  Three months down the road, if you are looking for something different, change it.  We'll make this super easy for you. 

All of our templates are included with any of the SnapShot Plans.  You can change as often as you'd like and even use different templates for different pages or sections of your site.  You can see live examples of all of the templates at www.snapshottemplates.com.

To get a sense of just how customizable the templates are, you've got to take a look at www.graceyouth.net.  Click through that site and see all of the things they have going on.  See if you can tell what template this is.

Give up?  Here is the template that they started with.

We wanted to show you a great Church website that is incorporating some simple and clean design pieces that give it a great look and feel.  The church, Mosborough Elim Church in the U.K. has set up a sub navigation on their site.  It's really 4 simple images that they have dropped into their site and shown on every page.  This, in essence, ensures that wherever someone is on the site, they will have a quick and easy way to get to the contact info, the service time info, and the info for guests with a simple click.  The design that they have used for these images looks amazing.  It fits well with the look they have implemented on their site. 

Another thing to check out while you peruse their site, www.mosboroughelimchurch.co.uk, is the way that they have used sub-header images on each of their pages to build a sense of continuity all through their site.  Make sure to check it out and as always, let us know if you'd like us to help you do something similar with your site.

It's Day 4 of the 90 day Bible Project for First Student Ministries.  A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to read through the Bible in a year.  It was a good year.  These guys are doing it in 90 days.  They've done the math and they say with just about 45 minutes and 12 pages a day, they can pull it off.  I love it.  What a amazing feat.  Their encouraging the students in their ministry and their families to join them.

Not only that but they are cataloging the journey on their website.  Each day at midnight they put up a new video, a new key verse for the day and a link to to a new resource that will help people in this adventure.  Each week's message at their program night will focus on the scripture reading for the previous week.  Check out their site to follow the daily updates. Check out their sweet video archive.  Join them if you dare. 

Lots of people have asked recently about how to set up a splash page for their church or ministry website.  A splash page is, in essence, a page that shows up before your home page and often offers people the chance to enter into different sections in your site.  We would say that sometimes this is not the best option as you are requiring an extra click for people to get to the content of your site. 

Other times though, people can make it work quite well.  We came across this site - www.ampedyouthonline.com - recently that has set up a make-shift splash page right from within the SnapShot Web tools.  They've done it in a way that looks good and is very easy to understand (two essentials for a splash page.)

One of the beautiful things about SnapShot Web is that you start with a template for your website but you can make all kinds of changes and tweaks to that template to "make it your own."

Let us show you a beautiful example.  Grace United Methodist Church, in Merritt Island, FL had a particular look and feel in mind as they were considering putting together a website.  Since none of our templates were a perfect match for them, we just had them choose one that was close and then we talked them through the process of changing a few images and a few colors and they were all set with what you see now.

All that to say that adding custom headers, logos, colors, images, and more is not only possible but we highly encourage it and we'll help you with the process.  Click through their site and check out some of the things that they're doing.  As always, please let us know if we can answer any questions for you or help you with your web needs in any way.

A few years ago a church could get away with having a website that was nothing more than informational – a site that merely answered basic questions about the time and location of the weekly service. A strictly informational website like this is called a “brochure website” because its content is static. It basically serves the same purpose as a tri-fold brochure that you might pick up in a hotel lobby.

The time for brochure websites has come and gone.

You already know that having a website for your ministry is important. You also know that it’s important for your website to looks great. But how do you pull this off? How do you make sure that your website has a look and feel that is easy on the eyes? How do you create site that makes people say “Wow”? And how do you avoid the common pitfalls that cause people wince when they visit your site?

We’ll mention 4 quick things that will help you create a website look that you’ll love. Some of these things may seem obvious to you, but if you were to look at as many church and ministry sites as I do every week, you would find that sometimes the obvious things aren't so obvious and are worth reviewing.

Having an online presence for your ministry is more important today than ever before. As we all know, the Internet can be an amazing way to connect with people inside your community and to reach out to people outside of your community. The possibilities for what you do online are endless - from the very simple presentation information about times, dates, and locations, to the more complex and interactive features such as social networking, discussion boards, event registration, and podcasting.

As part of our job, the SnapShot Web Team looks at hundreds of ministry websites every week. Some are fantastic, others are mediocre, and to be honest, some are so scattered and disjointed that it almost hurts to look at them - having no website at all would be a better option. The most common thing that distinguishes the good from the bad and the ugly is purpose. Let us explain…

Before creating (or re-creating) your online presence you’ll want to make sure that you ask yourself this critical question: Why?

Why are you doing what you do with your website? What should the purpose of your website be? Is it simply to convey information or do you want it to be something more? Is it to grab people’s attention? Stir people’s emotions? Get people involved? Persuade people to take action? Is it to connect with those already involved in your ministry or to reach out to those who are not yet involved?

The reality is that if you don’t have a purpose for your website, your blog, or your facebook group – if you haven’t thought about why you are doing what you do – there’s a very good chance that you’ll end up with a scattered mess that doesn’t do anything all that well.