Most of what we do every day at SnapShot Web could be described as helping churches, ministries, and sometimes small businesses get setup with affordable, great looking, very robust, and easy to manage websites.  When we set up a new website, I always tell customers and potential customers that the templates we start with are fully customizable.  What this means is that you can simply look for the website template that's closest to what you have in mind and we'll help you make changes to the images, colors, layout, etc. so that it's a perfect fit for what you are looking for.  That's most of what we do.

Occassionally though (it's actually becoming rather frequent) we'll have someone approach us with the website design already complete.  Not only do they know exactly what they are looking for but they have the design already packaged in layered Photoshop file.  These people want us to do two things for them:

1. Take their design and make it work - make the rollover images work, program the dropdown menus, add links, videos, mp3s, slideshows, etc.
2. Set it up in such a way that they can easily manage it themselves - this way they don't have to pay or wait every time they want to add a new page or update content.

We recently finished a custom project in this arena at live.simplyyouthministry.com and I thought you might like to check it out.  Click around the site and let us know what you think.  We've got a handful of others that I'll post on the blog in the coming weeks. 

Aliso Creek Presbyterian Church has put together a custom church website using the SnapShot Web tools.  One thing that you'll notice as you click through their church website is that they have some amazing and powerful photographs on every page.  These aren't your typical stock photos of generic smiling families.  Instead, they hired a local photographer to come out to their church and take some shots of people in their community.

The effect of a few good photos for your church website is priceless.  Take a look at www.acpc.net and let us know what you think.

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.

The Twitter Feed feature has been out for a few weeks now and we're getting lots of great feedback.  So far our favorite way that we have seen it used is as a simple and elegant newsfeed on a church home page.  It's an easy way to let your community and the rest of the world know what's going on at your church.  Check our current favorite instance of it.  

If you are using it on your site, let us know so we can take a look. If you have yet to get it set up, just send us an email at support@snapshotweb.com with the word TWITTER and your domain name and we'll have it configured for you so you can drop it on your site right away.

As always, you can follow the latest from SnapShot Web on twitter, facebook, and our blog.

At SnapShot Web, We pride ourselves on going above and beyond helping you make your church or ministry website into something beautiful, effective, and amazing.  We love to support you as you manage your SnapShot Website.  We'll often get a phone call or email that begins with "So sorry to bother you but..." It's never a bother.  Helping you is what we love to do.  We see it as a great gift and joy to get to support you and your ministry in this way.

Occasionally we will have a SnapShot Web user that doesn't ask any questions.  This sometimes means that she or he is not working with their site much.  It sometimes means that they are comfortable with the most basic setting and they will leave their site as it is.  And it sometimes means that they are a super-user - so gifted at working with the SnapShot Web tools that they may have things they could teach us.

I have been a fan of Snapshot for a while. Years ago I used it as a youth minister and now that I have "grown up," I use it as a pastor. Right now, I serve a wonderful and friendly small rural church in the panhandle of Texas with a big vision -- we desire to reach the un­‐churched and de‐churched and make disciples the best we can according to Scripture. I believe that Snapshot helps in this process. Here are some practical ways it has helped us:

We use the website for information/PR -  Snapshot has many great features that allow us to get info out -- from calendar events, to scrolling flash images, to Facebook/Twitter helps, to podcasting. We use these all. I would like to see the website be the go‐to for all information rather than the church bulletin. This would be better because it can be edited/updated anywhere at any time and there are quicker, real‐time updates. We have done community wide mailers and the main way we want to interact and get the word out about church is through our website. Snapshot also looks good and clean which has allowed residents of the town to take notice (and even motivated them to upgrade their web pages!).

We use the website to streamline - instead of calling the office or telling me in the hallways of the church on Sunday that I inevitably forget, we have used the website for members and ministry leaders to submit announcements and events to put on the calendar. It has really helped in organization of our office and calendar. This helps us focus more on our purpose and mission rather than just adding "stuff" to the calendar. Snapshot also makes PayPal easy with its module and has greatly helped in online payments for events.

Snapshot really has so many qualities that have helped our ministry this past year. The staff at Snapshot have always been an email or phone call away and have been quick to help in our times of great peril (i.e. PayPal changing everything during our sign-up for a conference!). If you are considering Snapshot, sign-up now without thinking - it will provide helpful tools to fulfill your vision to reach and disciple a generation that is desperately seeking truth.

By Paul Stohler
Pastor, First Baptist Church
Canadian, TX
www.fbccanadian.org
pstohler@fbccanadian.org

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.

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.

Incarnate Consulting is made up of proven, veteran youth workers who have been in ministry for at least 10 years. The "whole church approach" that they use includes helping a church develop a vision for kids in their church and community, finding the right people to do the job, and helping to develop a strategy for reaching and keeping kids. Their ministry is designed for churches who want professional ministry but can’t afford it or churches wanting to save as much as possible for when the right person comes along.

They have been using their SnapShot Website for almost 2 years and with just about an hour and a half every week working on the website, they’re able to make regular changes to directly help youth workers, including games, talks, and seasonal blogs that create a jumping off point for their members to use at their churches. With the SnapShot Web tools and support, they have set up a site that's easy to navigate, clear to read and full of valuable information.

In His Eyes Ministries is about bringing God's perspective into the everyday lives of women.  The ministry offers a variety of resources in print and in person in order to develop authentic discipleship relationships.  The ministry is run by April Motl.  She a fairly new SnapShot Web user.  We talked with her recently about her experience with her new SnapShot Website and here's what she had to say:

Over the past few years I have tried six previous methods/services to create a website and I finally have a site I am really happy with.  Snapshot's design tools were simple to use and the appearance of the site was fairly consistent across different web browsers- something that has always been a bit of a nuisance.  The design tools offered a level of creativity/freedom I was very happy with, but did not require a ton of technical knowledge. 

Make sure you check out April's ministry and her new website at www.inhiseyesministries.com.

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.)