Comments on: What we can learn about church websites from Janet Jackson’s Breasts

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 13:20:47 +0000

I fully agree with your points, and would even suggest that they could, would, and should be applied to many personal sites. How often the message is crowded out by fancy cursers and really bad midi files, athough I don’t know if there is a good midi file.

By: Matthew Jones

Matthew Jones — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 18:56:22 +0000

Very good point. I am working on building a website for my church currently and I refuse to use a free webhost for exactly this reason.

Webhosting is pretty affordable these days. It’s well worth the price to keep your message intact.

By: Aaron Curtis

Aaron Curtis — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:28:27 +0000

It is worth noting that I noticed a trend on my new blog at blogspot. I have not yet paid to remove the add banner from my page and I have been pleasantly surprised. Blogspot actually searches the content on my page and then finds relevant advertisements. For example I mentioned that I read the book “Purpose Driven Church” by Rick Warren and now I have an add selling his books.

The blogsopt add banner is powered by Google. This is at least one example of a company using technology a little bit more creatively.

I read an article in the January issue of the Costco Connection. It had an article on search engines stating, “Considering the popularity of online searching the growing use of search sites for marketing is nearly a no-brainer.”

This seems to be exactly what Google is trying to do. You can read Google’s summary of AdSence here http://www.google.com/services/

For advertisers, it seems that the market trend could be trying to move away being a provider of annoying or unwanted adds.

You have a great website. I have enjoyed stopping by from time to time.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 22:47:13 +0000

Aside from hosting, Church sites should also be weary of some technology companies. In the past a well-known streaming media company had an advert for exclusive access to swimsuit model videos and playboy videos on their plug-in download page – not what you want to be linking to from your Sermons page.

By: Mark Rust

Mark Rust — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:55:49 +0000

It seems to me that we are always paying, one way or another. If you don’t want to shell out cash you can either put in a bunch of time and energy to run your own, or you can trade off your “mindshare” and credibility for “free” hosting. TANSTAAFL – “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!”

By: Jayson Franklin

Jayson Franklin — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:44:50 +0000

There are some really cheap hosting options out there. 3 dollars a month is not to bad to host a website free of banner adds.

By: J N D 3

J N D 3 — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:38:48 +0000

Good stuff. It’s rather annoying having Scientology links in banner ads on my site. And it’s even more annoying to get an e-mail from a friend saying that they’re there. So either I gotta start paying, or everyone’s gotta start using Mozilla to block banner ads. Hrmm.

Cheers,
Jim

By: boy in the bands

boy in the bands — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:22:42 +0000

Does your church website flash a breast?

I know: poor little rich Janet Jackson. And what all her family has been through. And then there’s Justin. We know he just can’t help it. But at HealYourChurchWesite.com there’s another lesson to be learned from the antics at the…

By: the lutheran cynic

the lutheran cynic — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:13:13 +0000

Frank, if you have certain webhosts (Cyberpixels for example), you can actually run notify lists for your domain through your control panel.

One of the reasons we bought the domain for the church is that there would probably be the temptation to use someplace like Geocities for the site because they provide an editor that is easy to use.

A thought: perhaps compile a list of web editors that are super easy to use as many church webmasters aren’t that familiar with HTML?

By: Frank Ramage

Frank Ramage — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 17:18:08 +0000

Same thing applies to yahoogroups.com… or any other individual/listserv e-mail service that appends advertisements to your communications.

I speaketh of what I knoweth… [g]

Got any recommendations for a good listserv application for non-profits taht’ll run on an Apache server?

- Frank
- burtonsvillebaptist.org