Okay, we have to admit it; Blogger templates usually look perfect – for a high school student or a grandma that just wants to post pictures of her grand-babies. But, their look isn’t quite up to par for a blog that you want serious readers to interact with.

I just came across something awesome for those of you who want to us Blogger/Blogspot anyway:

25 Premium Like Though Free Blogger Templates

I have to admit there are some awesome ones in there. Check them out.

If you don’t know how to change your template on Blogger, check out this Blogger help page.

CRU Blogging is hosting a 30 minute webinar to help ministries understand the value in switching over to a blog for the main ministry website. We hope to share some vision, explain some tactics, and answer your specific questions.

I’ve noticed that a lot of ministries have outdated websites, and would like to try something new, but don’t know where to start.

I’ve also noticed that the focus is on DESIGN (better logo, graphics, text formatting) and have yet to see the value of upgrading the website to facilitate more ENGAGING CONTENT.

Sign up here in this post, or in the widget box on the right hand side of your screen.

I’ve tried them all, or just about. My first blog was hosted on Angelfire and was a text file that was eerily similar to a certain 14-year-old doctor. I was on LiveJournal, I had a Blogger/Blogspot account, I have a couple of 3-post of blogs still rotting on WordPress.com’s servers. I have settled on my own personal preference for WordPress self hosted blogs/sites.

In honor of full-disclosure, I haven’t tried out TypePad thoroughly, but I’m not opposed to it. Brian’s post about TypePad has convinced me to give it a run for the money, but like he said, “WordPress.org is the most robust and full-featured platform out there.”

It’s that robustness and feature-fullness that has sold me.

For the Ministry Website

Most of you are not looking to be anything close to a professional blogger, you’re wanting to set up a page that draws in your audience and is able to get to them the information that you want. Your audience will largely be the same people from day-to-day and even year-to-year – whether it’s your supporters or your students, most of them aren’t going to find the site through Google; they’re finding your site through you telling them about it. Your main goal is to get them to keep coming back.

You’ll pick your design once perhaps  – WordPress makes that really easy. You go to the “themes” tab and pick one. Voila! Your site looks like the example!

For the Ministry Blogger

You’re looking for extra functionality. How do I link my Twitter profile to my site? How do I post pictures in a gallery so my supporters can see what I’m doing? How do I get my students to engage in a conversation about what I’m posting?

This is the great part about WordPress’ plugins. All three of those things are included in the features of the thousands of plugins available to you in WordPress. Go to the Add New Plugins page and search your term, whether it’s “twitter”, “gallery” or “comments”. Within a page or two you’ll know which ones you’re looking for and can get it running in 5 minutes. And there are tons of places to learn how to do whatever you want, from WordPress.tv to the official Codex to hundreds of blogs and forums dedicated to WordPress and it’s add-ons.

Characteristics of a WordPress (SH) candidate:

• You like customization.
• You like free software.
• You’re willing to pay for hosting.
• You’re willing to learn a little to do your site well.

WordPress self-hosted is not for everyone, but to repeat myself and Brian: it is the most robust and full-featured platform out there.

Next time I’ll post a video about how easy it is to set one up.

So, you want to start a blog or basic website for your supporters or the people you’re ministering to, so they can connect with you online better… where do you start?

There seem like there are a thousand options, from learning HTML and coding it yourself or paying hundreds of dollars a year to have someone else take care of all of the work. I want to tell you there is middle ground.

There are 4 basic options that I would suggest for starting your own website. These options boil down to 4 blogging & website platforms that you can choose from, all of which have advantages and disadvantages. I know some better than others and I definitely have one that I recommend.

• Blogger.com – Blogger is Google’s easy to use blogging platform. It’s simple, and friendly and you could set up a free site in about 1/2 an hour and you get every penny and minute’s worth out of it. (That’s a joke, you can laugh.) Blogger sites tend to all look the same, their various themes all look similar and your options are really limited to blog posts and that’s about it. If you just want to get your thoughts down so you can share them with your friends this may be the way to go.
• TypePad.com – Far more advanced than Blogger, TypePad has 4 options for hosting plans that range from $4.95 per month to $89.95 per month. To be completely honest, I still don’t know it very well because I haven’t wanted to pay to check it out. Head to their pricing chart and if your convinced, try the free trial and let us know. I may try to get Brian to talk about this one later since he knows it.
• WordPress.com – Now we’re getting closer to my preference. WordPress.com is way above Blogger and free as well (there are paid options, but if you want WordPress and are willing to pay, check the next option). You can be up in 15 minutes and this choice will provide better themes, plugins to let you do extra things and allows pages that don’t fall into the “flow” of the blog posts (like our “About” page here). If you’re going for free, this is your baby all the way.
• WordPress.org (hosted) – You’re not crazy, this is WordPress again, but different and more freedom. WordPress is a pretty advanced open source blogging and website platform program. The community that works on it is strong, active and amazing at the rate that they update the software. There are thousands of available themes and as many plugins. To take advantage of this you need to pay for a webhost and for a domain (a .com or .org name). This option can require a little more know-how, but that’s what this blog is for – to teach you what you need to know. If you’re interested in this option, check out WordPress.org and comment here for hosting options.

Take some time and think through what you want, perhaps we can help you implement it.