Help with website for Church?

LondonGal

knightstyle wrote: »

Well, our old website is now up and running after help from the person who set it up. http://www.gainsboroughchurches.org/
But we want to start again from scratch so need to look at costs which I find confusing. So can a new host take over our old domain name? Looking at Weebly charges they quote from $3.29 to $19.54 a month, dos this include hosting or is it just for running the website?
As i said earlier this is all new to me so does a simple up to date guide exist, websites for dummies?
Like the look of the Swanage Methodist Church but as the poster said it looks a bit basic and dare I say old fashioned.
Now the old site is back not so urgent but needs doing.

Yes, a new host can take over your domain name. In fact I've just done this. I went with A2 hosting dwho offer unlimited domain names (as many sites as you want), unlimited emails, unlimited webspace and a variety of very affordable pricing plans.

If you're not wanting to keep your existing content, Wordpress can be installed from fresh within 2-3 minutes. I'm still VERY happy to help and talk you through things. I'm new to website building myself, had no skills, built three 'amateur' ones which I didn't like once I'd learnt a little, so swapped host and started anew just a few days ago. The potential of Wordpress is tremendous. I spent a long time finding a 'theme' (site template) which is able to be totally modified to exactly what you want. I'm sticking with that now.

But yes, your domain can be hosted wherever you want. You can either transfer the name across to the new hosting company, or what I've done is leave it with the existing domain registrar (where you bought it from) and pointed the nameservers to the new host. This information is given to you when you register with your new host, so is not nearly as complex as it sounds. I know as I'm only a little ahead of you, but can do almost anything I want to on the site now. Good luck!

knightstyle

Thanks JassV and LondonGal, I will be in contact later if thats OK.
Have a meeting on Thursday to put my proposals forward and hopefully we will be going to a new host and building a new website.
By the way I have a Macbook, OSX 10.6.8 should I use Wordpress or something else?

LondonGal

I don't know, I run a normal windows PC. A quick Google on your behalf suggests you may need to download a program called MAMP, but I'll leave that for the Mac experts to answer. Sorry!

Bowling_4_Gold

The website will be made up of two parts - the hosting and the domain.

Is it safe to assume your website will be pretty simple? If so, you may be able to use 000webhost. They offer hosting with 1.5GB of space, as well as quite a lot more, completely free of charge.

This will then leave you to purchase the domain (www .yourchurch.co.uk). For a .co.uk domain, 1and1 charge £3.49 per year!

I have a friend who has recently done the above for his website and it works well. He's got Wordpress installed, which offers a nice, simple CMS (content management system).

Benet

It's worth mentioning that your current website is already running on Wordpress, and updating it should be as easy as selecting a new theme that you like and tweaking it to your requirements.

http://wordpress.org/themes/ is a good place to look for suitable themes for free.

If you don't mind spending a little money. http://themeforest.net/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&term=church has some lovely themes you could use.