I am going to try and build a website for my church myself but I have never done it before. How user friendly is the webempowered church stuff for someone who is a real newbie??

Lori,

That is hard to gauge because it is different for each person based on their experience, gifts, and time availability. Here is what I would suggest.

1. Go through the Deciding Page which includes a readiness test at the end.

2. Go through WEC 101 the Flash version. This shows you WEC-TYPO3 in action. You see how to configure your website and how to work with pages and content. This shows real screen shots which should give you a really good feel for how it works and how hard it is. There are more classes here.

3. As you get started, please be sure to login to basicadmin instead of admin to simplify the interface.

In Christ,
Mark

Is there someone I can pay to install the site for me? I already have hosting paid for, for 3 years and have had a WEC site on running on it. I have tried to install WEC and have never been able to make it work. To the best of my understanding I have followed the directions perfectly. Mark helped me the last time (I have just changed churches). After it is installed I have no problem going from there. I think just need someone to install the basic site for me. Any takers?

Kerry

I do not know what denomination your church is, but if you visit United Methodist Communications website and look for the Online Learning Center and a course called "Web Ministry 101" you will be given some helpful knowledge about putting together a website ministry. There are not instructions on how to use the WEC technology, but I think you might want to review this online course anyway since it is designed for the novice.

If you are a member of a United Methodist congregation you should take advantage of the "Find A Church" feature and all the information you can request them to post for you. Also, the UMC provides free space for I think one web page, just one page, no links or anything flashy, but it is still a web presence.

I hope you can lead your church to a web ministry and online presence. Just remember it takes a never ending commitment to keep things up to date. You might just want to take the plunge and learn how to do it... I am self taught and still learning. The most exciting thing for me to see is new people in our congregation who found our church and decided to join it out of all the others because of what they saw on our website. I remain humble when I hear them say it but I am very proud on the inside to know that God can use me to help bring people to a closer relationship with Him!