Churches need websites, and websites need content management systems.
Today I share an interview I conducted with Dave McCall and Travis Hickox – the co-founders of iMinistries. iMinistries is a content management solution for churches. Below are some related posts on content management systems.
Q: Can you give a brief overview of what iMinistries is, and how it started?
iMinistries offers a Church Content Management System (CMS). Our church CMS allows those without web-coding knowledge the ability to post News, Events, Calendars, Photos, Blogs and much more to their church website.
We started by responding to a need at our own church, Harvest Bible Chapel. Their vision was narrow—they wanted a good-looking website that could help them get people registered for events. When we couldn’t find someone who offered this, we decided to create our own. Before we were even done, we were already talking with some of the other Harvest church plants about them using it. Thus, our platform was born.
Q: What are some common problems you have seen with church websites and design? How does iMinistries address these problems and challenges?
At the time we created iMinistries, the most common problems that we saw were:
- Churches had one of two design problems: they had a nice design but only through paying a designer for every change, or their design was terrible because there was little ability, continuity or control.
- Church websites held seriously out-of-date information. For example, in June the homepage of a website would have an announcement for a Men’s Event in that was in May. Upon further inspection, that was May of the previous year.
- Churches weren’t using the web like businesses were, to streamline their processes and gain efficiencies. Most websites were a copy of the church brochure and we imagined sites where it was an extension of the church bulletin that gave the user more options for self-help.
One helpful tool that we created ensures that content passes muster via an approval process. Pages don’t appear on the site until the post date is true and the status of the item is set to published.
Another thing that we focused on from the beginning was making it so a church website could be easily re-designed or “re-skinned”. We created our skin system which controls the page layout and design so that the casual user wouldn’t be designing as much as copy editing. In February we added the ability for power users to add their own CSS via their Site Preferences.
Since the beginning we have continued to work with designers to create custom skins for our customers and we have internally been expanding the skins we offer to everyone. Today we have some very good free skins and offer some great premium skins for a small one-time price.
On top of the design we built powerful tools that allow just about anyone to add content to their site with little-to-no training. We provide:
- Publish and expiration date fields on most everything so that content never becomes stale.
- Content editors the ability to easily add things to the site, while offering advanced options in the case that someone wants a bit more control.
- Excellent event registration, small group management, blogging, email newsletter and photo gallery modules built in.
- A way to easily embed Vimeo and YouTube videos, flickr galleries, Google Maps, Twitter feeds and RSS feeds.
Additionally, each ministry behaves like a site-within-the-site, each having its own permissions and content.
Q: What are the challenges to website management that are specific to churches and Christian ministry?
There are two major obstacles that churches have more than others: they lack both money and time. Even the churches that can afford a dedicated designer lack the time to offer the direction it needs. Most require something low-cost that they can easily maintain. The web isn’t the church’s main business and it shouldn’t be. It should be a compliment to their ministry and they should be able to keep it looking great and filled with great content with minimal effort and cost.
Q: How often do you think a church should re-visit their websites and undergo a re-design?
We recommend to our customers that they re-skin their sites every 2 years and in the intermediate times they keep the content fresh by changing out the banners and imagery on the site constantly.
Q: What are your plans for the future development of iMinistries? What features and functionality would you like to include?
We are always tweaking the system and its features. July 1st, 2010 saw the introduction of the first fully integrated ministry and/or church iPhone app that is actually affordable. We say that because we were seeing people getting charged anywhere from $2,500 – $6,500 for their app to be built. The real kicker is that price didn’t include it being ready today either. Ours is $999 and we can get it in the iTunes store very quickly.
Q: Can you give us some examples of good implementations of churches using the iMinistries CMS?
Client sites
Harvest Bible Chapel – Founding Church
Harvest Bible Chapel – Brampton
Harvest Bible Chapel – Muskoka
Harvest Bible Fellowship
Cedar Heights Baptist Church
Federated Church
Glory Books Ministry
New $75 Premium Skins applied to demonstration websites
Demonstration Website 1
Demonstration Website 2
Demonstration Website 3
Demonstration Website 4
Q: There are a number of church-focused content management systems out there (Ekklesia360, Clover, E-zekiel). What do you think sets iMinistries apart?
Every content management developer—especially those of us who focus on the Church—is working toward the same goal: appropriately balance ease-of-use with flexibility. Usually, the more control you give users, the more complicated things become. So, we all have to work hard to strike the right balance. I’d expect we’d all say that we’ve struck the appropriate balance. iMinistries certainly believes that we have. Our system pleases the less-than-savvy web users and the power users alike.
We have an excellent array of tools that our customers can grow into. Perhaps today you don’t have a need for a shopping cart for event payment, online donations and product purchases. But someday you might. If, in the future, you want to offer an iPhone app to your users, we already have one built that is ready to place in the iTunes Store.
Besides that, our staff is fired up about making sure people get great sites. We initiate a new project for each new customer and take them step-by-step through the process of adding or moving existing content from their current website, assisting them with their domain and every other step of getting a great website ready to go.
We have made a checklist available on our site to help churches decide between Church CMS systems. We admit that we don’t expect to come out on top of every category, but we will certainly rank highly. Each church must decide what categories are most important to them and pick the right system for their needs. We obviously hope to be that system…which excites us because we get to be a little part of the great commission.
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