Building a Church Website with WordPress

First, you need to choose the platform that fits your church website needs, taking into consideration hosting package bandwidth and speed.  I would advise you grab a shared-hosting package to take advantage of all the powerful features of a WordPress site. I would recommend using Hostgator. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and they are also the official WordPress hosting partner.

Next you will need to install WordPress. If you want step by step instructions, you can follow our guide on how to start a WordPress blog.

After the installation, you will need to choose the perfect WordPress theme for your Church. You can pick a theme from our selected list below and then follow instructions in our how to install your theme into your wordpress account, every theme is accompanied by a documentation to guide you step by step on the installation and setup process.

Here are some of the premium church themes designed for church both free and paid.

1. Sacredia – Church and Nonprofit WordPress Theme

Sacredia Church & Nonprofit WP theme was developed with the help of an active Church Pastor guidance on what a digital Church requires to increase it’s annual donation and tithing, in addition to all the features which a Church can utilize to grow it’s congregation such as (Paid & Free) membership portal, personalized dashboard for Church pastor and Church Members, Multi Causes Donation Portal, (Audio, Video, Text, PDF), Ministries, Events, Live Stream (you-tube), Mega Menu, responsive design, events calendar and many more. To sum it all up, Sacredia wordpress theme is one of the top powerful themes in the market, which is built with visual composer.

• • Designed for Churches & Nonprofits

• • Causes Donation Portal Included

• Easy 1 Click Installation
• Visual Composer & Slider Revolution
• Personalized Dashboard for Members & Pastors (Unique feature)

Save more with Sacredia church theme

• Page Builder by WPBakery Included Save $46 (visual composer)
• Slider Revolution Included Save $26
• Video Parallax Background Save $12
• .PSD Files IncludedSave $12

Sacredia Theme Features

• Sermons events Live Stream (youtube)
• Mega Menu
• Church Shop Included
• Personalized Admin & User Dashboard Portal
• 05 Unique Home Pages
• 05 Unique Landing Pages
• Membership Portal (Paid & Free) PayPal/stripe/authorize.net integration
• Awesome Colorful & Clean Design
• Fully Responsive design Across All Devices
• Beautiful Home Page with All Necessary Pages
• Functional Ministries, Sermons, Donations,
• Causes & Events Post type
• Redux Framework Theme-Options Panel
• GIve Donation Plugin Integrated
• Contact Form 7 Integrated
• Mailchimp Integrated
• 5 Custom Post types
• 16+ Custom Page Builder Addons
• One Click Demo Installation
• Translation Ready 7 Languages
• Easily customizable
• Well Documented & Documentation included
• 40+ Video Tutorials, Step by Step
• Cross Browser Compatible – IE10+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera
• Life Time Support
• Fast Setup, easy to configure
• 15+ short codes and counting
• Unlimited colors
• App view mobile page
• 300+ google fonts
• User profile
• Custom width
• Google maps
• Google AdSense ready
• Social Media feeds
• 100+ options

2. NativeChurch – Multi Purpose WordPress church Theme

NativeChurch is a Theme developed for Church, Charity, Non-Profit and Religion wordpress Websites and comes handy for Portfolio/Corporate Websites as well.

• • Prayer Wall, Event Manager, Sermon Manager

• • Causes & Campaigns Manager

• Use page templates or drag drop page builder

3. Passage | Church 

Passage is an responsive WordPress church theme built specifically for churches – with extended sermons, donations, and events management. It’s beautiful, clean and professional. We built this theme specifically for churches, and is flexible enough to use for lots projects. Passage includes easy to use live customizers and drag & drop builders and is capable of handling a ton including staff members, sermons, catalogs, custom logins, selling stuff, blogs, filterable galleries, and almost anything that you can think up! We pride ourselves on how well this theme works out of the box, so if you run into any issues, please don’t hesitate to let us know at our dedicated support forum. Check out our feature list below!

4. Church and Events

Church and Event is suitable for users with zero programming skills as well as advanced developers. The theme is built for churches and events but it is also suitable for any kind of website – conference, environmental, charity, law, agency, hosting, nonprofit, gym, medical, parallax, political, activist, cause, one page, business, spa and shop. It supports The Event Calendar Pro, Filter Bar, WooTickets.

• • 30 Days Money Back Guarantee

• • Gutenberg – WordPress 5 ready

• Free installation and set up

5. Adore Church – Responsive WordPress Theme

Adore Church is a full functional  Theme for modern Church, Charity, Religion wordpress Websites and comes handy for Portfolio/Corporate Websites as well.

• • Built In Events Manager, Sermons Manager

• • Podcasting for Sermons

• SiteOrigins Drag Drop Page Builder

6. Church WordPress | HolyCross Church

HolyCross Church WP, Church WordPress Theme, is great for church website with functional donation, sermons, events system. Responsive, fast, created with a deep down research to church actual requirement, feature packed & supported by top authors.

• • 3 Homepage Demos

• • Events & sermons

• 150+ shortcode elements styles

7. Kause – Multi Purpose WordPress Theme

Kause is a super flexible WordPress theme, charities, sporting clubs  websites. A beautifully designed multi-purpose WordPress theme, perfect for charities, churches and non-profit websites in including political campaigns. Kause is clean and minimal and puts direct focus on your message.

8. Deeds – Best Nonprofit Church Organization WP Theme

The lightweight and finely coded Deeds Church WordPress Theme 2018 is aimed at building a progressing website on multiple niches, such as modern church website, Religion wordpress,  ministry, church event, church donation or a church fundraising website. It is cleaner, quicker and easier to customize, and is perfect for the newbies. Three uniquely built Homepage Layouts, 8 innovative Header Styles and a number of built-in pages of varied utility are bound to be of special appeal for the professional web designer to design church website easily. If you are looking for the best WP theme in 2018 then Deeds church theme will surely help you make your site quickly and easily.

• • Online Donation System for Religious Causes

• Complete Event Display System + 9 Demos

9. Mission – Crowdfunding and Commerce for Churches

Mission is a church theme offering everything that a church would ever need, from podcasting to calendars to commerce and funding, mission aims to provide an advanced one stop solution for your church.

10. Life Churches – WordPress Theme for Churches and Events

Life Churches is a great theme for traditional and modern churches and religious organizations, church events and other community events, church donations, etc.

Sermons support audio and video files help to reach out and touch to your visitor’s heart. Events Support create and show upcoming events in your church with Events Calendar will showcase them to attract more visitors. Woocommerce Integration – sell goods from your church website to collect funds for your religious projects and church without having to do extra expense. If you would like to develop a model churches related theme with amazing functionality, this theme is for you.

How to use themeforest filter option to narrow your options while selecting a church wordpress theme?

While surfing themforest searching for a theme that fits your church the most, make sure you leverage the filter option to navigate between thousands of church themes in the market. You can filter by the following categories:

1. Trending Items
2. Best Seller
3. Best Rated
4. Newest Item
5. Price: Low to High
6. Price High to Low

The post Best WordPress Themes for Churches appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Mailchimp vs Constant 

The two most well-known and popular email marketing platforms in the industry today are Constant Contact and Mailchimp.

At first glance, both are pretty similar and the differences between them are minor in terms of functionality and features. But even slight differences can impact the delivery of your message and your email marketing strategy, so you need to choose the one that works best for you.

We’ve performed a comprehensive review of both Mailchimp and Constant Contact, used them both extensively, and highlighted the pros and cons of each platform to determine which one is best.

The verdict?

We love Mailchimp, but Constant Contact is definitely the better email marketing platform at the moment for most businesses and startups – with room for some adjustments that we’ve mentioned below.

Our results were based on a comparison of the features, user interface, support, pricing, reputation, client satisfaction and the overall industry performance of each platform.

Our goal is to help you find the information you need to determine whether Mailchimp or Constant Contact is the right platform for your business.

1. Template and Design Features
2. Analytics and Reporting
3. Deliverability and Performance
4. Pricing
5. Support and Knowledge Base

Here’s some quick stats before we get started

1. Template and Design Features

Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp have many pre-designed email templates to choose from, and you can import your own custom-built html templates to both platforms.

Constant Contact has more templates than Mailchimp, and they are generally designed better and considered readier to send as opposed to Mailchimp because they are occasion-based. Constant Contact also has more design features and elements that can save you time when you’re customizing your email templates, such as offering its users a free professional image gallery from Bigstock and intuitive editing tools. That makes up for its storage space of 1- 2GB, which is a slight downside as opposed to Mailchimp, that lets you store as many images as you want but has no image gallery.

If that feature is important to you and you would like to use more images than the allotted 5 from Constant Contact, you can upload them on your hosting site and link them to your template. Constant Contact also includes contact management features, and a WYSIWYG editor for email templates that Mailchimp does not offer in its editing options.

2. Tracking Tools

Both Mailchimp and Constant Contact allow users to integrate Google Analytics to track their emails, offer split A/B testing (relatively recent on Constant Contact’s part), message segmentation and click-tracking stats though the platform. In terms of differences, one key element that Mailchimp has that Constant Contact doesn’t is the geo tracking feature that lets you target people in different countries. Constant Contact has better tracking tools and features, such as a predictive analytics and real time reports. Constant Contact also has a heatmap feature for more visual users, that shows campaign managers where users are clicking the most. Another strong and unique feature that Constant Contact has that Mailchimp doesn’t is the mobile open rate feature that allows you to see how many people accessed your message from mobile as opposed to desktop, which is useful because you’ll be able to focus on creating campaigns for the platform that your target audience is accessing you from the most.

3. Deliverability and Performance

What we love about Constant Contact is that the people in charge listen to complaints and do something about it. One of the biggest complaints from previous users of the Constant Contact platform was that it didn’t provide automation services that for example, allowed people to send customized happy birthday messages to their clients. This has now been remedied, and automation is now a service offered by the platform. Another complaint was that Constant Contact wasn’t integrative with other platforms that campaign managers worked with, such as Shopify or Salesforce. This has also now been added to the Constant Contact platform, and it can be integrated to other major platforms such as Facebook, WordPress, Shopify, QuickBooks, Hootsuite and Salesforce. Their deliverability rate is almost identical, so they are both strong performers in this arena. What Constant Contact does have going for it is a slightly higher deliverability rate and a larger click through-rate than Mailchimp. This is most likely because it’s been around the block – Constant Contact has been in the email marketing industry since 1995, and marketing material sent through it is less likely to be labelled as spam and go to the junk mail folder. It can stand to be more user friendly however, as Constant Contact isn’t as user-friendly as Mailchimp.

4. Pricing

Mailchimp has three types of fixed payment plans and a pay as you go plan. In terms of the fixed plans, there’s the Free Plan, the Grow Plan, and the Pro Plan. Mailchimp promises its Free Plan users that it will always stay free, for life, if they have less than 2,000 subscribers and are fine with sending out no more than 12,000 emails per month. The Grow Plan starts at $10/month for sending unlimited emails to up to 500 subscribers. To send an unlimited number of emails to up to 2,000 subscribers, the Grow Plan’s price jumps to $25 / month. The Pro Plan is the do-all of Mailchimp’s packages, that have premium support, advanced segmentation tools, comparative reporting, and multivariate testing.

Constant Contact doesn’t offer a free plan, and may seem initially more expensive, but it offers heavy discounts and plans for different types of businesses, like franchises and associations, an option that Mailchimp doesn’t have.

Constant Contact also gives you free access to its platform for two months, giving you plenty of time to make up your mind. You’re also never tied into a contract with them, and you can always cancel at any time. Constant contact has two different pricing plans, the Email Plan and the Email Plus plan.

The Email Plus plan has a lot of extra features, such as dynamic forms, 2GB of storage, event marketing, multiple user access, online donation features, surveys and polls, and lots more.

Mailchimp can definitely afford to offer cheaper and free plans given its massive number of users, so quality vs. quantity is key when you’re making your final decision as to which platform works better for you. Mailchimp is cheaper initially and has more users than Constant Contact.

Constant Contact costs more but is more select in its services and has more experience in the market. What your needs are determine the best platform for you.

5. Support and Knowledge Base

Both Mail chimp and Constant Contact have solid knowledge bases on their websites and information centers, video tutorials, and more.

Other than what the actual platforms put out there, there are tons of user tutorials, video guides, YouTube channels, and discussion forums that are specifically made for users, by users of these platforms.

But when it comes to getting direct, professional help from the experts themselves, Constant Contact shines in this department by employing dedicated support teams that you can actually call and speak to when you’re encountering an issue.

Mailchimp only offers email and chat options, and that’s just for the first month if you’re a non-paying user with the free plan. Constant Contact has award-winning customer support that even the most dedicated Mailchimp users acknowledge as better.

The Result

Constant Contact is the better choice and stronger, higher quality platform in our comparison than Mailchimp.

While we definitely think that the team at Constant Contact can do better to make its platform more visually appealing, the features and experience working with a company that’s been doing this since well, the real birth of the internet is hard to beat.

One thing that we’ve noticed about Constant Contact while doing our research is that it listens to criticism and makes up for what it lacks. We’re pretty confident that Constant Contact will address those issues and will continue to be the leading platform in the email marketing industry.

The post Mailchimp vs Constant Contact 2019 – The Comprehensive Review appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Small and medium-sized businesses need SEO services to gain recognition in their industry, but there are a lot of companies that promise excellent ranking results and don’t deliver. RankPay, the California-based SEO service company has pretty much changed the SEO service stakes and has tackled this problem head-on with its pay for performance approach. What makes it different from most other SEO services companies is that RankPay only charges you when your business starts appearing on search engine results – so if you don’t rank, you don’t pay.

Since there are different approaches to achieve high visibility and ranking on Google and other major Search Engine Optimization, RankPay offers more than one service. These services are aimed to tackle issues such as updating listings and posting on social media. There’s a lot that goes into each service, so we’ll go over what they are and what they are supposed to include.

RankPay Services

• General SEO
• Local Citations
• Social Marketing
• Blog Management
• Website Maintenance
• Content Optimization.

How Can RankPay’s Services Benefit my Business?

The different services and approaches that RankPay has are pretty much geared towards getting your company ranked from every angle possible. Good SEO practices are comprehensive, and not only tackle one aspect of the website.

General SEO Services

To date, RankPay has ranked 5,000 business on the first page of Google. RankPay does not disclose how it does so, but it does mention that it focuses on local results for the business allowing them to rank similar clients in the top search engine results based on their location. In terms of its SEO Services, RankPay allows users to sign up for free and gives them the average pricing based on tiers, or group of result positions. There are five position tiers:

• Tier 1 > Positions 21-30 (Lowest)
• Tier 2 > Positions 11-20
• Tier 3 > Positions 7-10
• Tier 4 > Positions 4-6
• Tier 5 > Positions 1-3 (Highest)

How much you’ll pay is determined on keyword competition but RankPay provides upfront pricing, so you know what you’ll be paying as an average before you commit. Business owners are able to search for the best keywords that can help them rank their business with their free account, and business owners will only be asked to pay if RankPay makes their rank score better than what it was before a client signs up. So let’s say a business ranks at #10 already on Google. If RankPay won’t change it to rank higher, it doesn’t charge the client.

Local Citation Builder

When it comes to SEO ranking, the information that exists online about your business not only has to be consistent, but it must be updated continuously. Problems happen when the information about your business isn’t available in directories, is duplicated or if its inconsistent, because that can confuses search engines.

With the local citation builder, RankPay updates your online business listings if they exist, and they also submit business profile citations to over 150 local business directories. These directories are hand-picked to ensure credibility, an important factor when it comes to major search engines indexing your site.

RankPay aligns your listings with white-hat SEO practices, and updates them manually so an actual RankPay employee will be updating your information as opposed to software which is prone to glitches and mistakes and may not be able to fill all fields appropriately. RankPay also scours the web for duplicate listings and actually contacts those directories to remove your information if it is harmful for your ranking score.

Social Marketing

RankPay acts as your own personal social media management system, and its social media team take building an audience and posting on your behalf to a new level.

Rank Pay publishes and schedules social media posts on your behalf, and even creates a social presence for you free of charge if you don’t have one. All the material must be approved by you, and social media management is executed by professional marketing writers that spend a lot of time getting to know you and your business in order for them to provide the most authentic experience possible for your audience.

RankPay’s writers work with you to determine the voice of your business and create a social media strategy that it geared towards increased shares, mentions, and comments that engage your audience.

RankPay has three social media plans:

Blog Management

RankPay helps businesses generate a content marketing strategy and this involves setting up, running and optimizing your business blog. Blogs may seem to be too much work and take a lot of time, but their results have proved invaluable to business owners due to their effect on visitors and traffic. Websites with good blogs have on average, 55% more traffic than those that don’t. The best proof of RankPay’s blog expertise is its own well-managed blog. It’s engaging and frequently updated, has a great voice and style, and it gives its readers value.

RankPay helps businesses with their blogs and they have teams of writers that are dedicated to each business and create unique content strategies based on your business and industry. You’ll work with a one-on-one writer that studies your business and works with you to determine the best tone and approach to take for your blog.

RankPay updates your blog monthly with relevant content and publish scheduled posts based on your timeline and preference.

Website Maintenance

Every successful SEO strategy relies on establishing, running, and maintaining a solid website that is search engine readable and SEO optimized.

Rank Pay is serious about site security, page speed, and SSL certification. Many websites are vulnerable to security attacks and this can have a profound impact on your online business strategy. If your website loading time and page speed is slow due to errors that can easily be fixed, your bounce rate increases and search engines sink your website lower in in search results.

RankPay focuses on what search engines look for and how they read your site. Then, its developers make sure to fix and resolve any errors that may be affecting your website’s performance, and continue to maintain it for you to make sure that it complies with all new algorithm updates.

RankPay also provides site hosting services and offers different pricing plans based on your website maintenance needs. They start at $99 and do not require long-term contracts.

Content Optimization

RankPay stresses on content, and for good reason because major search engines like Google reward and rank valuable, fresh and engaging content higher. Even if your website already has good content, keeping it the same over extended periods of time can result in lower ranking.

RankPay’s Content Optimization service basically updates your website and generates fresh, engaging content that’s SEO-focused. Their content strategy relies on not only generating this content for readers, but doing so in a way that’s optimized for crawler readability.

You have full control of the content being posted so if there are changes made to your content that you don’t like, it won’t be published. Everything is run by you to make sure you’re completely satisfied with the changes.

Our Verdict

RankPay seems to lean more towards SEO-centric content strategies and link building. It’s more geared towards small and medium size business and can deliver great results. You can choose their degree of involvement in your online SEO strategy and RankPay doesn’t force you into financial obligations with long-term contracts. It’s absolutely risk-free to try them out, and with RankPay’s pay when you rank option, you don’t have to worry about spending money on bogus results.

The post RankPay SEO Service appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

SEO PowerSuite of SEO tools that helps you stay on top of your SEO game

SEO Powersuite is a software bundle of Link Assistant’s most robust SEO tools that helps companies understand how to work with and implement solid SEO practices. Download SEO Power-suite for free.

PowerSuite comes with Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor, SEO SpyGlass, and Link Assistant. These tools you to control and monitor your SEO practices in different ways, such as understanding keyword ranking and comparing how well you’re doing versus your competitors.

There are tons of features included in each software tool, so investing some time in getting to understand PowerSuite’s many features can lead to great bottom-line results and could even change the way your business broadcasts its message out there.

We’ve used PowerSuite for years and it’s a great bundle of tools that we definitely recommend for improving your SEO practices. That sentiment is shared by major industry giants who use it, like Mastercard, Microsoft, Nestle, IBM and HP. PowerSuite is so popular because it’s comprehensive, easy-to-use, and most importantly demystifies the ever-changing maze of Search Engine Optimization.

Here’s a breakdown of the software included in the bundle, and what you can do using PowerSuite for SEO.

What’s included in SEO PowerSuite

1. Rank Tracker
2. Website Auditor
3. SEO SpyGlass
4. Link Assistant

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker is PowerSuite’s ranking software tool that searches for and compares ranking information from over 400 search engines, giving businesses invaluable insight from a wide net of sources.

Users can see how their use of keywords or keyword phrases affects their traffic by predicting how many people are likely to visit their site. It integrates the most popular keyword tools that you may already be using, such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Analytics. You can also track your competitors using Rank Tracker, so that you can compare your performance and make the adjustments needed to keep you ahead.

Rank Tracker also allows unlimited keyword tracking, so you don’t have to worry about paying extra when you reach your keyword limit. This tool can be as in-depth as you need it to be with its Geo-specific features, allowing you to track keywords in particular regions and even addresses through their advanced search settings.

The reporting feature in Rank Tracker is customizable and very easy to interpret. If you’re working for a client, you can schedule recurring monthly, weekly or daily ranking reports so that they can see the progress that’s being made on their site.

Website Auditor

SEO PowerSuite’s WebSite Auditor “sees” your website like a search engine does, and it lets you know what you need to fix.

It crawls your entire site and reports issues that can potentially harm your rankings which usually stem from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and media issues.

You can generate a report of the analysis and schedule to-do tasks to get them done in chunks, with the program letting you know once you’ve completed a task and checks it off for you. Better yet, if you’re not sure how you need to fix a particular issue, the program gives you detailed instructions on how to do it yourself.

WebSite Auditor is more than simply a reporting tool, it allows users to perform in-app optimization functions and edit titles and meta description tags in separate tabs. WebSite Auditor also allows you to generate XML sitemaps and robot.txt files, and it’s pretty thorough giving you a comprehensive understanding of how your site is performing and its search engine strength.

SEO SpyGlass

SEO SpyGlass is a backlink database tool that shows you all the backlinks to your site and tells you whether they’re helping or harming your rankings. Even one link can mean a penalty from Google, making this a pretty useful tool that helps you weed out bad links and remain in good standing with search engines.

One of its useful features is that SEO SpyGlass gives its users the contact information of webmasters so that you’re able to rectify issues that come from bad links or request to take them down altogether.

SEO SypGlass can also be used to “spy” on the backlinks of competitors because it discloses their backlink structure and allows businesses to compare strategies and even see where their backlinks intersect. SpyGlass also provides recommendations with fully customizable and automated reporting.  

Link Assistant

Link Assistant is a great tool for building relevant links to your site, and it does all of the brunt work for you.

Based on the goals that you’ve set for your campaign or strategy, you’ll be able to sort your link prospects through tools that allow you to see their Alexa ranking, their domain authority or shares on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter to target them.

Often, the hardest part about this process if you’re doing it manually is reaching out to prospects. Link Assistant has you covered in that aspect because it actually provides you with tools like email templates and allows you to contact your prospects directly from the app, which makes it easy to manage. You can even see how many times you’ve contacted a prospect and move them through different lists if needed.

Just like all of PowerSuite Seo’s other tools, You can access and generate analysis reports for your clients and schedule them all in one click.

SEO PowerSuite User Group

Join SEO PowerSuite User Group

Would you like to learn some insider SEO PowerSuite hacks and news? Join SEO PowerSuite User Group to get help, find partners, and learn all the good stuff related to SEO and online marketing.

Our Verdict

We definitely believe that SEO PowerSuite can help your business because it’s a comprehensive bundle of programs that can make your life easier and save you lots of time and money.

You can choose one of three versions, the Free version, a Professional License that costs a one-time payment of $299, or the Enterprise License that costs $699. You do need to pay the Algo Update fee of $29 / month, which is extremely fair as Link Assistant does update regularly to keep you up to date.

Give SEO PowerSuite a try for thirty days free! We’re certain you’ll see great results and improvement in your site rankings and SEO strategy.

Disclaimer: This article contains referral links which means that if you click on the link and purchase SEO Powersuite, we receive a commission (at no cost to you). We always use and test anything we review before recommending it to our readers, so if we don’t love it, we would never recommend it!

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