So You Want A Church Website?

Dynamic and Static Websites February 2, 2006

When thinking of building a website for your church, you have a major decision to make. You must decide whether you want a static or dynamic site. This may also mean that you need to realize that there are different types of websites. When you are cruising around on the internet, you will run into two different types of websites, static and dynamic. Static websites consist of a whole bunch of HTML files that are linked together by a series of hyperlinks. Each page is just a file, and what you request from the server is exactly what the server gives you. The server finds the file and gives it back to you without adding anything to it. Think of the way you request a file, say a Microsoft Word file, from the hard drive on your computer. You click on the file, and the computer opens the file just as you saved it. This is the way static sites work. If a webpage ends in the extension .html, it is probably static. These are the easiest types of sites to build, and with a little thought, you can have a really nice one up in a matter of hours. You can make an HTML site look good and it will be functional. HTML sites are usually smaller sites that do not go through a whole lot of changes. My first foray into designing a church website was a static site. Here is a mock up of what it looked like:
Click on it if you want to see a bigger version. Notice that there was nothing fancy. It was just a clean looking site that I made using pure HTML and CSS. All the pages on the site were based on this template.

The second type of site is dynamic. Dynamic sites often change their content frequently. A dynamic site consists of a whole bunch of files that exist on a database of some sort on the server. When you request a page in this scenario, the server assembles the page on the fly from several files in the database. You might have one file that has your main text, one file that has your side bar, one file that has your header, and another file that has your footer. All of these files are in the database. When a person requests a page, say a page like the one you are currently looking at, all of these pieces come together in the page. All of this happens on the server. Dynamic pages can be used to give multiple church members publishing priveleges, to produce interactive web-based calendars, to produce a weblog (blog), to draw in headlines from newspapers, to collect tithes online from church members, to podcast or vidcast sermons, or to enable pretty much any other neat feature you have seen on someone else’s websites. Dynamic sites usually end with and extension other than HTML. Often it will be something like .php, .cgi, or .asp. Our current church site is dynamic (although it currently lacks the visual appeal of our first site–hopefully that will be fixed in time).

All of this is to say that one of the first decisions you need to make regarding your site is what do you want it to do. If you just want a site that will not change much and that will list service times, location, ministries, and the like, go with a static site.

If you want a site that “does stuff,” like calendars, blogs, and the like, go with a dynamic site. You are probably going to need the same basic tools for either type of site. You will need to understand or learn some basic HTML and possibly some CSS, but that’s about it. You do not necessarilly need to know how to manipulate databases and make a server run to produce a dynamic site. There are very good server companies that will set all that up for you so that you can just add your content. You just decide what you want.

If you have any questions about making this decision, please post them in a comment. I would be glad to dialogue with anyone about how they can make the best decision for their church.