In our last article on Church Web Master we talked about setting up a theme for your site.  We were going to start developing a theme called Livingos Upsilon because it had a nice scrolling feature for images.  As we began to work on the theme it became apparent that it would be a little too complicated for someone who was just trying to get a church website started.  We have switched to a theme called Massive News which also has a nice picture scrolling feature, but is a lot easier for a new church web master to work with.  We installed the theme and added a few pictures.

To get pictures for the site we bought a 27 shot disposable camera for $3.99, took the pictures, and had it developed onto a CD for $3.22.  If you have a digital camera and are able to upload pictures onto your computer that would certainly work as well, but it has been my experience that getting pictures can sometimes be a sticking point in getting your website developed.  Using a disposable camera and getting a CD is a very simple process.

We are going to want to do a couple of more things to your website today.  Login to your site and go to the WordPress dashboard.  Click on the Settings tab.  Click on the Permalinks tab.  You need to change the permalink structure from the default setting to a custom setting that looks like this /%postname%/

We also want to change the privacy setting so that people and search engines can find the site.  Once Google locates the site it will be indexed which means that it will start showing up on Google searches.  Initially, you are just looking for your site to show up when someone seaches for anything close to your church name on Google.  It sometimes takes several weeks to get your site indexed, so go ahead and change the privacy setting.  By the time your site gets indexed you should be ready for traffic.

Now, you need to write an article (200-300 words) describing what your church website will be about.  Once you post that first article, the search engines will begin the process of indexing your site.  We will pick it up from there in our next article.