Church Website Design: Hints & Tips

—Choosing A Domain Name...

What is a domain name?

A domain name is simply the address of the website. For example to get to this site you can visit www.church123.com (church123.com is our domain name). You may have noticed that domain names can have a number of different endings. You can also get to this site by visiting www.church123.net or www.church123.org. As a church you will probably only want one ending (you have to pay for each ending you have). The main endings are .com, .org, .net and, for those in the UK, .co.uk and .org.uk. Technically .com addresses are for companies (.co.uk if in the UK), .net addresses indicate you provide Internet services, and .org (.org.uk if in the UK) shows that you are an organisation. However these endings are not strictly adhered to so to a large extent the ending you chose is down to personal preference. If you don't already have a domain name then Church123 can register domain names for only £15 for UK endings (e.g. churchname.co.uk or churchname.org.uk) and £25 for other endings (e.g. churchname.com or churchname.net). These registrations last for two years at which point you can easily choose to renew them. If your church already has a web address then this can be used with the Church123 system.

Basic principles

Successful domain names are short and memorable. Get this right and you won't go far wrong.

Short: Your domain name will end up featuring on all your church publicity, so you won't want it to take up lots of space. Also, you don't want to put off people from typing it into their web-browser.
Memorable: Having seen your website address on a noticeboard (or wherever) you want to help people remember it so they can visit the church website later.

This immediately helps us choose a domain name for, say, St. Daniel's Church, Littletown. One option, st-daniels-church-littletown.org.uk, is simply too long, whereas an abbreviated version, stdachli.co.uk, is both hard to remember and fails to make an obvious link with the church. Far better options would be stdaniels.co.uk, stdanielslittletown.co.uk, or danielschurch.net. Please note a lot of domain names are already registered by churches, so you may have to think laterally.

Incidentally, it is best not to use hyphens in a domain name if you can help it. They make it harder for people to type the address, so shorten our-church-domain.org to ourchurchdomain.org. This can make the domain name harder to read, but this is not usually a problem if you restrict the domain name to contain only two words (or three at most).

Local community domains

If your church is trying to reach a particular local community or town (and presumably it is) then one further option is to choose a domain name related to your community. This is a really good idea.

For example, St Daniel's Church, Littletown would do well to get a domain such as littletown.co.uk, littletownlife.org.uk, littletownonline.co.uk, or littletownchurch.org.uk.

Not only does this provide a domain name which is short and memorable, it gives you a website address which is immediately attractive and interesting to the very people you are trying to reach. It also opens up the possibility that you could make the church website just one part of a larger community website.

Creating a true community website can take a lot of work, but is a great idea. Have a look at our community website page for more information.

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