Learning WordPress

The WordPress team just introduced a new learning platform so that WordPress users can learn how to use it. If you use WordPress for your website, or are just starting to, you may wish to learn more about it. Here is the link to the new WordPress learning workshops: Workshops | Learn WordPress

New GCI Microsites

Based on our previous microsite hosting option, we’ve created a brand new GCI microsite that is fully usable on creation. What does that mean? We use your church information from our online system to create a page that is pre-populated with general information that applies the most GCI churches in the United States. It uses

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Website Hosting

One of the first questions on your mind when you set up a website is, “Where do I host it?” There are so many options to choose from. How do you make sense of it all. How do you even get started? Well, I can offer some recommendations, but honestly, it comes down to what

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Online Giving

A question that comes up from time to time is, “How can we accept donations on our website?”. Well, the answer used to be pretty simple, but it’s gotten a bit more complicated this year as we are in the middle of rolling out a new online giving platform powered by GivingFuel. The new platform

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GCI-branded WordPress Theme

Wow. I thought this blog was completely dead. And then I get a question from someone who actually came here. So here’s the question: “Is there a template for local church websites that takes advantage of the excellent branding GCI is achieving?” Well, yes, there is. But we’ve been struggling with various issues with it.

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Why Encrypt Websites?

This year, GCI implemented https encryption across most of its hosted websites. Most of these websites are pretty basic with simple information about a church or camp. There’s nothing really private on them. There’s no personal information collected to keep secure. Still, I had my reasons for wanting it and recent developments by Let’s Encrypt made it

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Why WordPress? And is it really safe?

Anyone who has in the past few years asked GCI to host a website for them knows that I push WordPress. And while we don’t force you to use any particular website hosting environment, there are good reasons why we recommend it even if it is more work for us. So here are some reasons:

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Using Images from the Internet

Internet tools like Google Images and Bing Images have made it very easy to find and download images from the internet. In the process, they also make it very easy to violate copyright law. Now we may think, “Our church is so small. No one will notice if we use a copyrighted image. And if

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Want Your Website To Get Hacked?

At least a few of you know that I push pretty hard when it comes to updating software that runs websites. I always refer back to the reason: old software is easier to hack. Today I ran across this article about a cybersecurity expert who got his website hacked. And why? Because he didn’t update

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The Power of Google Analytics

As promised, here is the presentation and notes from the “The Power of Google Analytics” workshop at the 2013 Denominational Conference in Orlando, Florida. The Power of Google Analytics PowerPoint The Power of Google Analytics PDF