AM Design

We create websites for all types of businesses and organizations. Building church websites is one of our specialties.

We’ve worked with churches of 200 people and churches of 25,000 people and know that not every project is the same.  I want to take some time and share with you our process for beginning a church project and what that means for the client. If you checked out our client list before venturing here, you’ve probably noticed that we have partnered with hundreds of churches to deliver a world class online presence for each of them.   When you call us or email us to talk about your project, you’ll most likely here us refer to the “front-end” of your website and the “back-end”.  What we typically mean by these statements is that there are two parts to any great website: 

1. FRONT-END – This refers to the visible site content files that the public views when going to your domain. You may have also heard this called your “user interface”. The front-end defines the look and feel of the site. The job of the front-end files is to be the visually pleasing package that displays all the complex programming going on in the back end.

2. BACK-END  – The back-end refers to the files, databases, management systems, control panels, and code that make your website actually function. 

For AM, building a great church website is more than just designing a “pretty” site (although that’s a huge part of it) but it’s about building a framework that will grow with you as a church, one that will give you an easy, effective system for managing content including pages, imagery, navigation, media and any other modules that are a part of your site. So, with those definitions in mind, we want to look at our process for building a church website and how we approach both the “front-end” and “back-end” of the project.

The Design Process

First of all, we offer only custom designed solutions, not templates. This doesn’t only mean that your church’s home page will be different than every other project we’ve done, but this also means that your content pages and different features that you purchase with us will have a custom flair.  For example, if we include a sermons manager in the project, your sermons manager will look like the rest of the site, not like a plug-in.  Furthermore, we approach each sermons manager through the lens of what is going to be the best for the church. For instance, if your church currently doesn’t have the team in place to support a videocast of your Sunday sermons, then we’re not going to build you a sermons manager that is video driven or has big emphasis on large video screen images.  However, if you think that may be something you want to have in place in the next 12 months, then we do need to make sure your sermon system can grow into that without looking empty right now by providing an audio only solution for now that can handle video later. Our design process is an interactive one involving one of our art directors and the client working side by side to understand the mission and vision of the client, the goals for the church’s website, and much more.

The Content Management System

For 99% of the church sites we build, the “back-end” of the site is specifically referring to a content management system or “CMS”.  The number one rule to know about the CMS before beginning a website design and development project with AM Design or with anybody else is that not every CMS is created equal.  Much like front-end design, where sites are either custom or template based, the CMS can be built in one of these two manners.  There are hundreds of content management systems in existence that are pre-built and ready to plug into your site. Some of these are “proprietary” meaning that you need to purchase the license, either on a one-time or ongoing basis, to use this software, and some are “open-source” meaning that the CMS is available for download for free to plug-in to your site.   However, with a pre-built system, you are left with having to build around the available modules and features of the CMS.  When you contact AM Design to ask us to bid on your church’s site, you’re most likely going to hear that we have two solutions to offer you as the client:  (1) a pre-built system using a ministry based CMS developed by Monk Development or (2) a custom CMS developed in house, built specifically with your project in mind.

Two CMS Options (The Car/Chassy Model)

Let’s say your car breaks down, or you can no longer fit your growing family into your coupe, or for whatever reason, you know it’s time to make a change, so you go to the local Ford or Toyota dealer.  The salesperson will walk you around the lot and present you a number of choices, but whatever you choose, you’re primarily purchasing a product. You may purchase a service plan, addition of custom features that affect the appearance, or some type of add-on functionality like XM Radio, but the reality is you’ve purchased a system that is pre-built.  While the purchase you’ve made is for a great car that will do a great job of getting you around, it’s going to be nearly impossible and very expensive to make major changes to the functionality of the car in the future.  If you drive a 4×2, changing it to a 4×4 would be very costly and time-consuming, and probably completely illogical.  Option one for most of our church clients is using a pre-built system.  For the last several years, AM Design has partnered with Monk Development, creators of Ekklesia 360, to deliver a pre-built system that works well for the majority of our church clients.  We believe of all of the CMS options on the market, Ekklesia 360 is the most functional, easiest to use, and includes the most standard features. It has been built with churches and ministries in mind, so it includes features that the majority of today’s churches need.  Furthermore, it gives us semi-customizable solution that allows us to build custom front-end sites the way we want. For 90% of churches, Ekklesia 360 is a great content management system. 

Let’s go back to the day you realize that you need a new car. Now let’s say that instead of going to the local Ford dealership and buying a 2010 Mustang, that you come across a chassy for a 2010 Mustang and you hire somebody to build a custom car to your exact specifications using this chassy.  You decide that you want that you want the doors to open from the top like a DeLorean or maybe you want a custom sound system that works differently than any other Mustang, no problem.  When a car is built for you, the sky is the limit.  This is the best analogy we know for approaching our two CMS options. In addition to Ekklesia, we offer our clients a custom solution that may work better for them.  While Ekklesia is a great product, we sometimes find that a client needs a particular online system to work a certain way and if we assess that it can’t be done through an Ekklesia CMS, then we’ll propose a custom solution for the client.  While the pricing tends to be a little higher usually, for some clients it’s worth the extra investment to start from scratch as opposed to a pre-built system.  You may be thinking, “sounds great, but our church can’t afford the custom CMS route”.  We don’t want to discourage our clients from the custom route; many times, the total cost of ownership might be more cost effective over the long-run. When you contact us, our team will discuss options with you and present to you the best option for partnering with us on a new web project. Click here to request a quote for your next project.