The resources listed on this page are individuals, companies and organisations that I find (or have found) useful in this particular ministry – i.e. developing websites for churches and other Christian organisations.

Some of these links are “affiliate” links – which means that if you click on a link and then purchase something from that organisation, then I get a small amount of money.  Anything I receive goes towards helping churches that cannot afford even to buy a domain name, or a hosting account, to be able to achieve that.  No pressure – no hard sell!  In fact, I probably only get one ‘click’ on an affiliate link each month – and maybe 3 “sales” in a year.  But I don’t mind – I am not in this to make or raise money!

There’s also links to other resources at the bottom which people may find useful.

The Themeloom

Tim Hyde is a web designer/developer and minister (part-time) of a Baptist Church in Hartlepool in the North East of England. He creates and develops digital stuff, especially for churches and non-profits. He’s the founder of WordPress Driven Church and the Theme Loom.

In the past year I have started using Tim’s themes for more and more church projects – they are simply effective, sleek, not glitzy and they do exactly what they are meant to do – really, really, well! I have recently been building several new sites using the responsive Xi theme that Tim built and everyone who has seen it, and all the people I have been building the sites for. have been really “wowed” by it.

Tim’s work is definitely God inspired!

Hostgator

For many years I used GoDaddy.com for purchasing domain names and hosting accounts – and happily recommended them to others. However, I have increasingly been concerned about the performance of the low-end (cheap) hosting accounts – and that is what most of the people I work with can afford (or indeed need). In 2011 I did quite a bit of research into the mass-hosting market, looking for a most cost effective hosting provider, available worldwide, that had particularly a good reputation for consistent performance and good customer service. And Hostgator came out on top for me – most especially for outstanding customer service online (through email), in live chat and over the telephone. SO… if you need affordable hosting then you won’t go far wrong with Hostgator.

 Elegant Themes

Nick Roach at Elegant Themes is not only an excellent theme designer, but he also has a great attitude towards providing ongoing support and looking for new ways to support his customers.  I’ve been using Elegant Themes for a couple of years now and their portfolio is really good.  And what’s more the people I have built sites for have said that the themes are especially easy to manage, particularly for non-techies.

The Elegant Themes options pages are clear and easy to understand – really important for my clients.  Nick’s themes are also very cost effective for designers and clients – you get a great selection of themes for different purposes for a very low (unbelievably low!) price.  Great work Nick – and very “Elegant Themes“!

MailChimp

Many of the churches and organisations I have been working with have been looking for a better way to do e-newsletters as one of the stratagies for engaging with their congregations, ex-members, friends, etc. etc.  And my recommendation is always to go for MailChimp.  Certainly for most of my clients, the free account is perfect – with loads of capacity for weekly or monthly newsletters and a really easy interface for administrators to use – and for the “users” (congregation) to use too.  And as well as that, MailChimp’s newsletter templates have just about everything you need to do whatever you want!  I love free stuff – especially when it really works – and MailChimp is definitely one of my most recommended applications.

Theme Forest

ThemeForest is just a great market place for all things website related – themes, plugins, all the different sorts of templates and code versions you can think of – and a simply amazing selection of artistic and technical talent from all over the world, that can probably help you if you are going it alone with your website development.  My focus has usually been on looking for themes with particular characteristics / functionality or look for client churches – and if they haven’t seen something they like then I always point them to ThemeForest to take a look.