Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Hey Fletch … Who set up the XPastor.org website? I’ve explored the XPastor site and like how it is set-up. I’m currently serving on the board of a ministry. They tasked me with finding a designer to bring the site up-to-date. Would you have a contact to get an estimate? 

DRF—I’m glad that you like the XPastor site and thank you for the compliment. XPastor is done in WordPress. Here’s a few lines from a Wikipedia article:

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS). Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. It is most associated with blogging, but supports other types of web content including more traditional mailing lists and forums, media galleries, and online stores. Used by more than 60 million websites, including 30.6% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2018. WordPress is the most popular website management system in use.

WordPress is easy to set up and extremely easy to run. A key is having great graphics!

In your email you noted that you have “about $750 to get it up and running.” Web designers can be expensive and your budget won’t go very far. Search for a volunteer or teen who is computer savvy who can help!

Here is what you will need to host the website:

  • Domain names—You already have .org but also get .com and .net. Google can host the domain names for $10 a year.
  • Web host—XPastor likes WPengine. For a site with under 25,000 visits per month, this runs $35 each month or $350 if paid in advance. They do free migration of sites as well.
  • Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)—This makes your site safer and is becoming required. Cloudflare offers this for free. Cloudflare also has free caching of images and can stop web threats.

To run the site, you will need:

  • A good theme—XPastor uses Avada. It costs $60, one-time.
  • Good photos—Bigstock charges for $2 each one.
  • A masthead or logo—Find a paid or volunteer graphic artist.
  • Payment processing—Software for Stripe in WordPress is free.