Hosting, Design and Costs for Parish web sites

[Geoffrey Hall]

I am part of a committee in our parish tasked with reviewing our communications needs. This includes website design and functionality. In exploring Parish websites, I found the Fredericton Diocesan website very appealing.

Would you mind providing more information regarding the hosting, design, costs and maintenance of your website. I would like to propose to our vestry a similar design.

[Geoffrey Hall]

Pleased to do so ....

The Diocesan site is hosted with HostPapa (Toronto).  Link at the bottom of our home page.  Price is right - about $5 per month.

I use Adobe Dreamweaver primarily for design and maintenance but its high end and not at all necessary for basic needs.  There are several numerous free options available ... WordPress, Kompozer, Joomla etc ...  Of course the real "costs" for web sites are discipline and time - ie maintenance, planning, editing,  gathering and the flow of information.  $$ costs are non-existent and really not an issue these days.

Another relatively recent option you might want to seriously explore is Google Sites.  Built-in editing capability, design templates, free hosting and space and you can, in fact, use your current domain name if you wish.

I hope that helps.