Since 2016, the diocese has offered a website hosting plan to churches. The plan provides a simple, easy-to-update template to churches who may have few resources and technical abilities to build and maintain a site on their own. In 2022, we opened up this program to churches in New Hampshire, too!
What’s included?
Hosting
- The diocese hosts your church website
- Each church is allotted 1 GB of storage
Initial Setup
There are three design templates to select from, designed just for Maine Episcopal churches that include several color schemes and handy plug-ins like a calendar and slideshow. You choose a design template, then our team will assist you with:
- Initial set-up and navigation design
- Selecting a domain name, if you don’t yet have one
- Migration of text and media files (including photos)
- An initial training session via Zoom with your staff or volunteers to get you up-to-speed.
When initial setup is complete, we will point your new site to your domain name, and you’re ready to go!
Ongoing Support
- Tech support
- Want to make a change you don’t know how to make on your own? Contact us!
- Behind-the-scenes updates
- WordPress issues updates often. We will track and take care of these as they arise. You’ll be able to rest easy knowing the back-end support is being handled.
- Refresher training or training of new parish website admins as needed via Zoom
- A best practices audit of your website by Susan Sherrill Axelrod, Director of Communications
Basic Web Statistics
WP Statistics Plugin provides basic web traffic information which can be printed from the screen. Advanced reports are not available.
What’s not included?
- Email is not part of the Dio Maine Website Hosting plan. If you would like to use domain-based email (with your .org), you would be able to purchase email from another hosting company fairly inexpensively. We also recommend Google Workspace.
Interested? Here’s What We Need from You
Secure Your Domain Name and Manage Renewals
- Provide us with your credentials for accessing your domain account.
- Ensure you track and renew your domain name. We’ve had churches lose their domain name by forgetting to renew – don’t let that happen to you!
Use the Provided Templates
At this time, we only support templates installed by us. The Hosting program also does not cover the ongoing maintenance and management of any plugins a church might add on their own. Connect with us first, we’re happy to help.
Update Your Content!
Your site is yours – you can continue to update and customize your site with new updates, text, photos, and to a certain extent, navigation.
Designate a Web Admin
Your web admin will be the one updating content. They don’t need to be a tech expert — we can train them! Going through a transition? Ensure you put us in touch with the new web admin when one steps down or moves on. Be sure the new person has the logins/information that they need.
Attend Training
Your web admin will attend at least one training session with our team each year. We offer both multi-church group trainings and individual church sessions.
Participate in an Annual Website Audit
Our team will work with you to ensure your site’s content and appearance is up-to-date and following best practices for church websites.