I am writing a series of posts about setting goals for your church website. I’ve talked about goal setting before. In this post I want to introduce you to the idea of setting smart goals for your website. We all know that goals are important. In every aspect of our lives we must set goals. Your church website is no different. The big question is are you being smart with your goals?

I use the SMART goal setting technique with clients and for the websites I develop. I am not usually a fan of acronyms, but for goal setting, I have yet to find something better.

What does SMART stand for?

Specific – Your goal need to be extremely specific and concrete. Being able to clearly identify when the goal is achieved is key. It also cannot be a moving target, but a goal that is fixed. For instance, “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people.” is a fixed goal, while, “Write blog posts about our church.” is not.

Measurable – Your goal needs to not only be specific but it needs to be able to be measured with empirical evidence. An easy test is to see if your goal is measurable or not is to explain to a friend how you know, with data, that you achieved it. If we look at our previous example: “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people.” Is a simple, but very measurable goal. Using analytics we can see how much traffic our blog received this month and compare to next month.

Achievable – Your goal needs to be something you can reasonably reach. It does not mean you shouldn’t aim for a high reaching goal. It just needs to be something that is achievable based on the amount of work and effort you apply to the goal. In this case: “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people in 90 days.” Works for a goal if your church website has 500 users a month. But “Increase website visits to one million.” Would not be something that we can reasonably get to.

Realistic – Very similar to being achievable, your goal needs to be realistic. It needs to match up to what your vision is for your church, and your church website. For more on vision you can see my post about defining your website vision.

Time-bound – Your goal needs to be time based. In working with goals for websites, we need to develop a set of milestones that we can measure. For goals for my sites, I set one smaller monthly goal and then three larger ones for the quarter.

So? What are your goals? How are planning on reaching these?

The Old & New Project launched last week and it is an amazing showcase of illustrations from the bible. The Old & New Project features three new illustrations a week which you can order as prints. All of the proceeds go to the blood:water mission.

Very soon my office will be decked out in illustrations from Old & New, the designs are fantastic!

Check it out: http://oldandnewproject.com

I am running a test. Something that might drastically change how a user interacts with Church Website Ideas. Last night I removed the search field from this site in a effort to test an idea I had. It all started when I wanted to find an old blog post I wrote, so I did a quick search using a keyword and, nothing! I couldn’t find the post, or anything really relevant. Not a good user experience.

A Quick Look at the Numbers
I thought that if I am having trouble finding things, then I bet others are too. I took a quick look at my Google Analytic data and noticed in one week, 21% of people searching this site we bouncing off as soon as they hit the results page. This can mean a few things, but I read it as: 21% of our users are not finding content and leaving the site. Not something I want to be known for.

Why Search Can Fail Users
From a user experience viewpoint, search can be a fantastic tool when it works. It finds the content the user was looking for. But when it fails, it frustrates the user and they feel bad. Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. Did you find what you were looking for? Google focuses a ton of resources to make sure that all their search results are relevant to the user. Because they know what would happen if their search engine started to fail, people would look elsewhere.

What’s the solution?
I’m not sure yet. This is just an experiment. I am reworking our tagging system, to make it much easier to find relevant content by tag, also I have plans to test out a drop-down navigation that lists all the categories a post might fall into. This should be a fun experiment and I hope to find some interesting results to share with you all.

I love WordPress. When done right, using WordPress for your website is a great choice for a CMS. Unfortunately for churches, there are not a lot of choices when it comes to beautiful church WordPress themes. I spent some time digging for quality themes churches could use, and I found 8 that stood out over what is out there. All of these are paid themes and their features very.

Have a theme you love? Share in the comments! Enjoy!

Born – $40

Ray of Light – $35

Rebirth – $35

Ezekiel – $79

Micah – $79

Charity – $50

Organic NonProfit – $69

WordPress AID – $35

From time to time I post random things from my life in a effort to possibly help encourage people. I want to share part of my journey with you. Running has a ton of benefits, we all know why we should run, but I wanted to share with you a few reasons why 18 months ago I started running.

Here is my story, why I love running, and how it helps me as a creative.

Growing up I was always the big kid. I was always active, I played a lot of sports, but I was still always big. I liked to call myself Husky, but if I am honest, I was a fat kid.

In college I did the Atkins thing, and dropped about 80 pounds, eating nothing but salads, and a ton of meat. Also with no exercise. The end result was that I skinny, but it was probably the most unhealthy my heart has ever been in. The weight stayed off about a year, then I realized I liked bread, it came back almost immediately.

About two years ago, I launched my design studio, I was working two jobs and trying to bootstrap my business. I was working 20 hour days, spending very little time with my wife, and eating like crap. At one point, I started having a panic attack, I called my doctor and was told that if I don’t quit working two jobs, I could have a heart attack.

Something had to change, I was lazy, not taking care of my body, and it was effecting most of areas of my life. So, after seeing my brother-in-law loose a bunch of weight and run his first marathon, I was inspired to get healthy.

In the last 18 months, I have gone from not being able to run quarter of a mile to running in two half marathons. I have also lost 60 pounds in the process. I say this not to brag, but to encourage. If I can do it, anyone can. Seriously. I hated running with everything in me.

1. Running will give you more energy and help you be more productive.
This might sound crazy. I thought I would have no energy left after running, but running has provided me with more energy than I have ever have. Now that I have more energy, I find myself being more productive.

2. It will challenge your goal setting ability.
I’ve wanted to quit every time I’ve started training for a race. Running has taught me to push through the tough times and hit my goals.

3. It will build confidence.
For me, the hardest part of getting started was that I was embarrassed about how far I could run. My wife was a much better running that I was, and I honestly felt dumb having to walk after a half mile.

But, I can look back and see how far I have come.

4. It provides time to think.
When I just need a break for work, or life, I go for a run. It gives me at least 30 minutes, for short runs, to a couple of hours, for the longer ones to think.

So what about you? Do you have any activities you’ve started and noticed an improvement in your professional life?

It seems like responsive web design is here to stay. I recently started designing and developing my new projects around the responsive web design methodology. Designing and developing with multiple screen sizes in mind, presents a whole new set of challenges for designers and developers.

I have put together a list of some great tools I have used to help make my new responsive websites work.

Bootstrap Framework

The Bootstrap framework was created by the designers and developers over at Twitter. It has become a fantastic tool for my application development. This framework includes the ability to make your websites responsive.

Gridless

If you don’t like working with grid systems, then Gridless comes in handy. It is a simple and barebones HTML5 and CSS3 backbone that is designed to be responsive.

Fluid 960 Grid System

I have been using the 960 grid system for a couple of years now, and this project aims at making it easy for us to move to responsive design. If you are comfortable working with 960.gs, then this system will be an easy transition.

Respond.js

I stopped supporting IE6 last year, and I no longer support IE7, but I know there are people out there that want IE6+ support. Respond is a lightweight script that gives us more options for running media queries.

Modernizr

Similar to Respond.js but Modernizr has a few more features built in. It offers a little more control of how your media queries are handled. It also has some great features for handling resources. It also is well documented and has a great community of developers.

Lettering.js

One of my favorite new scripts! It is a jQuery script that will give you complete control over your web typography! It will allow your fonts to scale correctly and look wonderful on all devices.

Life can be crazy, it can be busy, it can be hard, but if you are following what God has called you to do, you will succeed.

Since moving to Cambodia to work with street kids, life has been difficult. I find myself questioning if we made the right choice. But I have to remind myself that God made a path for us to follow. As long as we follow His path, we will make it, and hopefully by His grace make a difference.

When I start to doubt God’s calling for us, I look to my favorite verse:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
(Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV)

We need your prayers, and I want to pray for you. Let me know how I can pray for you.

And if you want to see what my wife and I are unto in Cambodia, check out our site at: goforlove.org.

What are you afraid of?

You’re afraid. Getting more done would mean exposing yourself to considerable risk, to crossing bridges, to putting things into the world. Which means failure. – Seth Godin

Is 2012 the year you face your fears? I pray that it is.

via: Seth Godin Blog

For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! – Amos 4:13

The same God who forms the mountains and creates the wind gave us his Holy Spirit. That very spirit enables us to be creative, to form our own mountains and create our own wind, as an act of worship to God! It is my prayer for you today that you feel his creative spirit, in anything you do, He is there with you.

For some of us, paying a hosting service is worth the monthly cost. Being able to hand over control to someone else can remove potential headaches. But 3rd party hosting isn’t for everyone. I use a local server for testing out web apps I am developing, which cuts down on hosting costs for a dedicated server for testing, which can easily run $100+ a month!

This is the first part of an on-going series that will walk us through the process of setting up our own web server. First thing we need to do is look at what you will need in order to get your own server up and running!

1- An Old Computer

It doesn’t have to be new, or fast, just not super old. It also needs to have a CD burner, which will help get the OS installed.

2- Ubuntu Server Software

Ubuntu is a great Linux OS which will be free for us to download and run. You will need to download the ISO image, which will allow us to put in on a CD.

You can download the latest version here.

If you need help burning the ISO to the CD, there is a handy guide at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

3- Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP STACK)

These are all web technologies that you will need to make sure that your server can display your webpages. Apache is web server software, MySQL is a database server, and PHP is a server-side language that you will want to support, especially if you are planning on running a WordPress site.

Learn More At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle)

4- A Domain Name

Not totally required, but we will want to add a domain name, so that people can easily access our web server. I recommend NameCheap.com for domain registration.

5- A High Speed Internet Connection

This will make sure our web server is serving up content to our users at much faster. If you are setting this up as a local test server, the speed isn’t as important.

6- A Static IP Address

One of the hardest parts of our setup will be figuring out how to handle a process called port forwarding. Since your home network is behind a router, we will need to run a process that will make sure your server is visible to the world. So, you need to login to your router, and look for something along the lines of: “Static IP” or “Static Routing”. Make note of your static IP address.

7- Learn all you can about port-forwarding

Seriously, this is always the trickiest part of setting up a server. The main problem is that each router is different, each ISP is different, so it is hard to know all the settings out there.

So check out: http://portforward.com/routers.htm and learn all you can about your setup.

8- Time.

Setting up your own server will take time. And even longer if you run into issues. So make sure you have the better part of an afternoon set aside for this.