Every week I visit many church websites. They are my first point of contact as I seek to discover churches that may be open having ALIKI partner with them in ministry. While a website gives a very small incomplete picture of church life, it can also be a treasure trove of helpfulness. Many times I have been sidetracked to read the pastor's blog because if was easy to find and the heading really leapt out at me. Indeed on several occasion I have headed straight over to Koorong or Amazon to order a book, CD or DVD because of something that I have just read.

On the flip side there have been far more times where I have gone to look at the events calendar to find that the last entry was 8mths or more old, or that the latest news entry mentioned the wonderful time that all had at the previous church camp two years ago.

We all know how this happens! Some bright enterprising individual has started the ball rolling and everything went swimingly well until some time later when the time commitments crowded in or circumstances moved them on. Now no one knows how to update the system because all the software belongs to someone else, and no one understands HTML anyway.

The solution for many churches is to consider getting a Content Managment System, my favourite as any one knows is Joomla!  while there are heaps of alternatives I keep returning to this one as it is robust has a huge support base and the price is right - FREE. All of the major systems allow ordinary folk to setup and maintain a website without fancy software. Usually all that is required once the package is installed on your web server, all that is typically required is a web browser (of course my preferance is FireFox although Google's Chrome is also looking promisng) and something to edit pictures even Google's Picassa 3 should be sufficient for the basics (you may need to get some more expert assistance tinkering with the template images to make the site look and feel as you wish) but from that point on some basic tools will keep everthing running smoothly.

The primary reason that I started playing with Conten Management Systems CMS was to reduce my workload as I tried to keep ALIKI's calendar updated. With 2 or more concerts every week and more being added all the time I need to remove the concerts listings that were out of date and move them to 'Previous'. The web powered calendar component of the Joomla system was bliss, as soon as a concert had happened it automatically moved to the archive list and the next event popped up into top spot. Now all I have to do is keep adding new events and the system looks after itself.

So with a little bit of time invested you to can have a system that will work on relatively modest budget!