How to start your own church/ministerial/personal blog?

First of all let me explain you what a blog is? “A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. (source: Wikipedia)

Therefore a blog is an advanced and a convenient tool to use the Internet as a medium to expand the ministry of your church or your personal ministry. For example I am using this blog to publish my sermons, sermon outlines, articles, Bible studies, Power Point slide shows related to biblical truths, news related to the church, thus sharing my knowledge with everyone and touching millions around the world with the single click of a mouse button.

The advantages of running a blog.

Unlike a traditional web site you don’t have to depend on a web designing professional to update your blog (now a days the companies provide you with custom developed content management systems, but the reliability of these cannot be guaranteed as their usage is limited to their own clients, thus preventing the exposing of existing bugs). However updating a blog is easy as using a word processing software.

However there are some basic causes which prevent the Pastors serving in third world countries like Sri Lanka from having a blog. These are related to “cost” and “lack of technical knowledge”.

Therefore my purpose of writing this article is to show you how to have your own blog while beating the above mentioned hindrances.

Use a free blogging service.

If cost is the problem you can use a blogging service freely available in the Internet. There are many, but most popular services are ,

1. Wordpress.com (not the self hosted version)

2. Blogger

3. MSN Spaces

4. Live Journal

5. Typepad

6. Movable Type

Click here for a comparison chart on these and other available blogging services.

The above mentioned free blogging services does not require any technical knowledge as they are automatically setup once you register . The advantage of using one of the above listed blogging services are,

1. It’s free (no hidden fee)

2. You don’t have to worry about backing up your blog’s content. It’s taken care by the blog provider.

3. Security is not an issue, as long as the blogging provider takes care of it.

However there are disadvantages of running you blog on a  free platform.

1. You are limited to the design provided by the blog provider

2. You cannot customize the look of your blog

3. You cannot expand the capabilities of your blog

4. Facilities to insert media clips into your content could be limited

The best solution for the above disadvantages is, to host your own blog with a commercial web hosting provider. Now the first question you might ask me is how much will it cost to host your blog with a commercial web hosting provider. Well, unlike those days now you can host a web site with a commercial hosting provider for a cost as low as US $22 (Rs. 2200/=) for a year, if you host it with CSOFT who is hosting this blog. Additionally you can check this provider also. By the way if you are not willing to pay the above amount either you can check this free CPanel and Fantastico powered web hosting provider.

Choosing a domain name.

What is a domain name?

Basically the domain name is the name of your blog. For instance the domain name of this blog is “virtualpreacher.org” This could be divided into two parts. The actual name and the domain extension (this could be something like .lk, .com, .net, .org, .me). If you are planning to purchase a domain name (available through the hosting provider) for your church or Christian ministry you can use .org or .lk (.lk extension is available only in Sri Lanka and comparatively expensive). If it’s personal you can use .lk or .net Please avoid going for .com extensions as this extension is used by businesses only.

Also when you choose a name for your blog please use a name which is search engine friendly and easy for people to remember. Lets say your name is “Dilan Perera” and you want to start a personal blog. You can choose a name like dilanperera.net Also click here to find out how to choose a good hosting provider if you are not interested in CSOFT.

How to install the blogging software in my web server?

There are a lot of blogging software available but Wordpress is the most popular. Check the graph below (taken from KMP). And I am going to show you how to install Wordpress in your web server.

However you have to be careful to choose a web hosting service which supports Wordpress. I would recommend you to go for a CPanel powered web hosting service with Fantastico, or you can choose from An Hosting, Lunarpages, BlueHost and Yahoo (Click here to find out how to install Wordpress in a web server from Godaddy). The following video explains how to install Wordpress if you are using CPanel powered hosting.

If you are still afraid of messing up while attempting to install Wordpress, please check this service who will install the blogging software in your server for free, or else I can consider installing it for you for a small fee as low as 5 US $ (Rs. 500/=).

Ok, I have installed the blog software in my web server. What’s next?

Once you have installed the blog software you have to customize it according to your need. This includes the following,

- Choosing a blog theme (the layout of the blog)

- Installing necessary plugins

- Start blogging

Click here for a free tutorial on how to do the above mentioned tasks.

Well I, believe the above provided guidelines are enough to convince you how easy is it to start your own church/ministerial/personal blog. Would you have any questions, please let me know in the comments section. Happy blogging!

Recommended reading

1. How to blog, a beginners’ guide to blogging?

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