Our Little Church DIY

Written For Christ is pleased to have the opportunity to have instructions for Do-It-Yourself (DIY) website development. We believe churches have enough to do already, and they do not need to add web development from scratch, thus we have built a template with HTML5, CSS3, PHP, and JavaScript. This way your church can focus on what you do best do best.

Written For Christ uses the name Our Little Church, to show what you can do. Our Little Church is just a sample of what you could build here. Our Little Church does not exist, except in our imagination church.

LAMP vs. Microsoft's ASP.NET

Microsoft C# is a popular programming language for other applications, yet less than 10% of websites use ASP.NET. Microsoft ASP.NET requires the server and database to be Microsoft Server and Microsoft SQL Server.
Reference: (04/21/2021) https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-aspnet

Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) are a popular stack. LAMP is also used by some CMS like WordPress. Almost 80% of websites use PHP, which is the major part of LAMP.
Reference: (04/21/2021) https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php

Custom HTML & PHP vs. CMS

There are a few Content Management Systems (CMS). Some popular CMS are Drupal, Joomla, SquareSpace, Weebly, Wix, and Wordpress.

  • Speed Since with almost all the content of the CMS is in a database, it will take longer to load than HTML code.
  • Time to invest in Learning Normally, learning Wordpress is done in much less time than learning enough HTML to get your website the way you want it. This is why Written For Christ simple instructions and has templates for you to modify.
  • Flexibility and Power CMS is often written in HTML and PHP, with the programmer guessing on what you would like in a website, thus if they guessed wrong then you are out of luck unless you write a plug-in. With a template built in HTML and PHP, there are very few limitations.
  • Financial Investment in Development I can think of three factors related to the expense in developing / designing a website.
    • Technical Knowledge and Experience The more technical knowledge somebody has, the more they can demand per hour. At the same time, since they have more knowledge and experience, they should be able to give more options and design the website faster. Both the HTML template and a CMS should require the same level of knowledge and experience.
    • Design Skills Both the Written For Christ HTML template and a CMS require the same design skills. The more design skills they have the better chance they will design something which is user friendly.
    • Time Investment The more knowledge, skills and experience the designer has, the more it should save on time. Both the template and CMS should be about the same investment.
    • Web Server Selection The CMS requires the programming language (often PHP) be installed and also the CMS application be installed. Since HTML and PHP written without the CMS, does not require the CMS be installed, thus sometimes the web server can be found for a less expensive price.

Prerequisite:

These instructions assume you are not afraid to learn the minimal HTML5, CSS3, PHP, and JavaScript used within this web-site.

Note: If this is the pastor who is reading these instructions, then we beg you to recruit somebody who is not afraid of technology. We assume, being the pastor, you already have enough tasks on your plate.

Requirements:

The requirements can be found on the HTML Basics Introduction page

Let's Start

Grab your favorite drink, and let us begin developing a web-site. We will start in HTML Basics, thus select the navigation menu tab.