Church Plant Media

Although Wordpress is a great open-source blogging platform, it takes some technical skill to get it to do everything a typical ministry needs. Multiple plug-ins must be installed, maintained, and hosted to work correctly. In contrast, we release patches and upgrades to our system automatically, which means you’ll never have to do any upgrades or maintenance installations yourself. We take care of all of the development and programming for you, so you can focus on the more important aspects of building your ministry.

Our monthly system access includes much more than just hosting. It includes the CMS license, continual updates to the core CMS modules, hosting, e-mail support, and toll-free telephone/online support. So you’re getting much more than just hosting; you’re getting a complete, fully managed package. Regarding “unlimited hosting” from other vendors; there is no such thing. Running an “unlimited” amount of data through a hosting account will result in sluggish load times and server crashes. We don’t make unrealistic promises; with us, you know exactly what you’re getting.

Every website comes with 100 GB of disk space and 100 GB of monthly bandwidth for $50 per month. We have hundreds of partners, and only a small handful have approached that limit. To put the number into perspective, 100 GB is enough to store about 6,000 audio sermons (if compressed properly to about 15 MB per MP3). 100 GB of transfer means that people will be able to listen or download sermons equivalent to that amount. So, if your sermon MP3’s are each compressed to around 15 MB, then people will be able to either listen or download approximately 6,000 of your sermons per month. If the usage ever exceeds 100 GB on a regular basis, service will remain uninterrupted and our team will notify you of the total usage. More disk space or bandwidth can be added in blocks of 25 GB for an additional $10 per month.

Church Plant Media’s price is lower then most website providers. There are a few solutions that are less than us, but there are many more that are quite a bit higher. We firmly believe in creating a company that will last; one that will be around to serve our partners for years to come. We do this by setting a fair price for great design and serving our partners with excellence.

Not from us. The only other thing you'll need is a domain name, which you can purchase from a domain registrar such as namecheap.com for around $10 annually.

It is important that all of our partners have full, legal control over their own domain name(s). We recommend that you use a domain registrar such as namecheap.com for registering your domain.

Yes, we build our websites to be viewable on mobile devices, and we will be releasing mobile versions of our websites in the 2nd quarter of 2012, at no additional charge.

Yes, all new sites come with password protection. Adding a password to the page will disable the content from view by website visitors and search engines. The protected page will display the note “this page is password protected” with a login box. When a visitor enters the password, they will be able to view the content for one hour.

Yes. Many website solutions have a Content Management System (CMS) that is used to update the information on the public site. The CMS that Church Plant Media has developed is not only easy to update, but fun to use as well. Without any need to know programming languages, you are in control of your text, photos, navigation, events, sermons, blogs, video, audio, and much more. Check out our video tour to see how easy our CMS is to use.

Our CMS is completely custom built by our team and is built specifically for gospel ministry. This ensures that churches and ministries get the features they need without having to wade through the features they don’t need. Another benefit of using our CMS is that you don’t have to cobble together different plug-ins to get a non-church CMS to do what your ministry needs.

Our CMS is a hosted web service and we don’t have plans to make a downloadable option available. By having our CMS available as a hosted service, it allows us to continually monitor the entire technical environment and ensure that your experience is fast and reliable. This also allows us to immediately release new modules and features to all of our partners as they become available.

Our CMS is built on the L.A.M.P. stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP).

Yes, our system does support other languages. If your keyboard supports non-English characters, you will be able to input those characters into the CMS. The page titles and text are able to display in whatever language you type into the system. With that said however, minor aspects of our sermon, event, and blog output will remain in English. For example, if the home page says “Latest Sermon” or “Upcoming Events” these headings will always display in English, even if the sermon or event titles are in a different language.

If you need bilingual content, then you will need to create different pages in both English and Spanish. Our system does not provide an automatic translator for your content. Many churches will have a section of their site titled “Español” for Spanish speaking visitors. If you need the entire website to switch back and forth between English and Spanish, you may need to purchase our multi-campus selector along with an additional website. This would allow you to have one site in English and one site in Spanish with a way to select between the two. See our Multi-Campus Examples to learn more.

We strive to protect the brands of each ministry that we serve. If two or more unrelated ministries in the same immediate area had the exact same design, it would look like they are connected. This would result in brand confusion and frustration among the ministries as they reach out to the same community using the exact same design. This is why we have decided to limit how many times each design can be used in each area. It may feel like a restriction when you are selecting a design, but it is our promise of respect and protection for the duration of our partnership. We are not aware of any other website company who provides this same level of design protection.

Depending on your method of payment, we usually install the staging website within one business day of the deposit being paid.

Our designs and CMS are custom built by our team and they go hand-in-hand. We currently do not offer one without the other. If you have coding skills, we would be happy to provide a CSS override file for you to update the colors and fonts in our design to match your branding.

Sure, we can provide you with FTP access so you can update the CSS override file with your custom CSS. With FTP access to the CSS override file, you are able to change colors, textures, and fonts, but not the API output for sermons, events, blogs, etc. So all of the structure and output of the website will remain as-is, but you are able to modify the aspects of the design that are controlled by the CSS.

No, you do not need to make your final design selection at the time of your verbal agreement. However, we do request that you make your final design selection within one week of your payment. A key part of our process is the Project Agreement which asks you to select your design number before submitting the form. As soon as your payment is received and your agreement is filled out, we will reserve your design within 30 miles of your protected location. So the early bird catches the worm when it comes to design selection.

Most definitely! We serve a number of church plants each year that do not even have their official church name selected at the time of their verbal agreement. We understand the planting process well and we realize that your brand may be in flux, but you still need to publish a great website. If you do not have a logo when we launch your website, we can easily add the name of your organization where the logo will eventually go. Once your branding process is wrapped up, we can easily add your logo into the design at no additional cost.

No, we only specialize in developing websites for church and mission. If you need a logo, you may want to review the Branding/Logos category of The Church Planting Supersite.

Yes, an RSS podcast of the sermon feed and RSS feeds for each blog are all included with the system. When we launch your site, we also set up your podcast in iTunes, so you only have to add a sermon into our system and it will automatically be published and searchable in Apple’s iTunes. Your podcast will live at http://www.yourdomain.org/feeds/sermons and your blog feeds will live at http://www.yourdomain.org/feeds/blog/blog-name.

If you plan to shoot video weekly, we always suggest making use of Vimeo Plus for your video storage needs. Vimeo offers a cost-effective, HD video hosting solution that is proven and they feature an HTML5 video player which ensures playback on iPads, iPhones, and other non-Flash equipped devices. We can house your videos in our CMS, but Vimeo is the best and we’ve built in full integration with it. With your videos on Vimeo, you’ll be using their hosting and bandwidth, so it may actually take a number of years before you bump up against 100 GB.

If you decide to use Vimeo Plus for your video storage needs, they provide unlimited HD video storage (5 GB per week). Vimeo has been featured on the Apple website as a premier company who has optimized for HTML5. The file formats that Vimeo supports are: ASF, ASX, AVI, DivX, DV, DVX, M4V, MPEG, MPG, QT, WMV, 3G2, 3GP, 3ivX and 3VX. If you decide to use our system for video or other types of files, we allow for the following file formats in our files module: JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, MOV, MP4, MPEG, FLV, MP3, DOC, PDF.

All of our new designs include social media icons in the footer that you can link to your social media. This will allow visitors to easily access your Facebook and Twitter accounts. A few of our designs display your Twitter feed in the sidebar of the home page. Also, both Facebook and Twitter offer free widgets that you are able to embed into any page of your site. We are planning to release additional Facebook and Twitter integration in the very near future at no additional charge.

First, select your favorite design and then give us a call. Once we receive your Project Agreement and your one-time setup fee, we will install your design with our Content Management System (CMS). At that point, the $50 monthly fee will begin. You will then be able to add your pages, navigation, sermons, events, and blog posts. After you are confident with your content in the CMS, we will launch your website and help you set up your Google Apps email accounts after the website is live.

Feel free to review our Project Agreement. You may also read through our Service Agreement & Terms.

We accept credit cards, debit cards, checks, and bank drafts.

No. We do not require a minimum sign up period. We bill for our system access on a monthly basis, so you may cancel at any time.

Nope. All partners get toll-free phone and online support at no additional charge. We view our service as a partnership and we want you to know that we are only a phone call away if you need help. We believe our calling is to serve your church and mission.

Yes, we have a dedicated server at Rackspace (the gold standard for dedicated hosting). Your database, content, and pages will be served from there, and all media will be served from our hosting environment on the Amazon S3 cloud. That means all of your website pages will load quickly on the front-end and our CMS will quickly upload your media files in the back-end. But don’t take our word for it, go ahead and compare some of our examples to examples from other companies that you might be comparing us to.

Our system is rock solid and we’ve only had a few minutes of downtime in the last few years.

All of the content (i.e. text, photos, media, etc.) that you add into the CMS is yours to copy and transfer manually whenever you need. Our CMS and designs go hand in hand and they will remain on our server. For more information, please review our Service Agreement & Terms.

Yes, we are first and foremost a gospel company, and second, a web design company. Every person on our team enthusiastically adheres to our Gospel Agreement and we are each believing members of evangelical churches, in a number of different denominational traditions and church associations. Using our time and talents to expand the reach of the gospel via the Internet is just one way we give honor to God and enjoy Him.

Gospel means good news. This good news is about Jesus Christ and is briefly described within our Gospel Agreement. The truth of the gospel shapes who we are and it provides the foundation for everything we do. Feel free to contact any member of our team to learn more about the gospel.

We view the ministries that we serve as our partners in the gospel. This means that we don’t view ourselves as a web design company with customers; we view ourselves as a gospel company that provides websites for church and mission. Because of this, we refer to our “customers” as “partners”.

Yes. Please review our Gospel Agreement. We will work with any gospel-loving, humbly-othodox, body of believers who will commit to uphold three basic creeds without reservation. First, they must be Christians and adhere to the 2nd century Apostles’ Creed. Second, they must be Protestants* and uphold the 5 truths of the 16th century Reformation. Third, they must be Evangelicals and agree with the National Association of Evangelicals’ Statement of Faith. They must also affirm one additional clarifying statement, that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

There are a lot of fly-by-night web design companies. Thankfully we’re not one of them. We’ve been in business since 1998 and the number of ministries we serve has grown every year. We are privately owned, which means we don’t answer to outside investors. We serve hundreds of gospel-loving ministries and we are positioned to continue growing for years to come.

Simply complete our contact form, and we'll give you a call. Or, if you would like to connect right now, feel free to call Matt Ayers, our Ministry Coordinator, at: (800) 409-6631 x 1.

We look forward to serving you!