Jesus Hates Papyrus » free

Jesus Hates Papyrus iPhone Wallpaper

Michael Buckingham — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:23:11 +0000

I received a DM on twitter Monday:

@daniellsuzanne: u should turn the back of ur business card into an iPhone wallpaper – i’d use it!

Made my day. How could I resist a request like that? So here they are for you to enjoy.

Feel free to spread the word, but will you please link to here so that I can see how many of you are downloading the wallpaper and see if I should make some more down the road?

Freebies: First I Prayed then I voted

Michael Buckingham — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:14:43 +0000

I was giving some critique in the church marketing lab and through the process decided to just pull the images together for the person and make it available for him to use. Well…why not give those to you as well.

Nothing spectacular by any means…but free nonetheless and hopefully one or two of you can find it useful.

Enjoy!

Oh, and no that was not the door being opened for political banter on the blog.

Tis the season for free church marketing

Michael Buckingham — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:13:01 +0000

Churches are always looking for great marketing for free…normally I’d tell you that you need to commit to your marketing and as many things your checkbook tells of your commitment. Well Brad Abare posts a great idea for what I think is a great idea for church marketing this year…and it’s free. It’s the lost practice of: Caroling.

Go out, walk around your communities, show them community and sing your heart out. Let them know where you’re from but trust me, in a time where our neighborhoods are full of stranger and the only place people see people caroling is on TV, they’ll take notice by this simple, and fun, action.

Free Christmas Vectors … just add snow

Michael Buckingham — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:43:37 +0000

The Christmas tree is up, lights are lit…how’s your Christmas marketing coming along? In case you haven’t started, and in case you don’t work with us (shame on you) here is a link to some Christmas icons in vector, gif and other various forms to get you started. Now…don’t just use these like clipart but get into them, make them your own…use these as a starting point.

And, here’s a quick and easy way to create the snow:

First set your color to no fill and a white line. (or light blue) Create a “dashed line” with 0 for the first dash and 24 for the gap. Set the line weight to 1 pt. With the pencil tool, draw random scribbles in any direction. On subsequent lines, change the line weight (.5 pt or 2pt, etc) to vary the size of the “flakes”. Smaller blue flakes recede to the background; larger whiter flakes go in the foreground to create depth. The effect works especially well on a darker background/night scene.

Salvation for the gift card

Michael Buckingham — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:29:23 +0000

I hate gift cards. I think they are a poor excuse of a gift. Sure, it’s nice when someone gives me a gift card…but not very thoughtful, and certainly not heartwarming. Seth Godin agrees.

But he mentions a great idea…create a gift card that’s attached to a donation.

What if we created a great looking gift card that shows that the money that you spent for the Starbucks gift card was matched with a gift to a ministry, missionary, church…I think I like this idea. I still prefer to put a bit more thought to the gifts I give…but this is might just be the chance of salvation for the gift card. I like this idea a lot, brings back a truer spirit of giving that I think we’ve lost a bit.

I like it enough that for the first church or ministry that contacts me we will design yours for FREE.

The no money, no talent website

Michael Buckingham — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:57:28 +0000

I believe in working in the giftings and talents that God has given you. I don’t believe God intends you to do something you were not created to do. My best advice is if you’re not gifted in the field of website development (or design, or singing, or whatever) is to find someone that is and let them work in their giftings. This not only allows them to use their talents, but also doesn’t distract you from using your other talents. We’ll talk more about that in future conversations.

With that said I understand sometimes that’s not possible, or at least not without ruffling all sorts of feathers, and you’re going to launch the site either way. One of the most straightforward and simplified tools out there for such cases is WordPress. It’s what I use for this blog and what some use for not just their personal sites but also church websites. So for those of you who are going to press forward here are some links that should help. If you get stuck give me a shout and I’ll do my best to help you out.

But I thought WordPress was just for blogs:

WordPress for non-blog websites
Website powered by WordPress
WordPress as CMS

Now let’s help you build your church website:

Installing WordPress (for free)

Find a template (and this is just one example site) as your starting point and then customize it with your flavor…make it your own. There are thousands of free templates available, but please use these as layout templates and be original with the design.

Of course we don’t want this to look like a blog so aside from the fabulous design you created with the layout template here are a couple of great and easy ways to make it feel like a website:

Create a static page for your home page.
Then spend some time with your menu.

And let the fun begin…run all this on a test server and try different things out, make some mistakes…you can do it. If not give me a shout.