There has been a lot of news recently about HTML5 and the use of video. Apple is endorsing a codec (a way of encoding video) called h.264, but with any new technology it is important to understand the licensing issues involved and to make sure your church is not breaking any type of licensing requirements.  After the break I will walk you h.264 and what to expect if you are posting videos to your church website.

I have been going back and forth about this for a month. I have decided to merge my personal blog and church website ideas. It is just too hard to try and run two blogs when most of the content I want to share would go on both sites. So you should be able to access this site now through churchwebsiteideas.com and beardedblog.com. The site content will focus on my design experiences, thoughts, and how that can affect the churches online presence. Enjoy!

This morning I emailed Steve Jobs. My full time job is designing and developing flash ads and I wanted to make sure that I am preparing myself as a designer/developer for Apple’s new iAd platform. So I emailed Steve to see if the new iAds platform would allow full HTML5 animations or if we can only use HTML5 to display video based ads. Looks like we will be able to use complete HTML5 for our ads. Full email after the break.

I bought an iPad this weekend. I had to wait 2 hours in line.

Would I wait in line for two hours to get in to a church service? No.

There’s a problem with that. What do you think?

Everyday, I try to bring you a free item to use for your website, in your church, or for any project you might have! Today is a free high quality video loop from the great folks over at Videohive!

I am a little behind on this one but Videohive has a great high quality video loop for their free video file of the month. Make sure to get it here.

Enjoy!

Whoa! What happened to the site? I have refreshed the design of the site with a more minimalistic feel. Over the next few weeks you will notice a few more changes at Church Website Ideas, most of which, I hope, will make this site more user friendly.  So why the change? I realized that part of my reasoning to start this blog was to share my ideas, visions, and resources with anyone who works on a church website. This refresh will help refine the focus of the site and help bring more clarity to the purpose of this site. I hope to bring you some great stuff over the next few weeks! Enjoy!

After nearly a decade of rumors Apple finally unveiled the much hyped Apple Tablet, the iPad. While this device could never live up to the mass hype that internet has built over the last decade, most people seem to be disappointed in Apple’s latest gadget. Not me. I see a tool that can help pastors and the church. After the break I outline few a reasons why this device will help you.

Churches have always have a hard time fighting the persona of being slow to adopt new trends.  In web design churches have made up a lot of ground. I am very happy to see that a lot of churches are putting emphasis on their church websites! To kick off the new year we wanted to share with you 20 of the best church websites we could find. We tried to avoid the churches that always make these lists, but some still made the list, simply because their websites stand out. Enjoy, and if you have a website you enjoy, please link to it in the comments.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to CreativeMYK, a site dedicated to providing church designers free resources for their designs. The idea is simple, create an account, provide some of your stuff to share and network with other designers. The site is very cool and provides a ton a resources for designers new and old.

“I just don’t think our church is using our website.” It’s an issue I hear all the time.  The truth is that this has very little to do with your website design. It really has to do you and how your church utilizes your website. Most church websites suffer from content overload, too much content with very little focus. Keep reading to see how we can get back to simple church websites that are an effective ministry tool.

Everyday I am bringing you my lastest finds from around the ‘net. Today comes a free fully functional website from Forest Theme! Check out the details after the jump.

Everyday I am bringing you my latest free find of the day! Today is a very cool HD After Effects video source file from the amazing team over at Video Hive. Check it out after the jump!

Today I wanted to share with you a small collection of free mobile apps for your smart phone. I love gadgets and I love being able to find great apps for my iPhone. I hope you enjoy these free apps !

Well all love free! So in honor of free, everyday I am adding a free resource for you to use on your website or something that might simply help your ministry. Today I wanted to share a tool kit with those of you who are youth pastors.

Today I am going to start sharing with you all a free item of the day. What type of item? Depends! It can be a video loop, a worship video, a wordpress theme, or just about anything.  Hit the jump to get your free file!

The most common question I get when talking to pastors and church website staff is: “How can I get my church to show up on page one of Google?” This is a very reasonable question and there are a lot of tactics on how to get your website to show up on the first page of Google. I am not going to write an entire article on SEO strategies or anything complex. One thing that is often overlooked is that with very little effort or skill you can get your church website to show up in the Google Business listings area of a search result.

Two weeks ago we shared 21 Free Video Loops for Churches, well, as the saying goes you get what you pay for. This list includes 22 high quality video loops that can be purchased for use in your worship service or for your website videos.

We all need a little inspiration from time to time. Today I share with you 22 websites you can use that will inspire your next designs. Each of these sites are online galleries that showcase the best website designs. I hope these will help inspire your next creations!

It can be difficult if you are tossed into updating your church website and have no idea what you are doing. I want to provide you a few tools that will help you in your journey to becoming a web designer! Well, at least some tools that will help you keep your church website up to date and looking good! Please enjoy and if you have more tools that you use please, leave them in the comments!

I am going to start sharing with you all more from my Google reader. I currently have 67 christian blogs the I subscribe to. These blogs vary in content, each hitting a different area of industry, ministry, or technology. Each week, I hope to share with you one person’s blog you should subscribe to or at least take a look at. This week I am happy to share with you what is currently my favorite blog. keep reading after the jump to see who it is!

Video can provide a wonderful dimension to a worship service, it can serve as a great tool for intro for sermon series, and can provide great depth to your church website. Today, I share with you 21 free video loops for churches. Please enjoy these and if you have a free video loop the you have come across, please share in the comments.

A lot of the questions I have recieved over the last few weeks have been in regards to podcasting. Podcasting is a great tool we have today that allows pastors and churches to share sermons with their memebers directly from the church website. Also, users can subscribe to messages which will automaticlly download to their computer. Today I would like to share with you a list of 23 different tools you can use to create, share, or listen to podcasts! As always enjoy this list, and please add your own favorite tool if yours is not listed!

Last November Zondervan bought a community building platform from Mars Hill Church, named simply, The City. Zondervan has now re-launched The City out to the public. The service looks very promising, as a fully scalable service for churches of any size.

“The City enhances and deepens the community in your church that already exists. It isn’t merely online social networking; it’s literally community building software. Now your community groups and ministry service teams can continuously share life together as it unfolds. Whether it’s praying for one-another, discussing scripture, or whatever the need may be, The City is the catalyst for drawing your people together in deep, abiding community.”

I have personally seen this in place at Mars Hill and must say that the service is amazing. The only issue we can see is will your church be able to effectively move over to managing every aspect of your community online? We are hoping to have a full review of this service very soon. Stay tuned. Visit The City.

It has been awhile since our list real update, so now that things have calmed down over at Simple Church Marketing, we will be getting back to regular, daily updates to the blog! Last month we shared 45 Twitter Apps for Churches, today we wanted to share with you all top 10 pastors you should follow on Twitter. These pastors are very active with updates and have really embraced Twitter as a way to expand their reach and offer another way in which church members can connect to their pastor.

I wanted to take time today to share wit you some images in honor of memorial day. Often it is easy for me just to blast through this holiday with out much thought. I want to encourage you all to take time this weekend to pray for our soldiers. Enjoy the long weekend.

I wanted to let everyone who visits the blog that I am back from vaction and you can expect my reagular daily updates to continue tomorrow as usual. Thank you everyone for your comments and emails while I was gone!

This is the last of the online application posts for awhile, I think. Today we look at file storage and email marketing apps. Churches should now be keeping files online so that they can be accessed anywhere. I cannot think about how many times I have worked on a sermon out of the office, then had to email it to myself so that I could access it at my work.  Now, we can upload it online and access it from any computer with an internet connection! I also outlined a few email marketing applications that will allow  you to track all the emails you have sent, see who opened it, or clicked on a link. Enjoy!

Yesterday I shared Top Chart, Diagram, and Whiteboard Tools for Pastors. Today we look at the top applications for collaboration with your team! Managing your staff can be one of the most challenging aspects of being a pastor and most churches do not have typical business hours, so the use of collaboration tools can really benefit the church. I do want to highlight one major standout on this list: Text The Mob is a fantastic tool that you can use to get feedback during your sermons every week! Your congregation can text in answers to questions that you propose on Sunday mornings. I have been in a few services where this has been used and the result, if you have buy-in from your church is awesome! I am thinking about running an article on all the text applications that churches can use later on, but for now this was the only one to make this list. Enjoy!