Youth ministry website?!?

[TheWordSpreader]

First of all... A lil background abou myself might be helpful! I spend most of my time behind the sound board and computer at church... Though I love to pick up the guitar and play a lil, I don't usually devere in that ministry as of right now. I am extremely new to website building (but I am grasping the concept of the actuall building part vary quickly...) my problem is with content...

I am in the process of creating a website for the youthgroup at my church ( mud66.com ) not much there as of right now, I am using joomla and am in the process of getting a template from somebody in the church... So my question is what kinds of things would go into a youth website (content wise)?

I plan on having a photo gallery of pics from youth events and a video galley of the same type... A page about the youth pastor and possibly a blog for him as well... I plan on adding a prayer request form and an area for prayer requests to be shown if the person who wrote it wants it public... I plan to add an about page and a contact page...

Any other ideas or suggestions would be great!!!

[[Admin] skstarkiller]

A place for parents to download forms is always good

[TheWordSpreader]

That's a really good idea! Thanks! I have also been contemplating a small forum where teens could ask questions or maybe a discussion board for them to talk about different topics... Any thoughts on this?

[[Admin] skstarkiller]

It will be a wasteland. Instead, have a link to a youth page on Facebook. That's where they are... no offense, but they won't use that feature on your site.

[TheWordSpreader]

No offense taken! Actually I kinda figured that but wanted to get somebody else's opinion... Thanks for the idea on linking the FB page!

[[Admin] skstarkiller]

if you control the domain name, you could even make a subdomain that points to the facebook page so facebook.mud66.com points there, so it is easier to brand the site and for kids to remember how to find the page on facebook

[CopyrightSolver]

Definitely get signed release forms from parents if you are putting their kids' pictures on a public site.

[TheWordSpreader]

I do control the domain name, but am new to this so I will have to do some research on how to create the subdomain and point it to the facebook page...

Oh and @ copyrightsolver the pictures of the student members would probably be located on a private member section of the site, but thanks for reminding me of this... It is important to keep all the i's dotted and t's crossed

I have been thinking of putting a music player on my site that would play some of the praise an worship music that we sing... If I use the original tracks from bands such as hillsong and chris tomlin, would there be copyright issues with that? And also what if I recorded our praise band performing the songs would there be any copyright issues with that? I know that copyright issues are a lil off topic from general website issues but if somebody could point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it!

[CopyrightSolver]

There are some copyright issues with the actions you describe.

If you webcast your performances of copyrighted songs, you need an internet performance license like WORSHIPcast. If you webcast original recordings, you will also need a master track license.

We have a pretty good article that covers this subject matter here. Please let me know if I can answer any further questions.

[TheWordSpreader]

Hey thank you so much for the information on copyright issues... I didn't realize that there was that much involved. I new it was a big deal but I was naive in thinking there was an easy button for it! Thank you! I'm sure u have saved me a lot of trouble!!!

[mattcleaver]

I'm a youth minister & do all the website stuff for our church and youth ministry. And from what I hear from other youth ministers, what I say below is pretty much what everyone else is seeing, too.

The youth ministry website is good for two things:

• Reference - A calendar, for when people need to look up something, and downloads of forms and flyers is about all I keep on my website.
• Visitor information - If you get a bunch of visitor traffic, parents might go to the youth ministry website to find out more. So, keep that in mind.

Other than that, spend most of your energy on FaceBook. It's where the kids are and no amount of website features will pull them away from that. And it's free. The only reason I even keep a youth ministry website anymore is because it only costs $10/year for the domain name. I host the site on our church account, so it doesn't cost anything extra.

Just letting you know before you put in too much work into something that likely won't get any traffic.

[TheWordSpreader]

That's true and I will say lucky for me I get a few domain names free with the hosting service I'm using! But thanks for he heads up and I haven't used facebook much for making a group, just my personal profile, but what features does facebook give you?