What tools should you use to create a church website? WordPress offers the most comprehensive platform for building a quality church website. It includes thousands of helpful plugins, including the Elementor Plugin. The Elementor plugin provides a drag-and-drop interface for editing websites built with WordPress. For those with limited technical experience, this is the most effective way to build a church website.
WordPress Provides Your Base Set of Tools
The Elementor plugin is a free plugin designed for WordPress, which is a free website platform. WordPress provides the infrastructure for your website, while the Elementor plugin gives you a simple way to design your website.
WordPress is the most used website builder tool. All types of organizations use this tool to build professional-looking websites, from major brands to small businesses and churches.
While WordPress was originally designed for blogging, it now includes a vast set of tools for building and managing your site, making it a complete content management system (CMS).
WordPress has a dashboard that allows you to easily create posts or new web pages. You can also integrate Google Analytics to track your website traffic and visitor statistics. However, some people may struggle with the interface for editing web pages and posts.
The interface allows you to switch between HTML code and a visual editor. Editing a page with the visual editor is a lot like editing a Word document. While you can easily type text and insert images, it does have its limitations.
Some people may prefer a drag-and-drop interface. With a drag-and-drop interface, you can click and drag elements and see the result in real-time without needing to publish your changes.
Elementor Plugin Provides an Easier Interface
Installing the Elementor plugin for WordPress gives you the interface that you need to build web pages without any previous web design experience. When you edit a page, the changes are viewable instantly, providing a live design interface that is easier to work with compared to the standard WordPress interface.
With these features, you can also include details that help your website stand out. Hover effects, animations, overlays, box shadows, gradient backgrounds, and other professional touches are easily added to any web page.
The Elementor plugin also includes over 100 full-page WordPress templates that you can choose from for the basic layout and look of your website. You can then customize the theme to suit your specific style.
Along with templates, you can use special blocks to customize your web pages. The plugin includes over 300 pre-designed blocks, which are individual section templates that can be added to any page or combined in any order.
The Elementor page builder also allows you to use a responsive web design for your website. Responsive design adjusts the layout of your webpage based on the type of device.
Whether a visitor is visiting your website from a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer, you can ensure that they get streamlined user experience.
The Elementor page builder essentially takes the hassle out of building your website. Within a few hours, you can have a website that looks like it was designed by a professional instead of a church volunteer.
Besides the free Elementor plugin, the developers released Elementor Pro. The Pro version is a premium plugin that costs about $41 for use on one website. It also includes several features that are not found in the free version.
With Elementor Pro, you gain a visual form builder. You can quickly create forms to get people to sign up to receive a newsletter or capture emails from prospective members that want to learn more about your church. You also gain custom fonts, animated headlines, and image and video sliders.
Alternatives to the Elementor Plugin
Elementor is not the only plugin for WordPress that adds a drag-and-drop page builder interface to your WordPress installation. WPBakery and Divi are a couple of popular options that offer similar features. However, these two options are not free.
WPBakery costs about $45 to purchase while Divi requires an $89 per year subscription. These premium plugins include several features to help make them effective options for building your church website. While these are great choices, they are not quite as user-friendly as the Elementor plugin.
With WPBakery, you can use any WordPress theme that you want. It is designed to work with all free and premium themes, giving you more options for the starting look of your website. You also get tons of templates for quickly building web pages with a specific layout.
Whether you are editing the overall look of your website or using a template, WPBakery gives you complete control over the colors, fonts, and elements.
Divi is a little different from the WPBakery and Elementor plugins. Divi is a theme and page builder, which means that you do not need a separate WordPress theme. However, you also have the option of installing the standalone Divi plugin without the Divi theme.
It also includes many of the features found in the other plugins, including real-time visual editing. You can drag, resize, or remove elements and instantly see the results. You even get a large set of predefined elements that you can drop on to the page, including an audio player, comment section, email opt-in form, gallery, and slider.
Conclusion
Elementor is a useful plugin for WordPress that gives people more control over the design of their websites. Using this plugin, you can simply drag and drop elements on the page. You can easily resize images and move paragraphs to create stunning web pages that appeal to both your existing members and future church members.
The Elementor plugin is designed for WordPress, which gives you a base set of tools for managing your website. You do not need any experience to build a site that represents your church in the online world.
Besides Elementor, some churches use the WPBakery or Divi plugins. All three options give you a drag-and-drop page builder and a variety of useful features. However, if you want a free option, the Elementor plugin remains the most-recommended option. If you enjoy the plugin, you can upgrade to the pro version to enjoy even more useful features.
This article originally appeared here, and is used by permission.
