I've fallen in love with Posterous.com for easy posting; they say you can podcast with it; I haven't tried it but it sounds worth a try for churches: http://posterous.com/faq
For hosting, I highly recommend www.justhost.com , which is the cheapest I've found (yet reliable). I also often use www.000webhost.com , a completely free(!) host, for test sites I'm developing and for small sites for freelance clients. In my experience its uptime is not as good as it claims, but for small sites it's a good option--it's free up to 1.5GB of storage, which is plenty for the majority of church websites. This is the only free host I know of that does NOT place banner ads at the top of your page. (They try to sell you on switching to their paid hosting via www.hosting24.com, which is another fine option; no better or worse than justhost, bluehost, or godaddy.)
I'm working on a simple, basic, WordPress template for church sites that I'll offer via creative commons; contact me if you'd like to see what I have so far.
Google Apps is probably a good option for churches too.
Meg, great to have you on the beat! If anyone can, against the odds, make Synod a little more interesting and digestible, it's you. Then after this you can go cover Congress!
Posted in: How to Podcast Sermons
I've fallen in love with Posterous.com for easy posting; they say you can podcast with it; I haven't tried it but it sounds worth a try for churches: http://posterous.com/faq
Posted in: Who knows of any affordable Christian web host and CMS solutions?
For hosting, I highly recommend www.justhost.com , which is the cheapest I've found (yet reliable). I also often use www.000webhost.com , a completely free(!) host, for test sites I'm developing and for small sites for freelance clients. In my experience its uptime is not as good as it claims, but for small sites it's a good option--it's free up to 1.5GB of storage, which is plenty for the majority of church websites. This is the only free host I know of that does NOT place banner ads at the top of your page. (They try to sell you on switching to their paid hosting via www.hosting24.com, which is another fine option; no better or worse than justhost, bluehost, or godaddy.)
For a content management system, WordPress is the best, but for more basic, user-friendly options, see http://designm.ag/resources/simple-cms/ .
I'm working on a simple, basic, WordPress template for church sites that I'll offer via creative commons; contact me if you'd like to see what I have so far.
Google Apps is probably a good option for churches too.
Posted in: Agenda for Synod Review (May Contain Spoilers)
Meg, great to have you on the beat! If anyone can, against the odds, make Synod a little more interesting and digestible, it's you. Then after this you can go cover Congress!