After you have done all your planning and organizing and finally have your site online, is it doing what you expected it to? Your web site is quite a bit different than the place where you worship - you don't see the faces that visit your web site or get a chance to shake their hands. You will need some tools to help you discover if you are hitting your goals for your web site. You will need more than just a simple counter to properly gather and analyze the statistics and trends for your site.

We all remember being taught the Five W's (and one H) in school, don't we? Well, they are still relevant in the realm of the World Wide Web. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How apply not only to your online content, but also to your online outreach.

Print formats have fixed physical dimensions - 8.5" x 11", 4-page, 1/2-page folded - and the temptation is to fill every available square inch of space in an effort to get the most for your money. The web has no boundaries and pages are not limited by a fixed format, but the temptation still remains - publish everything, including the filler. The result? Lots of web content with little impact. We look at some of the consequences of continuing to follow the print mentality when publishing on the web.

The web has changed. In the beginning, it mimicked print media's "Publish and Read". In a relatively short time, however, the web has become dramatically different - instead of a few publishers, everyone is contributing content to the web. Internet users no longer just consume content, they also create content. Position your site to be one of the 'Net Generation's places to be.

The last thing you want is an ineffective web site. Your church web site must share your story and connect with your intended audience. To do this, you must determine who will build it and maintain it and what tools and resources they will need.

You also need to know what to look for when evaluating possible platforms for your church web site. Have a clear set of requirements ready as you look for your solution for an effective web site.

As a web master, at some point you will undoubtedly begin to work on your search engine optimization, or think you need to work on optimizing your site for the search engines. Before you do, read this article and stop to think about who's more important - your readers or the robots?

Every web master needs a basic understanding of how the web works. Educate yourself about the fundamentals of Apache, PHP and MySQL and you will have a much easier time managing your site and a lot less frustration in maintaining it. The aim here is to introduce some of the common concepts of the three primary web applications supporting your web site.

In a post on Church Marketing Sucks, Brad Abare posted a series on producing church web sites that don't suck. Let's face it - it is just as easy to produce a web site that sucks as it is to create one that doesn't suck. Follow these tips so your site is good for more than just serving as a bad example.

One of the first features you will want to consider carefully for your church or ministry site is the ability to accept prayer requests. People everywhere have joys and concerns they can offer in prayer and your web site can be part of their prayer lives. The web offers global availability - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But, it will be up to you to connect with those people and their prayers.

There are numerous web sites devoted to the technical, design aesthetics and usability aspects of web sites, but few help you with the editorial aspect (content) of your site. We start a discussion about what (and what not) to put on your church's web site.