Keeping a website updated can feel like a daunting task, but having a regular maintenance schedule can help! Here’s a sample church website maintenance schedule that you can adapt to your parish to help make your website work for you so that you can focus more time and energy on other ministries.
Weekly
Post sermon either as an embedded video of your latest church service (preferred) or as text only in a blog post.
Review your upcoming events page. Anything new to add? Anything to update? Anything to remove?
Review your upcoming worship times & locations for accuracy. This is especially important around holidays and with summer worship schedules. Remember - a guest won’t know that you cancel your midweek bible study during the local farmers’ market on the third Wednesday of each summer month!
Add newsletter links if you have an archive on your site.
Before Holidays
Post special service schedule prominently at least 6 weeks before the holiday. There are lots of ways you can do this—figure out what works that you can do consistently. Here’s some ideas—mix and match them!:
Add a new block on your homepage with the service schedule.
Create a new page for the holiday and link to it from your homepage and Plan a Visit page.
Create events for each special service and add them to the “Easter” category.
Change homepage banner to seasonal image & holiday welcome message
After Holidays
Change homepage banner back to “ordinary”
Remove special service schedule
Hide special holiday page if applicable
Monthly
Review staff and leadership pages. Have there been changes? Do photos need to be updated? Is contact information current?
Test your contact form
Review ministries page. Anything new to add? Anything changed?
Take an objective look at the photos on your site. How old are they? Are there any new photos you could add to give a sense of the life of your community today?
Annually
Review who has access to the site and make sure that you have redundancies in place. A good time to do this is at the first vestry meeting of your newly elected vestry.
Work to collect and update new photo release forms from your parishioners. This task works well at an annual meeting! (Read more about photo releases on our promising practices page.)
Gather your church’s communicators (any staff or volunteers who work communicate on behalf of your parish either online or in printed materials) and review your website goals and objectives. What doesn’t work anymore for your church? What could you add to support your ministry goals and objectives? How will you assign roles and responsibilities for the coming year? If you’d like help auditing your website and updating website goals, reach out to the diocesan communicator at communications@cnyepiscopal.org to schedule a meeting!