Clover Church Websites

Posted on 08. Aug, 2008 by loswhit in Web/Tech

When Sandals Church started we hand coded websites like this one.

For the year 2000, I was actually proud of this piece of work.
Well churches do not have to suffer anymore.
There are a few guys who were like 11 in the year 2000 that are making things sexy fly for your churches online experiences.
Introducing Clover.

We believe in equipping the church to do the work God has called it to do.

We know that your calling is huge… That it takes precidence over everything else in your life. Whether you are a church planter, pastor, or para-church leader; a major part of your ministry is making your heart known to the community and demographic you’re trying to minister to.

We believe that Clover will provide you with a means of communicating your heart and vision to your community, and it will do it in a fashion that is current, clean and fresh.

Our heart is that you are freed up to do the work of Christ in this world…
A calling that we don’t take lightly.

Clover has invented the most intuitive management system I have ever seen. Putting you in the driver seat.
And seriously. The sites they have built look amazing.
Head over to Clover and take a few of their demo sites for a spin.

Who designs your site?
Los

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Mud Puppy

08. Aug, 2008

Is that a Ragamuffin Sweater Vest?
Macker

08. Aug, 2008

actually, no, my church’s website does NOT suck. but I like your design.

http://betheriver.com/
Malachi

08. Aug, 2008

Sweater vest? Really? Someone should design a Raggamuffin Soul t-shirt based on that.
luke mundy

08. Aug, 2008

we’re currently using an iWeb site that I designed and don’t have time to maintain. So, yes, it does SUCK.

oddly enough, I just saw the Clover ad here last night and fell in love with their sites. We may be making the switch!
Macker

08. Aug, 2008

Our designer (ask for Elliot): http://asubtleweb.com/
Read Scott

08. Aug, 2008

I know this great little design boutique called Updatable. They do sweet church websites. They did our church’s website. Plus, I think the owner of the company is on staff at a church or something.

*wink*
Nick Blevins

08. Aug, 2008

http://www.robspangler.com will be working on our new design
lynse leanne

08. Aug, 2008

i like the look of our website, but the navigation is not too good….but it is ok.

we have a web guy that does it…it is a huge undertaking.
Macker

08. Aug, 2008

this stuff is not easy to do well. mean dean used to give lots of advice on the topic: http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/
Los

08. Aug, 2008

That is a NorthFace fleece vest jerks. I work that crap loud and proud
nooc

08. Aug, 2008

Me, myself and two volunteers (when I can get them). Talking about DIY - the volunteers hand-coded from scratch our back-end CMS system.

Our site sucks but only in small caps ’cause the design is fine but just a little too far ahead of our people. That is, looks great on laptop and flat-panel screens, completely illegible on CRT monitors. And we sure found out how many people were still on CRT’s!

Re-design under way.
Justin Dean

08. Aug, 2008

We’re using clover. So far we really like it. We are patiently waiting for upgrades like video streaming but it is very simple to use.

check our clover out at http://www.Rockchurchqc.com
Roberto

08. Aug, 2008

No, our website doesn’t suck. Thanks to our friends at http://www.churchplantmedia.com/ it actually looks like we know what we are doing.
Reese

08. Aug, 2008

A past youth leader designed our site, it’s been the same since, exactly the same. That’s right, no one’s even updated it.
Travis Spencer

08. Aug, 2008

HEY THERE…… Is $1000 a good deal? What do you guys think?
Roberto

08. Aug, 2008

You may view it at http://www.sevensdchurch.com/
Sully

08. Aug, 2008

Speak Creative out of Memphis. They are amazing guys, and very focused on helping the church.

http://speakcreative.com/

http://www.fbcsmyrna.org/
Isma Martinez

08. Aug, 2008

Hi from Vilanova, Barcelona, Spain.
Our website is fine, it could be better for sure but since we don’t have budget for a great website, and we’re all volunteering it’ll be enough for us for a very looong time.
You guys can check it at http://www.iglesiadelgarraf.com
Dave ©

08. Aug, 2008

If you’re asking about our personal site (http://www.beautifulcanvas.org)…well, that would be me. It’s nothing too fancy but it suits our purposes just fine.

If you are asking about our church website (http://www.church-redeemer.org), that was designed by Site Organic (http://www.siteorganic.com). It’s prices are a little bit more expensive than Clover’s prices. However, I think Site Organic offers more features. That being said, Clover’s front-end designs are much nicer (cleaner) than Site Organic’s designs.
Mike

08. Aug, 2008

Our website SUCKS REAL BAD, if you go to the church it sucks, if you don’t go to the church it sucks, no info to speak of, no links to small groups, BUT THAT IS GOING TO CHANGE SOON!!! can you say 360 Hubs
Fred McKinnon

08. Aug, 2008

Our site is done 100% in WordPress … was actually featured in a recent blog post at TonyMorganLive.Com, which was cool … what an honor .. you should see the Google Analytics spike for that one!

The site is
http://www.sscommunitychurch.com

Clover’s stuff looks good, though - fo sho.
Nick

08. Aug, 2008

i do
Batsirai Chada

08. Aug, 2008

Wordpress (free) is cool, but its hard to get all the features and themes you need for a church. But there is a new theme coming out soon - http://www.churchpresspro.com which should make things alot easier and cheaper for many churches…

My church site (http://www.theembassyofgod.com)
which I designed, uses - Interspire Website Publisher - http://www.interspire.com/articlelive/
Batsirai Chada

08. Aug, 2008

Sorry: http://www.theembassyofgod.com
Batsirai Chada

08. Aug, 2008

Also check out : http://www.freshchurchsites.com/
Jeff M. Miller

08. Aug, 2008

I used to hand code all our stuff, but we moved to Joomla a couple of years ago so I could try and get the other staff to lend a hand.

That hasn’t worked out so well. We’re now seriously considering Clover, and are waiting for finance committee approval.

If they say “no,” then I’m going to move the whole site to WordPress.
Anthony Coppedge

08. Aug, 2008

http://www.churchmedia.cc does mine.
Shaun King

08. Aug, 2008

Our church plant got on the Clover bandwagon early. Customer service is great, the CMS is simple, and the sites look great.

Check our site out @ http://www.Courageous.tv

-Shaun & Crew
Loran

09. Aug, 2008

Clover looks very cool. I like what they’ve done. At New Life in Renton,WA. we use http://www.churchwebworks.com
It’s a template system that we customize for us and make it really sing for us. We love it!
http://www.newliferenton.com

It’s very inexpensive also? but enough about that…seriously…the clover stuff looks cool!
Brad Huebert

09. Aug, 2008

Our site is pretty cool, I’d have to say. http://www.dccnet.org. We picked up a template like Clover offers and it works well for us. My personal site, http://www.howtoheargodspeaking.com, is an iWeb deal but I tweaked it a bit (no html meddling, just within the features you can do a lot).
Tyler

09. Aug, 2008

http://www.fiveninetylabs.com

100% Wordpress, check out http://www.lighthousecollective.com.
Eric

09. Aug, 2008

Nice, Clean, easy-to-use, but really REALLY bad on having Google crawl your site.

Designers today know so little about SEO that all your traffic and site promotion has to be done by word-of-mouth and not searching for … “real awesome church in atlanta ga”

Save Flash and Ajax for games, not web design.
Read Scott

09. Aug, 2008

@Eric - I second that. Flash ain’t cool, but I still love AJAX, when used in moderation.
Jay

12. Aug, 2008

I think that whole thing about “Flash being just for games” is a bit 1995…

I started poking around a bit, and check out what they did with the typical Flash SEO issue. Basically, every one of their sites is displayed as HTML to Google.

http://www.speakingofclover.com/2008/06/search-engine-optimization-in-flash-really/
Moses in Training

23. Dec, 2008

Clover designs look great but the features are pretty basic. Also, keep in mind that many of their designs rely on large photography. The irony is that if you're a small church you probably don't have lots of high-quality, original images. If you're a bigger church, then you probably need more functionality than Clover provides. Their CMS system is very slick however. It would probably be a good plan to think about starting on Clover, then move up to something like SiteOrganic Express.

The Deets

:: This whole Ragamuffin thing is simple. I'm just a screwed up man, in need of adoption, trying to be real. I was poured into, mentored, taught, and sometimes beat into authenticity by my family at Sandals Church. They created this beautiful mess of me and I'm forever grateful.
:: Now in the ATL with mi familia, I get to create relevant & engaging worship experiences every week. I am being shaped by Jeff Henderson and Andy Stanley at Buckhead Church. From creative sermon planning, to off the hook music experiences. This place is stretching me to my limits and I love it.
:: My life goal is to inspire a movement of authenticity among all generations of Christians that morphs the face of the evangelical church into a place of being real with yourself, others, and God.