[Worship Leader's Toolkit] Standard Theme & Flockhosting

[This is a post from my worship leader's toolkit blog series. You can read the series intro and find links to the other posts here.]

Soon after coming on staff at my church in the fall of 2005 I discovered that lots of worship leaders were blogging, sharing updates with one another and letting people know the kinds of things that were happening in their churches. I found these blogs really helpful and quickly learned that I would be able to learn lots by staying updated with these other worship leaders through their blogs.

After a conference in early 2007 I decided to jump in to the world of blogging and quickly got setup with WordPress. I loved how easy it was to manage my site on the WordPress server and that I really didn’t need to manage anything other than my own content. I began blogging my Sunday setlists, sharing links and writing about some of the things I was learning in my role.

Over time, I knew that I wanted to migrate my blog to my own self-hosted server to give me the benefit of a few things that weren’t available with my blog hosted by WordPress – a greater selection of themes, more control over plugins and eventually the ability to sell advertising.

In five years, blogging has been an incredible journey. I’ve been able to learn from tons of other worship leaders, share resources with people who are looking to learn, encouraged me to think critically about how I lead worship and, most of all, been loads of fun.

If you are looking to start blogging, I want to give you info on three things which will get you up and running.

1. WordPress - www.wordpress.com
   There really isn’t any other option worth considering. I’ve looked at most other blog platforms and I keep coming back to WordPress. The ease of use, the ability to expand the platform combined with the community of users is pretty unbeatable. If you’ve got an issue with your blog, chances are that someone out there has a solution. If you’ve got something you want to do with your WordPress blog, chances are that someone out there has figured out a way to do it on theirs. Setting up a WordPress account is very easy and you can be up and running with your own blog in minutes.

   www.wordpress.com will get you everything you need and running a  blog on WordPress is free.

2. FlockHosting – www.flockhosting.com
   Once your blog is at the place that you’re ready to have it hosted on your own server, FlockHosting is a great option. I’ve hosted domains with Chuck for several and I love his pricing, I love his customer service and I love the reliability of his servers.You can buy a domain or get one free from FlockHosting when you pay for a year of hosting. Pay $60 to get your server setup with a year of hosting and your domain registration – great deal! One really great thing is that there is a one-click install option to get WordPress setup on your new FlockHosting account – no downloading or uploading, no FTP, nothing but clicking one button to get WordPress up and running!

3. Standard Theme – www.standardtheme.com
   The world of WordPress themes is a neverending sea of good, bad and ugly. Even with best wordpress themes in Google you’ll get back 22 million results. Stop the madness!I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for Standard Theme when it was released by the team at 8bit and I have never looked back. Standard is the easiest, simplest, most straightforward theme I’ve come across and the platform allows for some really great customization. Once you decide to run WordPress on your own server, Standard Theme is the first theme option you should check out.

So there you go, three resources to help you get started or to take the next step in blogging. If you’ve decided to take the leap, leave a comment here so we can visit your blog and encourage you.