I spent the last 5 days at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago. 

I'm back in California - exhausted but recovering.  I got the chance to talk with dozens of youth workers about their areas of ministry and influence.  I'm inspired by all of the youth workers out there who are passionate about connecting with, and caring for, students.  I'm also impressed by all of the support, resources and tools that are available to help them succeed.  You can check out some videos from the conference at conference.youthministry.com.

Right before the Toby Mac concert on Sunday night, SnapShot Web gave away a free year's worth of hosting and a custom template to a youth pastor from Ashland Kentucky.  Check back soon for some pics and links to the site we'll have set up.

I came across a band called The Music Room this week.  Their music is amazing and their vision is inspirational.  They are getting ready to head out on a 52-city tour so there's a chance that they'll be in your neck of the woods within the next few months.  You've got to check out their music, their story, and their schedule at www.entertheroom.com.  Here's some of what they have to say about their music and their mission:

The Music Room is a band that wants to serve. We don’t want to glorify ourselves. Our songs are not geared towards self-glorification, but perhaps instead they ask the listener to self-examine. We want to write songs that force people to look truthfully and soberly at the life they are living. We don’t want to shame people, or discourage people; we want to see people be set free. If our music can lead people to know and recognize a God that sets people free from shame and slavery then we’ve succeeded. You see we’ve gone from not expecting much of ourselves to expecting that God will do much with us if we make ourselves available to His plans.

One of the really cool things that The Music Room is doing is partnering with an organization called Courage to be You.  This is a non-profit that works to raise awareness about human-trafficking (sex slavery of young girls) in Northern CA.  Courage to be You has produced a compilation album to sell at benefit concerts for the purpose of raising financial support to build a safe house for girls rescued from the hopeless life of sex trafficking. The Music Room was able to contribute one of their songs - “Cost of Believing” - to this compilation.  Check out www.couragetobeyou.org for more info.

We sometimes hear questions that go something like this: "Since SnapShot Web uses templates, how can I ensure that my site doesn't look just like everyone else's site?"  The underlying assumption is that a template is a static entity - something you simply drop onto your Church Website and can never change or customize.  This is simply not the case.

We always tell people that the templates are really just a place to start.  FInd the template that is the closes to what you are looking for and then start tweaking the colors and images and backgrounds so that it will fit your particular culture.  Three months down the road, if you are looking for something different, change it.  We'll make this super easy for you. 

All of our templates are included with any of the SnapShot Plans.  You can change as often as you'd like and even use different templates for different pages or sections of your site.  You can see live examples of all of the templates at www.snapshottemplates.com.

To get a sense of just how customizable the templates are, you've got to take a look at www.graceyouth.net.  Click through that site and see all of the things they have going on.  See if you can tell what template this is.

Give up?  Here is the template that they started with.

We wanted to show you a great Church website that is incorporating some simple and clean design pieces that give it a great look and feel.  The church, Mosborough Elim Church in the U.K. has set up a sub navigation on their site.  It's really 4 simple images that they have dropped into their site and shown on every page.  This, in essence, ensures that wherever someone is on the site, they will have a quick and easy way to get to the contact info, the service time info, and the info for guests with a simple click.  The design that they have used for these images looks amazing.  It fits well with the look they have implemented on their site. 

Another thing to check out while you peruse their site, www.mosboroughelimchurch.co.uk, is the way that they have used sub-header images on each of their pages to build a sense of continuity all through their site.  Make sure to check it out and as always, let us know if you'd like us to help you do something similar with your site.

It's Day 4 of the 90 day Bible Project for First Student Ministries.  A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to read through the Bible in a year.  It was a good year.  These guys are doing it in 90 days.  They've done the math and they say with just about 45 minutes and 12 pages a day, they can pull it off.  I love it.  What a amazing feat.  Their encouraging the students in their ministry and their families to join them.

Not only that but they are cataloging the journey on their website.  Each day at midnight they put up a new video, a new key verse for the day and a link to to a new resource that will help people in this adventure.  Each week's message at their program night will focus on the scripture reading for the previous week.  Check out their site to follow the daily updates. Check out their sweet video archive.  Join them if you dare. 

Lots of people have asked recently about how to set up a splash page for their church or ministry website.  A splash page is, in essence, a page that shows up before your home page and often offers people the chance to enter into different sections in your site.  We would say that sometimes this is not the best option as you are requiring an extra click for people to get to the content of your site. 

Other times though, people can make it work quite well.  We came across this site - www.ampedyouthonline.com - recently that has set up a make-shift splash page right from within the SnapShot Web tools.  They've done it in a way that looks good and is very easy to understand (two essentials for a splash page.)

Follow these quick tips for using images on your church website and you'll have a site that loads quickly and looks great.  First, there are a few things you need to know.

Image Dimensions: Digital images are composed of a large number of individual dots called pixels. Every digital image can be measured in terms of pixel width and height. When you look at the information or properties of an image on your computer and you see something like this (Dimensions 3600 x 2400) you are looking at the pixel dimensions of the image. In this case, the image is 3600 pixels wide and 2400 pixels high.

Image Resolution: The resolution of an image is measured in dots per inch (dpi) for print images or pixels per inch (ppi) for images viewed on a computer screen. While not technically the same, the terms dpi and ppi are often used interchangeably. The most common resolution that you will find for images on the web will be 72ppi. This is due to the simple fact that this is the best resolution that can display on the vast majority of computer screens.

Check out this SnapShot Website that's being used for an upcoming movie project with an amazing cause.  Go to www.nottodaythemovie.com and watch the videos that they have on their home page, check out some of the recent blog posts, follow them on facebook and twitter, and see how you can be involved.

The movie will draw attention to the horrific issue of human trafficking by telling the story of a college student who travels to India for a summer trip with a few friends.  He finds himself in a situation that will change his life forever.  He meets a young girl and her father, Dalits by birth, who are facing starvation and plead for his help.

Anyway, we came across this recently and couldn't help but share it with you.

Does your Church Website need help?  Do you want a great looking website that is easy to manage and includes robust features like podcasts, forms, calendars, surveys, blogs, and more?

We see lots of church websites every day. Some of these sites are being used as effective tools to reach their community. In contrast, some of these websites are in dire need of some serious help. That's where we come in.

Want a major makeover for your church website?

We're going to take a few of the church websites that are most in need and turn them into something beautiful, clean, and effective... for FREE. We'll help with design, layout, content, images, google ranking and more.

Give us a minute & fill out the survey to let us know why your church site needs serious help and you'll be entered to win.

One of the beautiful things about SnapShot Web is that you start with a template for your website but you can make all kinds of changes and tweaks to that template to "make it your own."

Let us show you a beautiful example.  Grace United Methodist Church, in Merritt Island, FL had a particular look and feel in mind as they were considering putting together a website.  Since none of our templates were a perfect match for them, we just had them choose one that was close and then we talked them through the process of changing a few images and a few colors and they were all set with what you see now.

All that to say that adding custom headers, logos, colors, images, and more is not only possible but we highly encourage it and we'll help you with the process.  Click through their site and check out some of the things that they're doing.  As always, please let us know if we can answer any questions for you or help you with your web needs in any way.