Are you looking for Joomla! church templates? Christian Templates Online is now offering Joomla CMS templates to meet the needs of churches, organizations, and ministries looking for dynamic interactivity in their website applications.  That’s right- Joomla church templates are available- finally!

Did you just finish reading the above sentence only to find yourself wondering:  what exactly does that mean? What is Joomla!? And what is a CMS template? And what exactly is “dynamic interactivity”? Yes? Well, fear not. This little article is designed to introduce you to the wonderful world of content management systems, and specifically the application known as Joomla!

Up until now you’ve counted on Christian Templates Online to offer the very best in attractive, state of the art web templates- at very affordable prices. The Christian templates offered by CTO allow churches and Christian organizations on a tight budget to put together a website that is both professional in appearance, and easy to manage and customize. These Christian templates are known as “static” web templates.

So how do these static church templates differ from Joomla! church templates? Well, static templates incorporate the use of HTML editors to publish material to the Web. There are numerous HTML editors on the market, including free ones such as Nvu. But with this kind of software, an underlying understanding of at least some HTML and CSS is necessary in order to load new content, images, etc, to your website. This is still a very popular option. And many churches, even relatively small ones, will have someone on staff with sufficient HTML knowledge to manage a church website in such a manner.

However, sometimes this isn’t the case. Sometimes a church, ministry, or organization won’t have someone available to make these changes via an HTML editor; at least not without an additional cost. And this is where CMS (content management systems), and specifically Joomla! comes in handy. Joomla is an open-source content management system that allows churches and organizations to maintain their own websites (including making updates, changes, etc) via the use of an online user interface that requires no pre-requisite HTML knowledge to operate.

Once upon a time there was no such thing as an open-source content management system available. And with paid-for, custom CMS setups costing tens of thousands of dollars to create, there simply was no real CMS option available for churches and organizations on any kind of fixed or limited budget. But then came along Joomla! And suddenly everyone had access to a sophisticated, open-source content management system infrastructure. And get this: the underlying infrastructure was offered-- totally free!

Okay, so maybe now you understand what Joomla is; a free, open-source content management system. But what exactly is a Joomla! template? Well, put simply, the template is the “skin” if you will, that dresses up your site. While there is plenty of complicated PHP coding going on behind the scenes, what your audience, congregation, and/or website visitor ultimately experiences- is the visual nature of the finished product. A Joomla template is the skin that dresses the underlying software platform; interacting smoothly with the Joomla infrastructure to create an attractive, seamless, interactive website experience.

Like any new product available on the Web, the initial Joomla! templates left a little to be desired- in terms of sheer design appeal. Sure, they worked- but with no real “pizzazz”. But as time went on, and as the popularity of the Joomla! platform grew, so too did the template options available. And because Joomla! is an open-source platform, any third party is free to design its own templates to add to the fold.

And this is where Christian Templates Online comes into the picture. Over time we’ve recognized the unique opportunity Joomla! provides for churches, ministries and Christian organizations. And so we’ve stepped up to the plate to design a series of Joomla! Christian templates (or would you call them Christian Joomla! templates – we’re not sure!?) to allow the Christian community a collection of striking website designs to match some of the professionalism offered by various secular companies. At present there are very few Christian design companies offering unique and attractive Joomla! templates. But at Christian Templates Online we’ve made that a very real goal that has now come to fruition.

**One note: While Joomla church templates are a robust and flexible alternative to HTML based church websites, it’s worth giving some forethought to which option best fits your particular church or Christian organization. As we state elsewhere, Joomla, while requiring little to no HTML understanding, still has a learning curve to deal with. A CMS infrastructure as comprehensive and multi-faceted as Joomla has plenty of rules to learn.  Once you learn how to use the Joomla infrastructure, future church website maintenance and updates are a snap. But that initial learning curve can be a little steep.

If you’re a small to mid-sized church with one or two people making changes to the church website, an HTML-based website might be a better choice- because, up front, there is probably less to learn with a simple HTML set-up than with the full Joomla infrastructure. If, on the other hand, you are a large church or organization planning on giving upload access to a large number of people and expecting frequent changes/updates, then Joomla could be the better option- especially if these people making updates lack prerequisite HTML knowledge.

The point is that, ultimately, both HTML-based and Joomla church website templates have their benefits and their drawbacks. So make your choice based on the unique needs of your particular congregation, staff, and/or organization. Most simply put, if you’re planning on developing a large, frequently changing website to be accessible to numerous contributors, then a Joomla church template is probably the way to go. Otherwise, you and your congregation might be best served by purchasing and developing one of our HTML/CSS church website templates.