Building a Church Website Around Church Community Builder
Co-Owner of Dragos Design Creative
When First Presbyterian Church in Norwalk, Ohio began looking for a web design partner, they already knew they wanted something highly customized.
They found Dragos Design Creative through Google while researching church website design and came across our work with River Oaks Church. After exploring several web developers and template-based church website options, they chose our team because they were looking for a combination of custom design, church-specific strategy, and technical experience with church management systems.
From the beginning, Church Community Builder, commonly known as CCB, was going to play an important role.
First Presbyterian wanted a modern website that reflected their church today, but they also wanted the website to connect with the systems their staff and congregation already use. Events, registrations, groups, ministry information, giving, media, and next steps all needed to feel like parts of one consistent experience.
That gave us an opportunity to approach the project as both a church website design project and a larger communication strategy.
Building the Website Around Church Community Builder
One of the biggest priorities was creating a stronger connection between the website and Church Community Builder.
Rather than asking church staff to manage the same information separately on the website and inside CCB, we designed the website so important information could flow from the church management system into the places visitors actually need it.
The church calendar is one of the clearest examples.
Visitors can search upcoming events, filter them by ministry, day, or time, and choose between different calendar views. Ministry-specific events can also appear directly within the relevant ministry pages.
That means someone exploring Kids Ministry does not have to leave that page and search through an unrelated calendar to see what is coming up. The relevant events are already part of the ministry experience.
CCB also supports registrations and sign-up pathways throughout the site, helping First Presbyterian connect website visitors with the systems the church uses to manage participation and communication.
For the church team, the goal was simple: manage information where it belongs and let the website help present that information to visitors.
Creating a Consistent Experience Across Every Ministry
First Presbyterian has a wide range of ministries, each serving different people and different stages of life.
That includes Kids Ministry, The Way for junior high and high school students, Adult Discipleship, Missions, Cross Ministry, Presbyterian Women, Vacation Bible School, and Children & Youth Sunday School.
One of the design decisions we made early was to create a consistent structure across those ministry pages.
Each ministry still has its own content, photos, schedule, and personality, but visitors encounter a familiar experience as they move around the website.
Pages can include a ministry overview, age information, meeting times and locations, upcoming events from CCB, frequently asked questions, photo galleries, and a direct way to contact the appropriate ministry leader.
We liked this approach because consistency is especially valuable on a church website.
A parent looking for information about their child should not have to figure out an entirely different page structure when they later explore student ministry or another area of church life. Once visitors understand how one ministry page works, the others feel familiar.
That makes the site easier to explore while still giving each ministry enough flexibility to communicate what makes it unique.
Making the Website a Central Place to Connect
The project also gave us an opportunity to think carefully about what someone may want to do after arriving on the website.
For some visitors, that might mean learning about the church for the first time. For others, it could mean joining a small group, requesting prayer, exploring membership, getting involved, finding an upcoming event, or connecting with the music ministry.
Those pathways were brought together through the website’s Next Steps structure so people have clear options for becoming more connected.
Media was another important part of that experience.
First Presbyterian’s Media section gives visitors access to Sunday messages and video content through YouTube, while the church’s radio ministry extends that content beyond the website.
The radio section includes links to listen through Apple Podcasts and Spotify, along with an Apple Podcasts feed embedded directly into the website. Visitors can browse recent episodes without first leaving the site.
Online giving is handled in a similar way.
Rather than simply sending visitors somewhere else, the church’s Pushpay giving form is embedded directly into the website. This gives people a straightforward way to make one-time or recurring gifts through the giving system First Presbyterian already uses.
Bringing these different pieces together was important. CCB, Pushpay, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ministry content, forms, and event information all serve different purposes, but to the person visiting the church website, they should feel like parts of the same First Presbyterian experience.
A Collaborative Planning Process
One of the things we enjoyed most about this project was the amount of collaboration that went into it.
Dirk served as our primary contact and helped coordinate input from church staff, ministry leaders, the committee, and the lead pastor. That gave different ministries an opportunity to contribute while maintaining a consistent direction for the website as a whole.
We also connected the First Presbyterian team with two churches whose websites we had previously redesigned.
Those conversations gave the committee an opportunity to hear directly from other churches that had been through a similar process, see different approaches to church websites, and think through what would work best for their own congregation.
As the planning developed, the conversations went beyond page layouts and visual design. The team spent time thinking about ministry language, communication pathways, how information should be organized, and how visitors should move from learning about something to actually participating.
Those decisions became part of the finished website.
Church management integrations have also played an important role in other Dragos projects. For example, our Central Community Church website project incorporated automated church content and ministry information into the visitor experience.
A Church Website Designed Around the Systems They Already Use
The finished First Presbyterian website brings together custom WordPress website design, Church Community Builder integration, Pushpay giving, ministry content, events, registrations, groups, media, and clear next steps within one consistent experience.
What we are most proud of is how naturally those pieces work together.
Visitors can explore a ministry, see upcoming events, register for activities, request prayer, join a group, watch a message, listen to the church’s radio ministry, give online, or contact a ministry leader without the website feeling like a collection of disconnected systems.
For the church team, it provides a website built around the tools and workflows they already use while giving them a strong foundation they can continue building on.
Is Your Website Ready to Serve Your Mission?
If your church uses Church Community Builder, Pushpay, Planning Center, or another church management platform and you are considering a new website, talk with us about your church website project. We would love to explore how those systems can become part of the website strategy from the beginning.
Screenshots of the project.
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