Useful online resources

Add a search engine to your site

If your site is large enough (has enough separate pages) to warrant one, then this is definitely a worthwhile thing to add. While most church sites are too small to need this, you should probably provide a search tool if you have over fifty pages or so. The following work well:

• Atomz provides a free service with no adverts.
• FreeFind is a good easy-to-use alternative.

Again, you can find lots more in the Google Directory.

Alternatively, you can provide a simple "sitemap", which shows a simple hierarchical tree view of your website, so that people can quickly see all available resources to your site. This is a good method if you feel you don't have enough pages to warrant a search engine approach. For a simple example, see this example site.

Keeping track of your visitors and/or traffic

While I highly recommend against using a counter on your website, there are some people that are convinced that this is a must. Note that "hit" counters WILL NOT provide an accurate account of the traffic that your website receives.

Some basic definitions for you, which will help you understand more about "tracking" visitors and traffic to your website.

• HITS: This is the most common referred to type of website statistical tracking, but it is also the most inaccurate. A "hit" is generated for each item that a webserver serves up to a browser that visits your site. This means that a single page can generate many "hits" for each page view.
• PAGEVIEWS: Many common hit counters count visits to a given web page, or "page views" - this is much more accurate, but must be treated with care, as some simple "counters" count each time a page is reloaded (so if someone sits at a browser, and hits the "refresh" or "reload" button multiple times, each one will increase your count. With better counters (or actual server logs), this is actually probably the best statistic to try and track. You can follow which pages in your site get the most traffic (and therefore which parts of your site get the most use).

  There are lots of different counters, and the more advanced counters, the more detailed statistics you will receive (such as which website referred the visitor to you). Here are a couple that provide better quality tracking - note that regardless of your choice, I highly recommend that you NOT display a "counter" number on your website.

  • SiteMeter displays a small logo instead of a counter. It gives access to lots of statistics about your visitors.
  • eXTReMe Tracking also displays a logo instead of a counter. It is a good alternative to SiteMeter.

  You can find lots more in the Google Directory.