Domain Sitters - As I try to figure out whether a church has a web presence or not, I am turning up some major issues. This was what prompted me to set up the domain-sitters service. There are numerous examples given, and but remember that URLs are very fluid and what I saw when writing this may not be the same as what YOU see when you are reading this.

• The first is a missing web site. This is especially prevalent on freeservers and forministry (see below) but you will find it on all sorts of free providers.

• The second is the domain name you will be assigned from various providers (free and not so free)

• The third is what these providers do with your web site when they suspend or remove it.

• The fourth (and minor) is that the domain name often promotes the provider more than your church.

1) http://freewebhosting.hostdepartment.com/b/bigguns/ This is a non-working URL - but, let me ask you, how difficult is it to remember this URL? How hard would it be to type this URL from a church bulletin or a printed ad? This URL is attached to Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Lexington KY. How much easier would it have been if http://www.pleasant-ridge.org had been registered (currently NONE of the domains with pleasant-ridge are registered. Through domain sitters I would have registered pleasant-ridge.org, pointed it to the web site with domain masking, so that you would never see the real URL, and when the web site came down, I would either repoint it to a new web site, or built a temporary web site for this church. This web site is giving a page not found error. I will show you some of the more objectionable treatments you might find. This is a working URL but again, can you remember or publish this: http://www.forministry.com/USNCINDBCNBC2

2) The next case church is Parkway Baptist Church in Prestonburg, KY (I am going through Kentucky right now, so all examples will come from that state at this time). I have found two URLS for this church, neither one of them is working:

It looks like forministry shut down all the old web sites on April 16, 2006 and they are requiring churches to re-register and rebuild. This church probably had a web site built on one provider then built a second web site on the second provider. Neither URL is conducive to memorization or retyping. Again, I would have registered a domain like http://www.parkaway-baptist.com (all of which are available except .org which belongs to a church in Duluth Georgia.). I would have pointed the domain with masking to the angelfire web site. When the site moved I would have repointed it to the forministry web site. And again, this is all included in domain-sitters.com including a temporary web site for this church today. No one would have gotten lost dazed or confused by the multiple domain names and changes would have been transparent to the visitors and the congregation.

3) http://www.wordtoyou.org/immanuelchurch.html This site belongs to Immanuel Baptist Church in Harlan KY. The web page simply goes to advertising as I type this, giving all sorts of references to Word Documents and Word publishing (not bad advertising considering some others I have seen). It appears that wordtoyou.org has expired, or the web hosting has expired. The domain is registered through August 2007 (you can go to http://www.ekklesia-online.com and enter a domain name to find, in this case I entered wordtoyou.org to see if it was available. It wasn't so I clicked on the "click here for more info" area and got the registry information for the domain, which includes the expiration date and current status). So - if you have a domain and let the hosting service lapse, you could end up with this kind of generic advertising site under your domain name. Again, Domain-sitters.com was started to prevent this.

4)http://home.bellsouth.net/p/s/community.dll?ep=16&groupid=141956&ck=     Can you imagine trying to give out THIS URL? This one is out there. This belongs to Balls Creek Independent Baptist Church in Newton NC.  They have listed, elsewhere on the web, a great domain - http://www.bcibc.org, (I will register this domain and point it to their web site as a payment for using this church as an example here). Unfortunately, the other reference also included additional addressing http://www.bcibc.org/ballscreekbaptistchurch/splash which in my opinion is also not a good idea. What I would have done is taken the initial domain http://www.bcibc.org, and repointed it to the http://www.bcibc.org/ballscreekbaptistchurch/splash URL. Again, a much simpler, easier URL to give out and when and if you lost that domain hosting (which is probably what happened) you could simply repoint the domain to the home.bellsouth.net URL above. Same URL, different web page, different host, easy to publish and give out. I will also try and save the splash URL and make it go back to their current web page, although I don't think I can do it, but will give it some research. I would also urge you to not add anything to your basic domain name. http://www.bcibc.org is sufficient, do not even add the index.htm, the browser will find many of the default pages. You can repoint it if you need to. And if you want to direct people to different web pages, you could, theoretically do this with a second level domain. For example: Lets say I have three web pages. A church web page, a Christian school web page, and a missionary web page. I can create three subdomains and point each subdomain (2nd level domain) to a specific web page. Lets say I will let http://www.bcibc.org be the church web page. This will use the default index.html web page. I could create http://school.bcibc.org and point this to http://www.bcibc.org/school.htm and I could create http://missions.bcibc.org and have it point to the page http://www.bcibc.org/missions.htm. Note: A Subsequent search turned up yet another (available) domain http://www.ballscreekbaptistchurch.org which is not registered at this time!

So far the all time worse (hardest domain name to remember, give out, and type is:

http://mypeoplepc.com/members/cfbodine/mountcalvarybaptistchurchfarmingtonpa15437/

This URL belongs to Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Farmington PA. This is again, a perfect candidate to simply register a domain and  point it to this URL! I will update this one as another one is discovered.

5) http://www.thebiblebaptistchurch.com    This is a different kind of pitfall to avoid. My personal opinion is that a person searching for a church and finding your church web page may actually want to contact or (perish the thought) even attend that church. This church came up under "The Bible Baptist Church" in Plant City Florida. I went to the web site to verify it's location. No where on the web site could I find an address or a phone number. I did find a map however, but nothing on that map was familiar to me. A subsequent search on this domain appears to have the church located in Tyrone PA. But even if you do a search on "thebiblebaptistchurch.com" on Google, half of the results show this church in plant city Florida! I would suggest you have your address and/or phone number displayed in a prominent location on your web site! I would also make sure you use the church name, and location (at least city and state) in the key words or description portion of your home page. Further research using the "whois" feature on http://www.ekklesia-online.com comes up with http://www.thebiblebaptistchurch.net as the actual domain registered for the church in Plant City Florida. This web page (as I type this) is going to an advertising page. It was registered for a year on June 7, 2006 and does not appear to have any web site set up on it as I type this. Not even a parked page! So - another pitfall to avoid. Make sure you list the CORRECT domain name when you start advertising your site! Not doing so can definitely cause confusion and make your web page impossible to find.

6) What we have here is a failure to communicate! I think I mentioned earlier that there are several companies in the Bahamas that are registering expired church domain names and have been putting up advertising web pages on these domains. The church has lost the domain. When I find a church with an expired domain, I will register the domain (so the church won't lose it), and put up a simple web page with all the information that I can find on the church. I send a letter to the church (or email) indicating the situation. I also offer to transfer the domain back to the church at no additional cost to the church. I had one church ask me to take down their temporary web page with no explanation. I just got an interesting e-mail from a church that clearly does not understand they lost the domain, and apparently thought that if they simply let the domain expire they could move it to another web hosting service. I removed the church web page as requested, but I don't think they understand the ramifications of letting the domain expire. I will be happy to transfer the domain back to them at some point in the future. Here is their letter:

I appreciate your email, but the pastor is no longer the pastor of
our Church. He resigned a few months ago after certain
improprieties were found regarding his service here. We did have a web page
for some time, but we have been waiting for our account to expire because we
have chosen to go through a new webhost. Thank you for your offer, but
please disable the unofficial web page you made for our church, since we
plan on using that name with the new host.
 

Do NOT let your domain expire, once it expires and is deleted, you stand an excellent chance of losing it! I see so many church domains with advertising on it, registered in the Bahamas! You can transfer the domain to another web host, or, you can keep the domain where it is (depending on how/where you have it registered) and point it to the new host. I found an excellent article to show you why you should NEVER let your domain expire:  http://pcworld.com/article/id,87824-page,1/article.html What kind of testimony is it to the Lord Jesus Christ if your web site gets hijacked, and people trying to find your church end up with pornography instead???