On behalf of our entire team at OurChurch.Com, I am excited to announce the launch of our new WP-EZ Website Builder.
It’s WordPress made easy!
Over the last month we’ve been sharing details about WP-EZ a little bit at a time. Now, WP-EZ is available for you to use, and I want to give you…
The Top 4 Reasons You Will Love the WP-EZ Website Builder!
(Plus other details about the launch below)
1) It Uses WordPress
WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world, so you can be sure it’s powerful and versatile to meet the needs of all kinds of organizations. If you want to know more about the benefits of WordPress, check out the Why WordPress Is A Great Website Platform For You! series Mark has been publishing every Monday. He’s up to Part 9 and still going strong!
Admittedly, WordPress can be complicated and time-consuming to set-up and maintain. WP-EZ harnesses the power of WordPress, and takes care of the set-up and maintenance making it easy for anyone to create and maintain a great website!
2) Great-Looking, Mobile-Friendly Themes
There are tens of thousands of WordPress themes available online. That’s a great benefit, but it can also be very overwhelming. Who has time to search through all these themes, test them to make sure they are secure, and work well on all devices?
The WP-EZ Website Builder includes dozens of themes that look great and have been thoroughly tested for mobile-friendliness. These themes have been designed to provide a variety of styles and color palettes to give your website a modern, professional look. You can also customize all of the themes with your own logo, images and colors.
3) Powerful Website Features
There are also tens of thousands of WordPress plugins available online that provide almost every function imaginable. But many plugins have security vulnerabilities, are not well supported by their developers and have other flaws. The typical website includes 10-30 plugins. Who has time to find, install and test all these plugins and make sure they work on all devices?
The WP-EZ Website Builder includes a ton of advanced features you want on your website, including a blog, contact form, calendar, Facebook Fanbox, newsletter, PayPal shopping cart, photo gallery and more. They’ve all been thoroughly tested to make sure they are secure and mobile-friendly.
4) No Security or Update Worries
Because WordPress is so popular, it’s a favorite target of hackers. While WordPress itself rarely has security issues, vulnerabilities in plugins and themes are discovered all the time. They key is to make updates as soon as they become available. But who has time to login to their website on a daily basis to check for updates and make sure its secure?
With WP-EZ, we make daily security checks and make immediate updates when a security update is needed. This saves you time and gives you peace of mind so you can focus on other needs of your church, school, nonprofit or business.
Available for New Sites Only
Right now, WP-EZ is available for new sites only. If you order a Gold, Silver, Bronze or Free site now, you can immediately build your website with WP-EZ.
NE1 Migration Tool Coming Soon
If you currently have a website built with our NE1 Website Builder, don’t worry, we are developing and testing a migration tool that will copy your NE1 website into WP-EZ. The migration tool should be available in April. In the mean time, if you want to build a free site just to get a look under the hood of WP-EZ you are welcome to do that.
Beta Testers Wanted
We are looking for a limited number of people to put WP-EZ through the ringer and give us feedback. If you are interested in doing that, please post a comment with your name, website address and email address. Or contact us at support (at) ourchurch (dot) com
Discuss
- Which of these 4 reasons resonates with you most? Why?
I am trying to build our website and this program is extremely frustrating and not very user friendly. I am anxious for the help menu to be in place!!
Hi Dawn, sorry to hear you have run into some frustration. We are still working to complete the full library of video tutorials for WP-EZ. Right now we have 47 that are available:
https://www.ourchurch.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/89/wp-ez-web-builder
If you call, chat, email or create a help desk ticket at http https://www.ourchurch.com/support/ Our support team will quickly respond with instructions for whatever you are trying to do in WP-EZ. We are also factoring the questions we receive into the order the video tutorials are created.
Debbie has been great! I am definitely taking advantage of the chat help!
I have two other sites one for the church ministry and the other for the Leadership School of ministry. Can I use the new WP to do one for my personal site?
Hi Angela, yes. You can use the WP-EZ website builder for any website you order and build now. It is only to copy an existing NE1 website into WP-EZ that you'll have to wait until next month to do.
I’m willing to be a Beta tester.
Pastor Billy Kryger <a href="http://www.smokyhillbaptistchurch.com” target=”_blank”>www.smokyhillbaptistchurch.com
SHBCEllsworth (at) aol (dot) com
I have a church site built with NE1 and with this in mind took a look at WP-EZ (free) to examine the builder. With this in mind it seems to eliminate many of the options and feature I use in NE1 .
Where is the configurations for Page SEO and Website Meta Tags info
Could not locate Gallery or Calendar Modules
Will the options now in present Website care over for editing as usual (Example News features )
Was not able to find insertion of HTML in page design …does this option go away with WP-EZ??
Hi David, great question. The SEO, gallery and calendar features are not available to free sites but are included in Gold, Silver, and Bronze sites. In hind sight I should have mentioned that in the announcement. Are you interest in being a beta tester? If so, we can give you access to gold site at no cost to experiment with.
Yes..Please give me access to Gold to examine as a beta tester.
Thanks in advance
None of these reasons resonates with me at all. I am completely happy with the NE1 site builder, and quite honestly, don't have the time to learn something new, again. Why not leave well enough alone?
Hi Kathleen, I'm glad to hear you are completely happy with the NE1 Website Builder, and I understand your reluctance to change when NE1 seems "well enough." However, as I wrote last month when we first began discussing WP-EZ:
"Unfortunately, over time we have come to realize that NE1 has some significant short-comings. In particular, its themes are not mobile-friendly, and it’s not easy for us to add or improve functionality. We worked very hard to try to come up with solutions to these short-comings within NE1, but in the end it became clear the best path forward was with a brand new website builder."
Additionally, NE1 uses old software that has security vulnerabilities and its not compatible with the newest version of that software which is secure. So, there is no way for us to continue using NE1 and keep our servers secure.
We realize it will take some time and effort to get use to WP-EZ, but trust me it will be worth it. The visitors to your website will thank you when they get to experience a better, mobile-friendly version of your website.
i still do not understand the old site but am happy to learn a new one.
I am new to OurChurch.com and NE1. I am just getting the hang of it. Where and how do I get to the WP-EZ free to start exploring it? Do I need to register a new domain or can I play around using my current domain, without activating it, of course? What will the grace period look like for a novice like myself to make the transition?
I'm new to Our Church WP-EZ and I have to say it's very frustrating and not user friendly. I've been working on this site for over 4 hours and have yet to accomplish a single page. I wish I knew what I was getting into, ugh
Excellent post.
Hey , can anyone reply me who has already used this "new-wp-ez-website-builder-wordpress" and share their experience while building it? I am not asking about the website look..looking for an easy way to build amazing site…it really helps or pathetic ? just confused..