Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I need to build a membership web site for a church career ministry and need suggestions on where I can find an inexpensive but scaleable, easy to manage (novice skills) web site template or portal.  Don`t have funds to have one custom built. Must have the following functionality:

Home portal for many churches (each church will have their own pages for listing their members resumes).

Forum page for local program facilitators to post questions/answers.

Blog and e-newsletter capability, with email blast and autoresponder capability.

Podcast, web conferencing capability and training video archive capability.

Product and service listings with billing capability.

Automatic membership fee billing and renewal.

Store training handout materials in PDF format for download by certified progam facilitators. 

Calendar for imporatnt asssociation meetings/dates

Job board for job listings

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Try checking templatemonster.com "religious" category: religious

Second that.  Keep in mind that they also have developers on hand.  If you needed one of the templates tweaked, the can do it for a fee.  They include all source files (HTML, PSD, Flash, etc) and even provide the fonts they created the templates with.


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Aaron Wood
CEO
San Diego Dream Weavers
http://www.sddreamweavers.com
awood@sddreamweavers.com

New and improved! Now with blogging goodness!
http://www.sddreamweavers.com/san-diego-seo-marketing-blog/

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Tangtungler,
Here is one of the biggest issues that you are facing... You do not have any funds to get your project off the ground but yet you want all high-end components.
lets go through your list of wants.

1. You want a portal for other churches to have their own site.. This is steep! right off the gate
2. A forum page? for facilitators
3. Blog and E-Newsletter
4. Podcast / Web Conferencing - WOW WEE! this is high end development
5. E-commerce (product listing and Processing)
6. Store training and PDF downloads
7. Job Board and listings

There are a few more in there but honestly, you are talking about some heavy stuff there.
If I may ask you... What is your level of understanding in the web design / development area?
Are you planning on tackling this yourself? How do you plan on funding your project?
I want to share a design (mod) that I am currently working on "This is for a good friend of mine" is this something that you are looking to have? perhaps a few more features here and there? check it out CHURCH PUNCH
Please understand that this ties in to the School also, which I will share with you down the road once I finish the Universities Web Site. But for now, you can see something similar to what you are trying to build.



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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Thanks to everyone for their input I really appreciate your suggestions. Haven`t found what I`m looking for yet, and yes, I realize that I may have to build the site a piece at a time because of having essentially no budget right now. And Edgar, thank you for the site suggestion.

Thanks,

 Joe 

Tang..
If you`re creating this for a church? why not dip into the donations? I`m pretty sure you can collect as much money needed to start your project on any given day of the week... Not to mention how much poor folks dish out on a Sunday Mass... You can have your site up in no time.. Even on one of the less filled day at church you can collect the funds for your site. Im not being funny... or putting church down... but churches have deep pockets...





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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

There`s a few nice web templates here.


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Damn.  That`s an excellent idea!


-------------------------

Aaron Wood
CEO
San Diego Dream Weavers
http://www.sddreamweavers.com
awood@sddreamweavers.com

New and improved! Now with blogging goodness!
http://www.sddreamweavers.com/san-diego-seo-marketing-blog/