10 Free Resources for Christian Webmasters and Bloggers

If you haven’t created your website or blog yet, maybe now it’s the right time to do it. With the amount of amazing free tools available on the Internet, you can achieve great results with minimum investment. Don’t be fooled by online companies trying to convince you to spend lots of money on their products with marketing slogans like “you pay for what you get”. The Internet is one of those places where “less can be more”, if you know where to look and how to make use of the information you find. You can create a perfectly functional and professional looking website with as little as $10 (the price for a domain name). Creating and maintaining your own site or blog has never been easier.

1. Christian Photos is a site offering free, high resolution, quality images for Christian bloggers and webmasters. To download an image, you need to register with a valid email address and specify the URL where you plan to use the photos. They also require a link back and ask you to credit them as the source of the images. 

2. Bible Gateway is a very useful site for anyone interested in reading, studying and promoting the Bible. They give you the opportunity to look up Biblical passages in different versions and in several languages. They also offer a variety of other resources such as Audio Bibles, Biblical commentaries, eBooks, dictionaries, and study tools. A neat feature is the ‘Verse of the Day’ widget that you can post on your site or blog to have a fresh Biblical verse displayed every day. The widget comes in two formats: HTML and Flash. 

3. Free Scripture Moment Code Generator is a useful web application powered by Church Webs & Ark Webs. Based on your preferences, it generates a code you can post in your HTML source to have a new quote displayed every time your page loads. You can customize the looks of your widget and the category of the content you want to display (e.g. Bible verses, Christian Quotes, Prayers, Leaders, Evangelism). 

4. JavaScript Kit is a website offering a variety of free scripts, among which several Random Quote Generators. It is useful if you want to use your own quotes, rather than rely on the content other people have chosen. Just replace the default values with your own. The site doesn’t require registration and it’s very easy to use and navigate. 

5. ChristArt Clipart offers a nice selection of free Christian clipart. Registration is not required but they do ask for a back link. The clipart is grouped into several categories (e.g. Bible, Cross, Dove, Fish, Prayer, etc), which makes it easier for the user to navigate the site and find what they are looking for. 

6. Free Hostia is a website offering a variety of hosting packages, among which a free one for beginners or people who don’t have the resources to pay for a hosting site. I’ve been a user of Free Hostia for over two years now and I can recommend it with all my heart. The free offer includes 250 MB disk space, 6 GB monthly traffic, 24/7 Customer Support, over 40+ free scripts (including Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress), 5 hosted domains, 15 sub-domains and 50 parked domains. The offer does not include the domain names, which have to be purchased separately (the price of a .com, .net or .org domain is $9.95). 

7. Faith Writers is a virtual community of Christian writers and a place where they can publish and sell their work, get help and support, gain exposure, improve their skills, etc. This site can help you grow in a number of ways. If you are a writer, you can join the community and start promoting your articles, poems, stories, etc. You can set your own price for each published item or post it in the Free Christian Reprint Articles section, where it becomes available to other people as free content for their site. As a blogger or webmaster, you have access to a great number of paid or free articles that you can post on your website or blog. The writers get exposure and back links to their sites and the webmasters get free content. It’s a win-win situation.

8. Big Church is a free Christian dating site, but also one of the best affiliate programs for Christian webmasters on the net. Why? Simply because you don’t have to convince your visitors to buy anything. For each user you send who signs up for a free account, you get paid $1. You can also get commissions for referring other webmasters (10% of your referrals’ earnings). 

9. Rhyming Dictionary is a priceless tool for people who enjoy writing poems – Christian or not. Simply type a word and you’ll see a whole list of other words that rhyme with it. With this clever little dictionary, the days when you had to struggle to find the right rhyme are gone. 

10. EmailMeForm.com is an amazing free tool that allows you to create submission forms for your website / blog. You are taken through an intuitive wizard and your form is ready in minutes. If you want to make any changes, you can always come back and edit it later. Why is it so simple? Because everything happens on their server. You don’t have to upload any file, or worry about PHP settings or FTP accounts. All you have to do is paste a code on your site, where you want the form to appear. When a visitor tries to contact you via your submission form, EmailMeForm.com will send you and email to let you know. It is very useful, especially for blogs hosted on blogging platforms such as Blogger, which don’t allow users to upload files onto their server.