Why this matters
A church website maintenance checklist is a short routine that keeps the facts a first-time guest needs correct. A weekly pass covers service times, dated items and the give link. A monthly pass covers your menu links and your Google listing. A quarterly pass covers staff, logins and the plan-a-visit page. One volunteer can run all of it from a phone and a laptop.
In our 2026 State of Small Church Websites study, an audit of 2,000 church websites, 72.8% of small church websites (n=1,734) showed an update within a year of the July 2026 crawl, about three in four. The routine below keeps yours current without taking over your week.
At a glance
- A short weekly check on your phone keeps three things right for a first-time guest: the service time, the address and the give link.
- A monthly pass covers every menu and footer link, your Google listing, and how the homepage loads off church wifi.
- A quarterly pass covers the staff page, the plan-a-visit page, who holds each login, and one test gift.
- A checklist keeps a working site working. If the weekly pass is hard to finish, the site itself needs attention.
What goes on a church website maintenance checklist?
Three passes: weekly, monthly and quarterly. Here is the whole routine in one table you can copy into a shared document, with notes on each pass below it.
| How often | What to check | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Service time and address on the first screen | Homepage, on your phone |
| Weekly | The give link opens your giving page | Homepage and menu |
| Weekly | Anything with a date: events, series, announcements | Homepage and events page |
| Weekly | Sunday's sermon is posted | Sermons page |
| Monthly | Every menu and footer link loads | Whole site |
| Monthly | Hours, address, phone and website link match | Your Google listing |
| Monthly | The homepage loads off church wifi | Your phone, on cellular data |
| Quarterly | Staff names, roles, photos and the pastor's name | About or staff page |
| Quarterly | The plan-a-visit page still reads true | Plan-a-visit page |
| Quarterly | Who holds each login, and a second person who can get in | Website, domain, giving, Google |
| Quarterly | One test gift from start to finish | Giving page |
Weekly: the first-screen check on your phone
Open your homepage on your phone with wifi off and look at the first screen: the service time, the address, and a give link that opens your giving page. Our 2026 study found 83.9% of small church websites (n=1,734) made service times findable, and this check is how you stay in that group after a time change. Say a family looks you up on Saturday night after your service moved from 10:00 to 10:30 (a made-up example). The homepage is the likeliest place they check, so the new time goes there first.
Weekly: dates, the bulletin and Sunday's sermon
Update or remove every event, series or announcement whose date has passed. You might assume a church website gets touched every few months as a matter of course. Across all 1,930 sites the study judged, 41.2% showed current content, meaning something updated within about three months. If your church prints a bulletin or sends a weekly email, copy the same announcements onto the site the same day, and post Sunday's sermon with its date and title.
Monthly: click every menu and footer link
Open each page in your navigation and footer, and confirm it loads and still says something true. Links break when a page is renamed or a file is moved. Fix the link or remove the page so a guest never lands on an error.
Monthly: check your Google listing against the website
Search your church's name on Google and compare the hours, address, phone number and website link on your listing with your homepage. Update whichever one is wrong. As of October 2026, Google Business Profile lets the people who manage your listing edit its hours and set special hours for a single date, such as a holiday service. If nobody at church can edit the listing, finding who can is the first job.
Monthly: load the homepage off church wifi
Turn off wifi and open the homepage. If the service time takes more than a few seconds to appear, run the homepage through Google's PageSpeed Insights (free as of October 2026) and work through what it flags, starting at the top. For a longer guide, read How to fix a slow church website.
Quarterly: staff, photos and the plan-a-visit page
Walk the staff page: remove anyone who has left, update changed roles, replace photos that no longer look like the person, and make sure the pastor's name is easy to find. Across all 1,930 judged sites in our 2026 study, 56.9% had plan-a-visit or what-to-expect content, more than half, and 50.6% named the pastor anywhere on the site, about half. Then read your plan-a-visit page as if you had never been, and correct anything that has changed, from parking to kids' check-in.
Quarterly: logins, and who else can get in
List every account the website depends on: the website builder, the domain registrar (the company where your web address is registered), the giving platform, your Google listing, and any sermon or email host. For each one, write down who holds the login and make sure a second trusted person can get in. While you are in the domain account, note the renewal date and confirm auto-renew is on with a current card. When the volunteer who knows the passwords moves on, this list is what lets the next person pick up where they left off.
Quarterly: one test gift from start to finish
Check more than whether the button opens. Make a small gift yourself, or at least log in to your giving platform and confirm recent gifts and payouts are showing. In our 2026 study, 64.2% of small church websites (n=1,734) had a working online giving path, and this test is how you confirm yours is one of them. If the test gift fails, this symptom-by-symptom diagnosis finds the break.
Implementation notes
- Put the weekly pass on a recurring calendar reminder for the same day each week. Monday works well because Sunday's changes are fresh.
- Keep the checklist and the login list in one shared place so a second volunteer can cover when you are away.
- Do the phone checks on cellular data so you see what a guest in the parking lot sees.
- Fix a wrong service time or a broken give link the same day. The rest can wait for next week.
- Keep a short changelog: the date, what you changed and why.
- If the same thing breaks every month, fix the cause at the quarterly pass rather than patching it again.
- If a page has not helped a guest or a member in a long while, remove it instead of maintaining it.
A note you can forward to whoever updates the site: Every Monday, open our homepage on your phone with wifi off. Check the service time, the address, and that the give link opens. Take down anything with a past date and post Sunday's sermon. Once a month, click every menu link and compare our Google listing's hours with the website.
When is a checklist not enough?
A checklist is not enough when the weekly pass keeps failing for reasons you cannot fix from your chair. Signs to watch for: changing a service time means calling someone else, the homepage is hard to read on a phone, nobody can get into one of the accounts, or a single pass takes a whole evening. If your passes come back clean week after week, you do not need a new site or anyone's help, ours included. If two or more of those signs fit, start by getting back into every account, then decide whether the site needs repair or a fresh start.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a small church update its website?
Check it weekly, even when the check is only confirming the service time and the give link still work, and plan a fuller review each quarter. The aim is to catch a change before a guest does. Across all 1,930 reachable sites in our 2026 study, 55.1% were both updated within a year and able to take a gift online, and this routine covers both.
What is the one check I should never skip?
The first-screen check on your phone: the service time, the address, and a give link that opens. Those are what a first-time guest needs to find you on Sunday and to give if they choose. If you only have a minute, spend it there.
Do we need special software to keep up with this?
No. A shared document for the checklist and the login list, plus a recurring calendar reminder, covers everything here. Add a tool only when a real problem shows up that the document cannot handle.
Where this connects in our work
- Our 2026 State of Small Church Websites study, for how each figure in this checklist was measured.
- The Church Digital blog, for longer fix-it-yourself guides, including slow pages and broken giving links.
Next step
Put the weekly phone check on your calendar and run it once before Sunday. If you would like a second pair of eyes on your first screen, a free homepage review is a video of about 4 minutes, sent within 2 business days.