Creating a Group Folder Structure

One of the most important tasks when first setting up your site is to create a group structure that accurately reflects the life of your community.  These are the Group Folders.

Determining an appropriate structure for your church allows content to be stored on the web site in a logical manner that is easy for visitors to understand and for administrators to maintain. Bear in mind that there is no single correct way to structure your web site; and you don’t have to set things in stone at this stage (you can always adapt the structure later) but some planning now will save time later.

You can determinine an appropriate group structure by following these steps:

Step 1 - List your church's activities

Try listing all of the activities that go on in your church; often the best place to start is by going through the weekly news sheet or calendar to see which groups are meeting regularly.  To help you here are some examples of the types of groups you may have in your church:

People Groups	Outreach groups	Church Activities
Children's work	Alpha course	Prayer
Youth group	Community Action	Bible Study group
Mens ministry	Charity activities	Sunday morning duties
Womens ministry	Courses and conferences	Home/cell/small groups
Mothers and Toddlers	Sports activities	Baptism
Senior Citizens groups	Music or drama groups	Membership induction
Students	Missionaries	Marriage ministry
International groups	Workplace ministries	Church Planting

Step 2 - sub-divide the groups

Once you have a list of groups go through each of them making sure you have every possible sub-group.  For example, take the Sunday celebrations group; everyone who is involved in helping out with the Sunday meetings will become a member of this group, but it would be helpful to distinguish between those who serve in different areas.

Some of the possible sub-groups could be:

Sunday celebrations

• PA
• OHP
• Transport
• Bookstall
• Musicians
• Stewarding & Welcome
• Car parking
• Refreshments
• Set up
• Video 

Within each of the sub-groups there may be further sub-groups; for example within the musicians group you may have sub-groups for leaders, choir and a group for each of the bands.  Try to bear in mind which groups of people you may which to communicate with - for example in the childrens work group you may wish to have a sub-group for leaders, one for helpers, and possibly an additional one for parents.

Step 3 - arrange the groups into a hierarchy

Try to group the activities of your church together under a common heading.  For example, your small groups can all be placed in a group called small groups, whilst your youth group and childrens work group may be placed in a group called children and family.  This can be one of the most difficult parts of creating your group structure - certainly some groups are easier to place than others.  The following are some 'rules of thumb' which may help:

• If possible let the folder structure reflect the existing organisation of the church.  For example if home groups are organised by geographical area, then use districts to group them together.  The structure of the web site will then be more familiar and appear more intuitive to church members.
• Each sub-group should make sense as a logical division of the containing group (the parent group). See step 2 for examples of how to sub-divide a group.
• Try to limit the number of sub-groups to a maximum of seven at any point.  Lists of longer than seven can be difficult to remember.  This means that church life should have a maximum of seven sub-groups, each of those sub-groups should have a maximum of seven sub-groups and so on.
• Try to 'balance' the structure by not allowing different parts of it to become too deep - aim for a maximum depth of four levels.
• Choose concise and appropriate names for each group.