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Friday, March 30, 2007
Developing and Communicating your Plan: Part 2
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In this article, I wrote about the importance of developing and communicating a plan for creating, editing, and publishing your content. In this post, I present a possible policy document for you to copy and adapt to your purposes. Please keep in mind that this is not a cookie-cutter document that you should use "as-is," but a starting place for you to create your own. Our church website is one means of communicating with the congregation and with those who might be interested in attending one of our ministry events. All official church activities should be promoted on our church website, either through a simple calendar entry or a paragraph providing more details about the event.
In order to ensure accurate and professional communication, all website content at East Timbuctu Baptist Church is approved and edited by the church secretary. When you submit an event for the church calendar or bulletin, please indicate if you would also like that material included on our website.
Ministry leaders are responsible for creating the content that should be on their respective pages within their site. To update the content, please print a copy of the current page, make any necessary edits in red pen, and deliver to the secretary.
News reports and photos of past events may also be included upon request. Please speak with the secretary about the nature of your event, and whether a news report would be appropriate. Please note that photos of minors may be included only with parental permission, and that names will not be included with any photos.
Upon approval, the secretary will forward the material to the webmaster for publication. Please note that it may take up to one week for your content to be uploaded, so please plan accordingly. You should plan on promoting your event at least one month before the event takes place. Obviously, you probably don't attend the East Timbuctu Baptist Church, and I imagine that your church will have a different set of policies and procedures. Would you be willing to share your document with us? Go ahead and post it as a comment to this post! Grace and Peace, PastorJon Labels: plan, policy
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Developing and Communicating your Plan: Part 1
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The following article was published in our April, 2007 edition of YCW eNews. You can subscribe (for free) to this valuable newsletter here. Who makes executive-level decisions about your website? Is it the pastor? The church secretary? A board chairperson? Or the webmaster? Or, do you have a team that is responsible for the final decision making process? Whoever it is, there's someone who has been given authority to make decisions about what goes on the website and what doesn't. (Even if you don't have a policy that says so...it must be true--or else nothing would ever get done!) The executive (or team of executives) decides what will be written, what events will be promoted, and what photos are selected to go on the website. In some cases, the "webExec" is the same person as the webmaster--in other cases, the webmaster simply handles the design and technical work, and the webExec handles all content decision. For the purpose of this article, we'll simply be dealing with the responsibilities of the webExec, whether handled by the webmaster, another person, or a team of people. How does your webExec decide what will go on the website? You might want to consider developing a written policy that explains how articles get on the website, and who decides what is published and what is not. For instance, you might publish official church gatherings on your website--but Sister Frances' birthday party might not get published. You might publish photos of a senior adult event, but require permission to publish photos of children or teenagers. You might also want to consider the flow of information--does the webExec create content based on the church bulletin? Or are ministry directors responsible for writing their own promotional material and giving it the webExec? If they write the material, does the webExec have editorial power? Or do you just publish it as it's written--typos and all?!? Have you communicated your plan (whatever it may be) to your leadership? If you don't tell them who's responsible for writing content, they might assume that you're responsible! If you don't tell them that Sister Frances' birthdy party isn't appropriate material for the website, they might not be happy when you don't include it. If you don't tell them that you reserve the right to edit their content, they might be surprised when it isn't exactly the way they wrote it. I would suggest that you create a simple policy document that outlines the flow of information, the criteria for publication, and any other pertinent information. Once this document is approved, make sure that all of your ministry directors have a copy, so they know exactly how the information about their ministries makes it onto the internet. I've created a sample document which you may adapt for your needs. You can view it here. Grace and Peace, PastorJon Labels: plan, policy, YCW eNews
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Friday, March 23, 2007
Domain Name Renewals: A Cautionary Tale...
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Today I received in the mail a notice that one of my domain names is up for renewal in a couple months. I wanted to share with you a bit about that renewal notice, because there is something important for all of us to be aware of. Here it is: The mail was not from my registrar - it was from a different company altogether.The mail was designed to look like a bill - in fact, it even had a place to print my credit card information, and check off how many years I was registering for. But midway down the page there was a notice in the middle of a paragraph: This is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to renew your domain name with...In other words, these people are hoping I won't notice that they aren't my registrar, and I'll fill out the form without realizing that I'm actually requesting that my domain name be transferred to a different registrar. Here's what scares me. I know absolutely nothing about these people, and yet if I fell for their sales pitch, I'd end up giving them my credit card information. This could just as easily be a form of identity theft as it could be a legitimate domain registrar. Certainly, since the setup of their mailing is designed to fool us, we know that their level of trustworthiness is very low. Would I give them my credit card information? Absolutely not. All that aside, they were charging more than twice the price for a domain renewal as I'm paying through YourChurchWeb. My point in this cautionary tale is this: know who you are doing business with. When you receive mail and email notices regarding your domains and/or hosting plans, pay close attention to make sure you know that they are from the people you are doing business with, and not a scam artist trying to steal your identity, your domain name, or your money. Labels: domains, privacy, renewal
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Sunday, March 11, 2007
Most Affordable Christian Web Host
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It's been a while since I researched what other companies are charging for webhosting, so I decided to spend the last couple of hours searching for as many other Christian web hosts as I could find. If you're in the process of looking for a Christian based web host to serve your church, ministry, or Christian business, be prepared to spend some time researching your options. In this post, I'll answer some of your commonly asked questions about MB, GB, storage and transfer, and I'll also provide you with the prices that I found during my searching. My intent is not that you would just "take my word for it," but that this information would provide a starting point for you as you search for the host that will best meet the needs of your church or Christian ministry. What is MB and GB? MB stands for Megabytes (or megs), and GB stands for Gigabytes (or gigs). These are units which measure the size of your files. There are 1024 bytes in a Kilobyte, 1024KB in a Megabyte, and 1024 Megabites in a Gigabyte. Each week I upload a 20 minute sermon audio file that utilizes about 10MB. The old floppy diskettes held 1.44MB, a CD-ROM holds 700MB, and a DVD-ROM holds 4.7GB. What is storage? Storage is the amount of space you have available to you on the server. Whether these files are linked to your website or simply stored there to be accessed by FTP, whenever you upload files, they take up some of the space in your account. Our economy hosting plan includes 5GB of hosting space. What is data transfer, traffic, or bandwidth? Different hosts use different words to refer to the same basic concept. Data transfer refers to the amount of data that can be moved to or from your server during a given month. For example, if I have 1,000 downloads of a 10MB audio file during a month, then I've used 10,000MB (or 10GB) of data transfer. Our economy hosting plan includes 250GB of data transfer each month. How much storage and transfer do I need? Every ministry is going to have different needs, depending on what they plan to do with their website. If you're primarily going to host text, then you don't need as much space as you would if you plan on hosting photos, audio, or even video. Consider what you plan to have available on your website, and start tallying how much space you think it will need. Then, consider how many visitors you hope to have each month, and what percentage of your site you expect them to download, and then you have a bandwidth projection. What sort of prices did you find in your research? I'm glad you asked! To be honest, while I knew that we offered an affordable hosting package, I was somewhat surprised to see that we were among the least expensive Christian webhosts that are operating today. In fact, during my search, I didn't find any other Christian web hosting company that offered more space & transfer for less money. In the following comparison chart, I list one plan for each host. In each case, I picked the hosting plan that I felt most closely matched our "economy" hosting plan in regards to space and transfer. In fairness, it should be noted that our "economy" plan is a very robust hosting plan, and few other hosts match it. In other words, I found that I was often comparing our least expensive plan with their most expensive plan. Consequently, if you don't need as much space as we provide, you may find that a smaller plan offered by another company would be cheaper and still suit your needs. * - indicates that the webhost does not state their data transfer limits. This may be due to a "soft limit" model in which the bandwidth is monitored but not limited unless it becomes excessive. If you are considering a host with a "soft limit," be sure that your questions about limits, throttling, and overage charges are explained to your satisfaction. There is one anomaly in that chart that deserves further exploration. ChristianWebHost.com offers a very robust plan with 40GB of space and 150GB of data transfer. Instead of comparing it to our "economy" plan as I did in the chart above, I really should compare it to our "deluxe" plan: As you can see, if you are needing more space than our economy plan (5GB), then our more robust plan (100GB) is still extremely affordable. Information in this post was accurate as of March 11, 2007. I have presented monthly costs if you were to purchase your hosting by the month. Some discounts may be available for annual purchases. Also, just as YourChurchWeb.net runs sales and promotions, I assume that the other hosts referenced here have sales and promotions as well, which are obviously not reflected in the pricing chart. You'll also see that I've listed domain prices when available. However, some of the hosts listed above do include domain registration with their hosting plan. Please read carefully the terms and conditions of included domain registrations--you want to make sure that the domain is registered in your (or your church's) name, and that you can take it with you if you ever move to another host. One of the hosts above will pay for your domain as long as you are their customer, but it is stipulated that they own the domain, and that you can't take it with you. Most churches I know would rather pay the $9.00 a year, simply for that added flexibility. By the way, even if you choose one of these other hosts, we'd be happy to serve as your registrar. You'll see that our domain registration prices are among the lowest that you'll find. If you own or operate one of these hosting companies and feel that I have somehow misunderstood or misrepresented your hosting plan, please contact me so I can correct this post. And, if you'd rather not be listed here at all, just let me know and I'll be happy to remove your company's name and information. Obviously, I want to serve your church or ministry. I'd also like to help you save money, which you can use to help strengthen your other ministries. I'd be more than happy to help you transfer your website to our servers, or to discuss other options with you. Please don't hesitate to send me an email: sales@yourchurchweb.net. Grace and Peace, Jonathan Twitchell YourChurchWeb.net Labels: domains, hosting, prices
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Limited Time Sale - .info domains for $.99
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For a limited time only, you can purchase a .info domain for only $.99 (+ $0.22 ICANN fee) for your first year registration. No, that wasn't a typo! I'm serious...just $1.21 gets you a domain that you can use for whatever you want. What do you want an extra domain for? Perhaps you need a "throwaway" domain to do some website development. I know some webmasters like to do their development at a domain that nobody (but them) knows about. You can purchase this domain for this low sale price, and simply not renew it next year. Or maybe you want to give your pastor his own domain--you could associate a blog with the domain (either our hosted " Quick Blog" or the free " Blogger" tool). A .info domain would be just perfect. And, remember that all of our domains come with free extras, including: forwarding, masking, email forwarding, 1 Complete Email (25mb) address, a starter web page, and a free Online Photo Filer account. In fact, the free Online Photo Filer account alone is worth much more than the $1.21 you'll spend for the domain! You'll get 1GB of disk space to store your photos, 25GB of monthly data transfer, and the ability to print your photos directly from our low-cost photo store. Your .info domain will renew at our regular rates in one year...but even so, at our current renewal rate of $8.75/yr (plus $.22 ICANN fee), you can't go wrong. This offer expires at midnight on June 30, 2007 -- so don't wait -- purchase your .info domain today! Grace and Peace, Jonathan Twitchell YourChurchWeb.net Labels: .info, blogging, domains, email, photo filer, photo store
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Thursday, March 01, 2007
Sale: March, April & May, 2007 - $3.99 Domains
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I'm really excited about the sale that I arranged for March, April and May of 2007. For every non-domain purchase that you make, you can register one brand-new domain (.com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, .name, or .info) for only $3.99. That's less than half of our regular price for .com, .org, and .net TLDs. (Your domain will renew at our regular price in effect at the time of renewal.) To take advantage of this special offer, just purchase any new product and add your domain to your shopping cart before you check out. Both the non-domain product and the domain must be a new purchase. This is a perfect time to try out one of our products for a few months to see if it will help expand your ministry. Maybe it's time to get your pastor started on blogging--you can even register the domain in your pastor's name as a special gift. Or perhaps you might want to try our Online Photo Filer and attach it to a special domain for your youth ministry. Whatever you choose, I hope you'll take advantage of this special offer. Grace and Peace, Jonathan Twitchell YourChurchWeb.net Labels: domains, Sales
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Sale: March & April, 2007 - Traffic Facts
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About a week ago I posted an article on Site Statistics and Traffic Facts™. Maybe you were interested in upgrading your statistics package, but weren't sure if it would be worth the money. If you're like me, you don't really like spending money on something until you get a chance to try it out and make sure it will do what you want. Well, I can't quite offer a "try-before-you-buy" promotion, but this will come close. During March and April (2007), you can purchase Traffic Facts™ for only $1.49/month. You'll need to make a 3-month minimum purchase, but I'd like to let you in on a little secret. (shhh...don't tell anyone!) You can purchase your three-month subscription to Traffic Facts™ at the beginning of the sale period (for only $4.47). Then you can try it out during March and April. If you don't like it, you can let it expire, and you've only spent less than $5. But if you DO like it, then you can renew it for up to 24 months at our low sale price. But be sure to renew it before the end of April, because I don't know when this sale will come around again.If you have any questions on this promotion, how to make a purchase, how to renew a purchase, or how to cancel a renewal, please don't hesitate to ask! You can ask our professional support department (480)624-2500, or you can send me an email at sales@yourchurchweb.net. Grace and Peace, Jonathan Twitchell YourChurchWeb.net Labels: Sales, Traffic Facts
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Jonathan Twitchell,
the owner of YourChurchWeb.net, is also a pastor and podcaster.
He and his wife Melody live near the coast of Maine with
their black, long-hair, bobtail cat named Kiera.
Pastor Jon believes that churches must stay abreast of new technologies
in their effort to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Through websites, podcasts, radio and television, the Church
of the 21st century has the unique opportunity to be available to all
people, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
YourChurchWeb.net was begun in 2001 based on the conviction that every
church ought to have a website, and that the technology should be as
affordable as possible.
Jonathan's brother Douglas
Twitchell joins us on this blog as an occasional guest
blogger. Douglas is the owner of Virtu Software,
and specializes in web-based programming and database development. For
an example of some of Doug's work, check out Quote Puzzler.
Doug is also very involved in ministry through his local church,
and his ministry
and devotional website.
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