Wow – it’s been some time since we last posted to our blog, but make no mistake, we have been busy up to our ears! You may have already heard, but we launched (a few months ago, actually) our partner site SchoolPost.com, and have already signed on hundreds of teachers who are busy communicating with parents, students, volunteers and other administrators. SchoolPost is perfect for religious schools, non-religious organizations, and any other non-profit looking to enhance its communication.

All the while, we’ve launched some cool new features at ChurchPost.com – and this post is about one, in particular.

Our custom SignUp boxes have been a hit (released last June), and one feature request that’s come up over and over again is the ability to link text and/or images to a SignUp box. Well – the wait is over!

By navigating to the SIGNUP BOXES tab, then clicking on the orange CODE button next to any of your forms, you can use a handy link we’ve created to point to your custom signup box wherever you want! This is particularly handy for text links in your emails (ex. “Sign up for our newsletter now!”), custom images on your website, or just because you don’t want to host the form on your site.

Check it out!

We’re pleased to announce that ChurchPost.com Version 4 is now accessible on all browsers!

So go ahead – point your browser to www.ChurchPost.com and see why thousands of users around the world empower their ministries with our easy, affordable, secure and portable communications solution.

With the release of ChurchPost Version 4, you’ll notice a few new features popping up in various places. Perhaps most noticeable is the new SignUp Boxes TAB that appears on the left main navigation area under REPORTS.

This tab is available to all user types (Master, Full & Limited) and boxes you create with this feature are available to ALL of your ChurchPost users when they log in to their accounts.

Over the past year, we’ve had many ChurchPost users tell us how useful the general “Get Connected Box” is, noting specifically how awesome it is that once you paste the code on your website, various ChurchPost users can control what appears in the “Get Connected” area all from ChurchPost (without access to the website code itself). So group owners are empowered to make a group PUBLIC, and it instantly appears on the website for signups.

The one limitation of the “Get Connected” box is that it displays ALL public groups, without the ability to select a handful of groups for specific website pages (for example, a signup box that displays ONLY youth groups). Another limitation is the inability in the general “Get Connected” box to specify an order of groups (it’s alphabetical by group name), so a more important “Weekly Newsletter” group may appear at the bottom under 10 or 20 other groups that are not as active.

So, we collected this feedback and created the new SignUp Boxes feature – which allows your users to do ALL of the above, and even control the look and feel of the box itself, without any programming knowledge.

When you click on the SignUp Boxes tab, you see a list of all of your customized SignUp Boxes, with the General Get Connected Box listed at the top. The General Get Connected Box is the default website form that displays ALL PUBLIC GROUPS (you can read more about this by clicking the small question mark next to the form).

To create a new SignUp Box, just click the “Create a SignUp Box” button that appears on the top of this page. Then choose a name for your box:

You’ll also notice an area directly under the box name that allows you to specify colors unique to this SignUp Box – you can choose colors that match your website or find totally new ones!

You can also set the width of the box in pixels. As you scroll down the page, you’ll see a list of all of your PUBLIC groups. These are groups that have been marked by group owners to appear on any SignUp Boxes created by your ChurchPost users. You can select as many groups as you wish, and even specify what order your groups are to appear in your SignUp Box:

Groups you check and do NOT apply a sort order will automatically appear in alphabetical order (after any sorted groups).

Lastly, at the bottom of the creation wizard, you’ll see a text box for any customized information you would like to include in your SignUp Box – this can be text with useful tips, information, etc. and can even include HTML (links to other parts of your site, etc.):

When you are done, just click SAVE SIGNUP BOX and we’ll instantly generate the HTML for your website:

You may choose to EMAIL the code to your webmaster, COPY the code your clipboard (to paste into an editing program of your choice) or PREVIEW the form to be sure it looks the way you want it.

At any time, when you click the SignUp Boxes TAB on the main navigation area, you can see a listing of all of your customized signup forms. You can instantly preview a box by clicking the box name, jump to the code for that form by clicking the CODE icon, or EDIT/DELETE the form as you wish.

Because ChurchPost is so cool, any changes you make to your SignUp Box groups and group order are instantly live on your website without having to update your code! For your convenience, we list all SignUp Box names in alphabetical order so you can find what you are looking for super quick.

We are totally in love with this new feature, and hope you will be, too So go ahead – create a customized SignUp Box for your website and see how easy ChurchPost makes it to communicate with your church family!

We had a wonderful time in Chicago at the 2010 Religion Communication Conference last week! In addition to meeting many of our fantastic current customers, we met a host of people (of every denomination) from pretty much every state across the United States.

We were particularly impressed with Art McClanahan from the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church. Not only is he technically savvy (I learned about a new iPhone app that broadcasts recorded audio), but he took the time to record this fantastic video of Debra talking about what we do. His questions were spot on, and his passion, interest and energy for his ministry was palpable and infectious – so…thanks for the video, Art!

Today we released a small but useful feature called Basic Layouts in our Standard Editor:

This is a great way to get started on a message design without having to think about the overall table structure of your mailing. Change background colors, swap out images from your personal image library….adjust fonts, sizes and colors of any text!

We are thrilled to announce the upcoming release of our new Standard Email editor on February 1, 2010.

Here’s a sneak peak at the top 3 features:

For a quick summary of what all of the buttons/icons do, visit our Help Desk:
http://support.churchpost.com/kb/article/000043

We are excited to announce the release of our new social network sharing feature.

Next to each of your SENT messages, you will now see a small icon that automatically creates a short URL to your message.

URL shortening is a technique on the Web where a provider makes a web page available under a very short URL in addition to the original address.

For example, the page:

http://www.churchpost.com/view_message?id=pp45dfdhyXd78dfs

can be shortened to:

http://bitpost.us/23ts

Short URLs are perfect for sharing content via a host of social networking sites!

Instead of using services like bit.ly or TinyURL.com, we decided to create our own shortening service called bitpost.us, or “Bit Post Us” – a reference to our company’s legal name Post Communications

In recent years, services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com have been attacked by spammers and the like, often times making these references (or short URLs) flagged by social networking sites and email services (like Gmail) as potential SPAM because anyone can create short URLs using them.

By creating our own shortening service, we ensure that only valid ChurchPost mailings get short links with the http://bitpost.us/ prefix, and that your messages are not filtered as SPAM when you post them.

By teaming up with AddThis, you can now share your ChurchPost.com messages with a host of over 230 communication services, including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and many more!

Of course, you can use our short URLs anywhere you wish – simply click the SHARE icon next to your sent message and copy/paste the URL into anything! Clicking the link will automatically take your viewers to a web version of your message.

By using SHARE ChurchPost, we make it incredibly easy to post your message to the platform of your choice:

Selecting Facebook, for example, automatically takes you to your posting page (or prompts you to login if you aren’t already) and includes the short URL and message subject. You can add your custom message and then post it!

TWEET your message with one simple click!

This new feature makes sharing your message even easier, without the hassle of re-creating it on every communication platform you use.

Remember, we only create short URLs for messages you decide to share. Otherwise, web versions are completely encrypted and only viewable by those who receive them.

Once a short URL has been created for your message (by clicking the SHARE icon next to your message subject), this URL will ALWAYS remain the same, and you can refer back to it any time by clicking the SHARE icon.

In the coming months, we will be vastly expanding our reporting section to include tracking of messages viewed by short URL and much more!

Happy communicating!

Team ChurchPost

Today we released a small but helpful feature that allows you to, with one click, select ALL of your groups when sending a message:

This feature has been requested by several users recently, and we thought we would go ahead and push it live before the holidays

Remember, ChurchPost automatically “de-dupes” recipients for a given message, so if a subscriber exists in more than one group in the “TO GROUPS” list for a specific message, we will be sure your subscribers do NOT receive duplicates.

We have some exciting news just around the corner…keep your eyes on our BLOG…

Setting User Permissions is one of the most powerful features of ChurchPost.com – users are invited by the Master User, and today we started rolling out some small but important upgrades to how users of various types (see below) interact with our system.

It’s always been the case that every user can search and browse EVERY subscriber using the SUBSCRIBERS tab. If a subscriber exists in at least one group that you OWN, you can also edit that subscriber, and any changes you make affect that subscriber GLOBALLY.

Up until now, when creating a message, the “Send to Individuals” feature automatically searched for subscribers that existed in at least one of your groups (ownership) – this was particularly frustrating for LIMITED users who owned only one or two groups and wanted to copy a message to someone already in the global database. Because they did NOT appear in the ‘quick search’ results for individuals, many users reported going to the SUBSCRIBERS tab, searching for the subscriber, copying the email, and returning to the COMPOSE MESSAGE page to paste the email into the CC box.

Our ‘search as you type’ feature for individual email addresses now searches your central database for ALL SUBSCRIBERS, regardless of your user type. Hopefully, this will further streamline your messaging experience.

We’re rolling out some amazing new features in the coming weeks and months, including an entirely new Standard Email platform, complete with an intuitive and highly flexible image library platform that is compatible with every major browser. Additionally, we have some surprises coming…just in time for the holidays and into the beginning of the New Year.

As always, keep your feedback coming! We cannot continue to improve our service without you.

We’re thrilled to be mentioned in yesterday’s edition of the Ann Arbor News (AnnArbor.com) along with Facebook and Twitter as a way congregations ‘friend their faith lives online’.

Terry Johnson, Ann Arbor, checks her Facebook account on her laptop while sitting on the couch in her living room on Tuesday. Johnson spent the better part of three months on the couch while she recovered from a stem cell transplant last summer. While she was recovering, she used Facebook as a way to stay connected with her church community. Lon Horwedel | Ann Arbor.com
After undergoing a stem cell transplant last summer, Terry Johnson felt trapped inside her Ann Arbor home, shut off from her church, her friends and the rest of the world.Unable to leave her house, Johnson could no longer volunteer at church, attend swim meets and spend time with people. She missed the children she had befriended as a volunteer at St. Luke Lutheran Church.

A self-described people-person, Johnson turned to the Internet, where she used social networking sites and other online tools to reconnect to her faith and friends.

Johnson was able to continue contact with the children at the church as well as listen to sermons and read the latest news of the congregation. She also kept her friends online updated on her recovery from the transplant.

“For me, God’s word is very important,” Johnson said. “I draw a lot of strength from hearing God’s word, reading God’s word and talking to other people about God’s word.”

Johnson is one of many people using the Web to keep in touch with her church. As churches and temples see a decrease in attendance, St. Luke and other congregations in the area are working to maintain a relationship with parishioners online.

Keeping in contact with people in the Jewish community is the goal for Rabbi Lisa Delson at Temple Beth Emeth.

Delson, director of congregational services, recently started a page on Facebook, which she updates regularly.

“I give announcements about things going on, reminders of things happening,” she said. “I remind people that we’re here. (The temple is) here, and we’re still open.”

Delson writes about what she’s doing and informal, conversational posts, such as “We’re busy today at the Temple,” on the Temple Beth Emeth’s Facebook page.
She also uses Facebook to advertise initiatives at the temple.

On Monday, for example, she posted, ”The Food Gatherers food drive is up and running. Please bring bags of food or a check to the social hall at TBE.”

Delson said her target is to find people who might not come regularly to the congregation.

“Right now, we’re just reaching out to members of the community and people who have come to events at the temple who might not be members,” she said. “It’s a way to draw people in, in a more active way.”

In April, a study by Unconventional Method (pdf), a firm that strategizes with businesses, nonprofits and ministries, found social networking sites that focus specifically on Christianity made little headway into the church market. However, more than 51 percent of churches surveyed used Facebook.

The study also found that congregants look for specific tasks when using online tools associated with their church. These include the ability to post prayer requests or needs; to find out more about events; to find opportunities to donate or volunteer; to find phone and e-mail directories; and to find and interact with Bible study groups.

The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor uses Facebook, Twitter and online tools to reach out to its community and recruit new members. Associate Pastor Donnell Wyche said about 28 percent of newcomers come through the Internet. The church tracks the data through welcome cards newcomers are asked to fill out.

“It allows for us to have different conversations with folks in different mediums,” he said.

Internet social networking not only spreads information about events, but it also allows people in the community to participate externally in an experience happening through the church, Wyche said.

Several people from the church went to Costa Rica, and they were explaining the extreme poverty they encountered while in the region online.

“The capability of the Internet to create a community is a powerful tool,” Wyche said. “Those people who weren’t able to go were able to experience what we were doing.”

St. Luke uses ChurchPost, a site that connects congregants to churches, to send out messages to its members. The site allows the church to define messages based on subject, and parishioners can choose which subjects, such as youth or missions, they want to hear about regularly. The church also posts all of its sermons online.

For Delson, the use of social networking is a way to reach a generation of people who don’t remember life without a cell phone or the Internet. The same generation is notorious for its low attendance at religious centers.

“It is a way to get younger people involved,” she said. “Any little bit helps.”