How can you get this amazing new tool? It will automagically appear in your ChurchPost account (look under CREATE) in the next few weeks. Of course, we aren’t getting rid of our Standard Editor…we’re just adding another great tool to communicate with your subscribers.

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!

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.

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!

After receiving feedback from many of you we have decided to take the designer editor down.  We have not been happy with the functionality and after a year of trying to repair it, it is time to move on.  As of April 5, the Designer Editor will not be available.

The recently launched Standard Editor has proven itself to be stable and robust and we know that it is a better overall platform for you.

If you have templates that were created in the Designer Editor (and you’ll know this by looking in your Custom Email/Template Library… look for an orange Designer tag) and want those re-created for use in the Standard Editor, please contact us.  We’re happy to do that at no charge.  Please contact us at support@churchpost.com to let us know to begin work.

More Public Templates Available

We were asked by a customer for template designs that celebrated the change of the seasons – hello spring!  We have added a few designs that reflect that idea.  Of course, you can always create more by using your own images but we were happy to add some for you.  Check them out by looking in the Custom Email >> My Templates library.

Welcome, Kim!

We are ushering in spring by welcoming a new team member.  Kim Tucker comes to us with extensive experience in both technology and serving the church.  A fantastic addition to our staff, she is jumping in with both feet.  We’ve told her how great our customers are… now you get to find out how great she is!

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!

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

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

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…