ChurchPost.com Blog

Thank you for your continued feedback (and patience) with our release of ChurchPost Version 3. It’s been a fantastically busy week, and we’ve identified several issues that have been fixed and will be updated to our live site tonight, Monday April 6 between 6pm and midnight EST. We suggest you avoid using our service during these hours to prevent accidental loss of email content.

We will remove this notice from our website when the upgrades are complete.

Snapshot overview of upgrades includes:

• Unexplained loss of content when saving a draft of a message (now explained - the “&” character was triggering our database to omit content - this was a particular problem when pulling up drafts of OLD messages (pre-Version 3). The fix will resolve all related issues.
• My Templates interface now includes templates from version 2 - yipee! You will be able to see both personal templates & public templates in one screen.
• Some major improvements with the Designer Email platform, including an upgraded Image Library and more stable use of blocks, including editing and formatting
• Use images in the Standard Email - this new feature will pull from the same Image Library, so you can store images in one central location and use them in either editor (Standard & Designer)
• Scroll bar implementation on the Standard Email - this will make it easier to use the tool bar without having to scroll up and down the page and try to remember what you were doing when you get there

As always, we welcome your continued feedback - even if we already know about an issue, it’s helpful to hear about your personal experience!

You can contact us any time by emailing support@churchpost.com - we promise a quick reply!

Sleep is overrated! We’ve been working around the clock to bring you ChurchPost Version 3 - here are a few screenshots of what’s ahead - ALL of these upgrades are in response to valuable feedback from our customers over the past year - THANK YOU

To upgrade to Version 3, you don’t need to do anything! We’ll automatically roll out these features starting March 21, 2009 (this Saturday!) and we’ll be done by March 25, 2009 - of course, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you can reach us any time by email or phone (support.churchpost.com)….here’s what we’ve been up to (notice the help videos on every page for quick answers to your questions):

Sneak Peak of Version 3

Every once and a while, ISPs change their configuration and filters for incoming mail. The SBC/ATT/Bellsouth family are famous for this Most recently, several messages from ChurchPost’s mail server were blocked from @sbcglobal email addresses - @att.net messages were also affected.

Within a few hours, we were in touch with them to resolve the issue, and messages are being delivered once again!

To help maintain a clean database, ChurchPost automatically removes email addresses that bounce more than 3 times. For the past few days, attempts to send to email addresses @sbcglobal.net and @att.net resulted in “hard bounces” which, in turn, count towards the “3 times” allowed by ChurchPost.com.

To contact valid email addresses who may have been automatically removed from your system, Master Users may do the following:

1. Log in to your ChurchPost account and click on the REPORTING tab
2. Select the SUBSCRIBER TRENDS tab
3. Change “all time” to “last 7 days” next to the first option - SHOW ME AUTO/BOUNCE REMOVALS
4. Click GO and we’ll generate a quick report for you listing email,first,last of every subscriber automatically removed over the past week

Of course, if you have any questions whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to contact us! We work hard to maintain our WHITELISTED relationship with ISPs small and large around the world, and are happy to address any concerns you have.

Keep your eyes posted on our BLOG and homepage…ChurchPost Version3 is coming…soon….really soon…

We completed our transition from GroupReply to ChurchReply today!

If you have existing groups that were originally named with the @groupreply.com naming scheme, those groups are up and running with @churchreply.com endings.  You should have received individual email messages for each of your groups with this information, as well.

If you have requested new groups, we will be setting those up throughout the day and you will be individually notified.

Please keep in mind that if you set up an alias on your server (to forward from an existing list name at your church to our groupreply address) you will have to reset those to forward to the new, correct @churchreply.com address.

Don’t know anything about ChurchReply?

ChurchReply™ is our newest “add on” feature that enables a designated administrator at your church to create and customize distribution email lists (like youthretreat@churchreply.com) specifically designed for group discussion and conversation threads. Best of all, ChurchReply™ is completely integrated with ChurchPost.com! Make a change in one location and ALL INSTANCES of that record are updated instantly - no more hunting down EVERY LIST or GROUP to update!

Key Features
» “Reply to All” and/or “Reply to Sender”
» Online message thread retrieval (public or private)
» Create allow/deny email lists
» Subscriber-only posting
» List moderation functionality
» Bulk import/export
» Customized message subject for easy sorting
» Intuitive web-based management

Other Benefits
» Hassle-free setup and maintenance
» Whitelisted mail servers managed by ChurchPost.com
» 24/7 SpamAssassin monitoring by ChurchPost.com
» DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) included…

the sticks is a gathering to inspire and equip pastors in small to medium towns to make a big impact for the Kingdom!

ChurchPost will be exhibiting at THE STICKS next month (November 11-12 at New Hope Community Church in Loudonville, OH 44842) - stop on by and say hello, ask about our new version (ChurchPost 3.0), check out GroupReply (our newest service that integrates with your ChurchPost Broadcast database), take some candy and sign the Happy Fun Ball!

The Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, PA has purchased annual subscriptions of ChurchPost for all 65 of its parishes!

Following 2 days of in-person trainings, individual parishes began rolling out ChurchPost for their electronic communications last month. The Diocese, itself, also uses ChurchPost (and GroupReply) to communicate with their area churches, staff, lay leaders and more!

Read more on the DioBeth newSpin Blog at:

http://diobeth.typepad.com/diobeth_newspin/2008/07/churchpost-trai.html

We are happy to welcome them on board, and look forward to working with them over the coming months and years ahead!

Want to hang out with the gurus of church communications?

MinistryCOM (visit their website) is the only national conference dedicated to church communications professionals. Come join some of the leaders in church communications to learn how to make your ministry more effective.

This conference has four objectives — to provide encouragement, education, resources, and networking opportunities to ministry communications professionals.

We had such a great time last year in Nashville that we’re headed to Oklahoma City! Stop by and say hello (our booth is located next to the General Information section), ask questions, see our newest features and grab some free candy!

Hope to see you there!

For more photos of last year’s conference, click here.

Tags: ministryCOM Oklahoma city 2008

This Friday, August 22, we will be performing several minor upgrades to our servers, including a small fix to our “coaching system” that ensures you are making the most of our service.

We have done everything possible to limit the number of emails you receive, but if your account has been inactive for some time (more than 175 days), you may receive multiple emails at once indicating that your account has been idle and/or deleted.

We apologize in advance if you receive one or more messages from us on Friday because of this upgrade.

Messages you compose and send on Friday using ChurchPost will be unaffected by this maintenance.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact us any time (by replying to this email OR by visiting support.churchpost.com).

Respectfully,

John Goodell
ChurchPost.com

When someone signs up for a group at your church via your Get Connected Box, they are instantly welcomed once they confirm their email address.

This welcome message is your chance to provide not only information about the specific group/ministry/activity, but also to stamp your unique personality as a group leader.

We have recently updated the customized welcome message format. Effective immediately, welcome messages (by default) contain only 3 short sentences that ensure the recipient knows what they have opted to receive.

The rest of the message is completely customizable, and is automatically personalized for that subscriber.

You can customize content, signoff, and more! Best of all, your custom welcome message accepts HTML, so have fun!

Welcome messages are always sent to the subscriber FROM the group owner’s verified address. So matter what time of the day someone signs up for your group, they will instantly be welcomed by the group owner!

Well, we think we’ve solved it this time.

Recently, we’ve heard from many of you about funny characters appearing in your messages - especially when content was copied and pasted from other programs (eh hem…Microsoft). Last year, we launched the addition of the “Paste of Word” feature on our editor that cleaned up proprietary code created by Microsoft programs. That worked for many of you, but others have continued to see some funny business going on…

Now, we’ve changed the way our database stores information in your message body (for those techies….from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci) and we think that’s done it!

If you see strange characters creeping into your messages, drop us a line so we can determine the source. Otherwise, enjoy a ‘funny-character-free’ ChurchPost experience!

We LOVE your feedback - keep your comments, questions and suggestions coming!