FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a web designer.  My policy is to give away information and sell a service.  Early in the process with clients, I go through a “discovery” phase – finding out where they stand with their site, then I take them through a teaching phase-  so that the decisions that follow are informed.  This is when I often find that the clients have had a bad run with their last “webmaster” (I use that term lightly).  Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a particularly hard lesson when a bad website is publicly displaying your decisions… for better or worse.

Here are a few questions you might ask to ensure your decision to hire a company or individual is a good one:

1. Do you build websites for a living, or on the side? How long have you been doing this?
2. Can I see six of your most recent websites?
3. Do you have references from clients past and present? May I contact them?
4. Can I get a copy of your hosting contract and your pricing list?
5. What platform or software do you you use to build your sites?
6. Will I get a blog?
7. Can I have multiple user accounts with different security roles?
8. Do you utilize all the recent web standards (HTML,CSS, XML, Accessibility, etc?)
9. Can I leave anytime and take my content with me?
10. How often do you back up all my data? Do I get a copy?
11. How often do you update your server software?
12. Do you charge per page or have limits on storage and bandwidth?
13. Do you support calendars? Photo Galleries? Web forms? Video? Audio?
14. What type of support do you offer? Phone? Email? On site? Do you have a SLA (Service Level Agreement)?

Can you think of other questions you would like to know?

During the last MinistryVault.com podcast recording (coming soon to an itunes near you), we got into a discussion of the tech that pastors use everyday to be more efficient. We – ok, I – talked at length about All-In-One church management systems versus Google Applications. For those who missed it or want a brief, “ICanHazLinks2ShareW/MyChurchTreasurer” summary, here’s a quick recap of what is out there and how Google measures up.

CORE COMPETENCY

This post will, admittedly, be an oversimplification.  But in my last job, I managed a contact database at a mega-church with over 60,000 people on the books. In short, I am qualified to make the following statements.

Church management breaks down into 2 categories:
1) communicating with people
2) managing the tithes and offerings

In my opinion, the latter should be done with the best software and resources out there – QuickBooks and professional accountants. Period.

I could go on, but my practical stance on this matter has left no one disappointed.  It’s the smart, safe, cheap, as-painless-as-possible road for the small church (the big church, the growing church, the start-up church – any church with a connection to the internet on a desktop, laptop, or phone).

To belabor the point, LARGE companies even use this same one-two financial punch.

Now for the former task: communicating with people.  THAT is something that regular folk can get in on, and there are all sorts of tools that can help us do a good job.

It’s completely overwhelming to study – let alone to choose from. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a simpler way to get the work done? Tarry a moment, friends, with the decision hymn held in readiness …

EENIE-MEANIE, MONEY-‘MO?

Let’s cut this list down a bit. First off, check out the Price ranges! Since I am an advocate of, for, by and to the local church and for spending toward the eternal mission more than the earthly mansion, let’s throw out all the fancy pants with their high dollar offerings, since we’re about to find out that money, for a change, is not the key to the ministry-communication kingdom. Check. That eliminates over half.

Next, let’s cast into outer darkness – on a 3.5-inch floppy disk, to boot – all the ones that are NOT online apps. Ouch. Is that weeping and the gnashing of profit-margin teeth we hear?

Now, we have a list of 5 companies. Of those 5 companies, Fellowship Technologies is far and away the biggest. And what they lack in easy to understand pricing structures, they make up for with mind-blowing complexity and sheer size of instructional manuals. Did I mention this company has options for ALL the pricing options? Right on up to over $2000 a month.

Yeah, TWO THOUSAND. Dollars. A month. And next month. And …

“DON’T BE EVIL” -Google

Enter: Google Apps. The irony here is that the largest, richest, most powerful company ever to be on this planet is helping the local church. I don’t think it KNOWS it’s helping the church, but Google is clearly committed to offering premium services to the non-profit and educational market. Just the top-tier colleges? Nay! Whole states are running their communication models through Google Apps – from email and calendaring to online documents and secure storage.

I could go on and on about what it does, but I think it is enough to say that it does email and contact management EXTREMELY well. No Church Management System (ChMS) can hold a candle to Google and its increasingly seamless and interactive communications empire. These apps are ideal for posting docs and calendars to websites, accessing and updating information on the go, quickly finding a person on your phone … Google even gives directions to addresses with one click within the contacts application. The bugs? All worked out for us by others in the great cloud of early-adopters who have gone before us on the beta-testing trail. The stuff just plain works. The price? For anyone who already has a connection to the internet and a browser: FREE. Who can compete with that?

CELL PHONES ARE THE NEW COMPUTER

Whosoever will may come to the trailing edge … the long tail of technology has finally begun to trickle down to churches. FaceBook is widely used now by many, MANY churches. From a “what should we get today to help us in the future” perspective, desktops are completely dead. Laptops are still being used, but the march to smaller, more portable gear is already off and running. The netbook has largely come and gone. Now, the iPad and iPhone are what appeal to many pastors I know. The APP-nation is marching, and the prevailing attitude is – if their ain’t “an app for that,” why bother? Many ChMS vendors are scrambling to remain relevant when the pastor just wants his info on his phone. Why does any of this matter? Because Google Applications work great on an iPhone, or an Android phone – yesterday and today and, until the last trumpet sounds, tomorrow(s). iPad? No problem.

“CAUGHT UP TOGETHER” IN THE CLOUD

The bottom line is that Google Apps can enable your church staff and congregation (and visitors and neighbors next door and around the world) to interact and communicate – ‘community-cate’ – in real time for real effect in fellowship, worship and outreach – e-mail unlimited groups, collaborate, calendar, write, plot, draw, chat, IM, video chat, poll, newsletter, fill out forms online, sign up, respond, discuss and publish – are already here.

They are not as free (or as essentially precious) as saving grace, but they are given freely, as gifts … from billionaires.

The simple truth of the Gospel can get bogged down in the complexity of ministry in today’s world. With Google Apps, the simple truth meets a simple solution for Church Management Software. Amen!

Feedback is critical to leadership and making sound decisions. But most leaders don’t have the time to poll more than a few individuals for their take on an event or new idea.  Keep reading for some great online survey tools!

Enter the Online Survey

You’ve all taken online surveys before. In a church setting, these surveys can be used for:

• first-time guest feedback
• Sunday service feedback from staff & key volunteers
• polling for community service ideas
• congregation health survey
• etc…

Free Services

If you’re already a Google Docs user, you have this built in. You can post unlimited questions and they include ‘skip logic‘: depending on their answer to a particular question, they can be taken to a different page. From your Docs homepage, just pull down the Create New menu and select Form:

Survey Monkey is a freemium service that allows you to post 10 questions, but lacks the ‘skip logic‘ that Google builds in for free.

Zoomerang is another freemium service that gives you 12 questions.

Get Busy

Now that you know that you can post surveys for free, how are you going to use online surveys for your church? What creative ways have you seen them used for churches?

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In part 1 of our series, we covered adding the FBML (Facebook Markup Language) application to our Fan Page.  It shows up as a tab and accepts some basic HTML.  One great example of this from Part 1 is here.  Now we will move on to a more advanced technique that allows us to hide and reveal different sections of our page to mimic a micro site – a webpage within a webpage.

THE MENU

We are using a series of images as our menu buttons.  To keep it simple, we will not use hover and click states – just a simple image as a link.  If you want to use the image I created, feel free.  I have made four different buttons for this example that will correspond with each “page”: Home, About, Map, & Contact.

BLOCKS AS PAGES

The basic concept at work here is that each “page” is actually a block of HTML code that contains the content for each of our pages.  Only one block will show at a time, forcing the other blocks to be hidden.  This hide/reveal technique is a bit of slide-of-hand to make the user imagine there are independent pages , when, actually, all the content is being served up from one page without the need to load a new page.  Since we are operating within the confines of Facebook tabs, this is a perfect solution for our micro site.

THE CODE

When looking for tutorials like this, I found a lot of them were incomplete.  Many sites assumed that the reader knew  HTML, javascript and beyond… I wanted to be sure you had the EXACT code that I used so you will have someplace to start.  Instead of give examples in the blog post, just download the whole document and have fun.  Feel free to ask questions in the comments, too.

Facebook-Microsite-Example

So much hype surrounds this little update from Apple, its hard to overstate the success of the product.  And this is day 1.  The product has been over-covered and over-reviewed, so I won’t attempt to give a full review just yet.  If you do want a great review, I recommend THIS ONE over at Engadget.  But, if you are up for a little editorial review, read on.

Why upgrade?

I don’t have the money to afford being an early adopter.  I typically wait for at least one generation of a new gadget to lapse and work out all the kinks.  I also am not one to buy the biggest capacity storage, largest screen, or fastest processor. I look for the best value.  Case in point: I own the 13 inch MacBook.  My hard drive went out and I actually downgraded in hard drive space to 60GB (it is a Solid State Drive, but I digress). In any case, the iPhone 4 is NOT the best value.  I don’t think anyone can argue this point.  The compelling reasons to upgrade are: Speed, screen resolution, camera, and “facetime”.  I have to admit, these are great reasons to upgrade, but ask yourself these questions:

• Is your current cell phone too slow?
• Is your current cell phone screen resolution slowing you down?
• Is your current cell phone camera producing pictures that disappoint?
• Do you currently do a lot of video conferencing? Or do you have a need to do so in the future?

For me, these questions left me thinking that my current cell phone (an iphone 3G) still has some life left in it.

The Value Proposition

My trusty, 2 year old iphone is still a joy to use (most of the time), but would I enjoy a new phone with better… well, everything?  YES!  So, like many of you, I ask – what would it cost me?

The Apple website makes it look like the new phone will set you back either $199, or $299 – but existing AT&T customers will have to check www.apple.com/iphone/buy to see where you stand.  I have pulled a couple of lines from the Apple.com website – the really small print at the bottom:

Requires new two-year AT&T wireless service contract, sold separately to qualified customers; credit check required; must be 18 or older. Existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS should check with AT&T or use www.apple.com/iphone/buy. For those who are not eligible for an early upgrade or who wish to buy iPhone as a gift, the prices are $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

I checked my account and I am eligible for the cheaper price, but I have to renew my contract for 2 years, and in doing so, I will lose my unlimited data plan and drop back to the new policy of 2GB per month.  To keep my unlimited data plan, I would have to buy the phone at full price.

So what will you do? Will you upgrade? Can you afford it? Lave a comment and let us know.

Go2Convert.com to the rescue.

The interface is very straight forward, and needs no explaination – just browse for your file, choose the format you want it to output and click convert.

One feature I didn’t think to use at first is the resizing feature.  You can upload a JPG and immediately resize it without fussing with a program on your computer.  This would be helpful when you are away from your main computer and without the benefit of your personal software arsenal.

Go2Convert will convert our image immediately and give you a download link right there on the page.  This is good.  It also sends you an email with a link to the page it created with the download link, in case you didn’t download it immediately.  This is good and bad.  I love the email feature, but I wish it would email you the image as an attachment.  When I am out of the office, it would be nice to be able to check my email and have access to the file itself.  Since I use an iphone, I can’t download it from the website (ok, maybe I can, but most people have not hacked their phone like I have).

All in all, it is a great little tool to bookmark and add to your online arsenal.

If you have an online giving option on your website (you do have that, right?), have you thought about what the donor sees after successfully sending money to your church?

Enter the ‘Thank You’ page.

Here are some best practices based on Hubspot’s blog article Thank You, Come Again!: Best Practices for Thank You Pages:

• Thank Them. Well, duh! Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what you’d like to see if you had just given money. Be sincere but not cheesy.
• Set Great Expectations. Will you send them a tax receipt? A written thank you? What are you going to do with their money? Let them know what happens next.
• Suggest They Follow You. Are you on FaceBook or Twitter? Invite them to be more involved in your ministry/cause by joining your circle of friends
• Better Yet: Suggest They Tell Their Friends. They’ve already given you a vote of confidence by their donation. Suggest they invite you into their circle of friends. Get the word out!

Don’t miss the opportunity to involve your donors in the mission & ministry of your church. People love to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and especially love being part of a ‘winning team’.

What good ideas could you add to this?