Author: sozomai

Church Info Form

SUNDAY SERVICES

Sunday Service Time:

Enter the time of your Sunday Service. The form is not picky about the manner in which you enter the time but you should indicate am or pm. If you fail to indicate am or pm, it will be assumed that you mean am and will be grouped as such for the purposes of placing it in the correct order, but the finally display will appear EXACTLY as you enter it, so anyone who visits your site may not know which you mean.

Sunday Bible Class Time:

Enter the time of your Sunday Bible Class. The form is not picky about the manner in which you enter the time but you should indicate am or pm. If you fail to indicate am or pm, it will be assumed that you mean am and will be grouped as such for the purposes of placing it in the correct order, but the finally display will appear EXACTLY as you enter it, so anyone who visits your site may not know which you mean.

Sunday School Time:

Enter the time of your Sunday School Class. The form is not picky about the manner in which you enter the time but you should indicate am or pm. If you fail to indicate am or pm, it will be assumed that you mean am and will be grouped as such for the purposes of placing it in the correct order, but the finally display will appear EXACTLY as you enter it, so anyone who visits your site may not know which you mean.

Here you are also provided the Option of choosing “Same time as Bible Class”. When this option is chosen, no individual entry for Sunday School will be displayed instead the Bible Class entry will be replaced with “Bible Class and Sunday School” on your website. If you want a separate entry for Sunday School, you must choose “Custom” and fill out the box, if you only fill out the box it will not be displayed.

WEEKLY SERVICES

This form is meant for displaying information that is at least fairly consistent from week to week. It is not meant to be used as a church calendar showing events that are taking place only on a particular week.

It can however be used fairly easily to display events that are of a seasonal nature. Enter the event and when you no longer wish it to be displayed change it to zero.

Finally the display order is provided so that it does not matter where on the list you enter the event, thus if you want to add an event but you wish it to be displayed between the 2nd and 3rd event, instead of erasing all the events and moving them down one to make room for the new event, simply add the new event to the end and makes its display order equal to 2.5, assuming that events 2 and 3 are labeled display order 2 and 3 respectively.

Extra Number of Weekly Events:

By default you are giving the ability to enter up to four events, if you wish to have more just type in the number of extra slots you wish to have and update the options.

eg. if you want 6 slots type 2 into this box and hit the update options button that appears beneath the Contact Information Section.

Display Order:

Enter where you would like this event displayed in relation to the other events. Any number can be used including decimals. Set to “0” if and only if you do not want the event dispaled, change later when you wish it to be displayed again.

It should be noted that NOTHING else effects the display order other than this number. In other words if you put the same number for two events I cannot guarantee which will be displayed first.

Day:

Choose which day the event takes place.

Events taking place on the same day will be grouped together under the appropriate day header assuming that their display order is consecutive, ie no other event on a different day comes between them. They will be listed on that day in in the order that you indicate.

Time:

Type in the time of the event, remember to indicate am or pm for the sake of your visitors.

The time on your website will be displayed EXACTLY as it appears here.

Event;

Type in the name of your Event as you wish it to appear on the website.

CONTACT INFORMATION

This form is meant for displaying basic contact information. All information will be displayed on the site exactly as it appears here. You do not need to fill in “country” if you don’t care to.

Email address – The email address will appear on the site as a mailto: link. If you are afraid of listing you email address because of the possibility of spiders and bots finding it and sending you a bunch of junk mail, please use the CryptX plugin. CryptX does  a superb job of hiding all email address listed on a site from spiders and bots.

CONTACT BANNER AND CHURCH LOGO

The church banner and church logo options allow you to upload and change the banner and or logo that appear on your website, provided your theme supports this option. If you theme does not support this option contact your webmaster. If you aren’t sure, why not give it a try and find out.

Simply browse your computer for whichever image you may wish to use and then hit the Upload and save button.

IMPORTANT: WHEN YOU HIT THE UPLOAD AND SAVE BUTTON IT DOES NOT SAVE THE DATA YOU MAY HAVE ENTERED IN THE REST OF THE FORM BUT IT DOES REFRESH THE PAGE. THEREFORE YOU SOHULD HIT THE UPDATE OPTIONS BUTTON FIRST TO SAVE ANY DATA YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY ENTERED. ONCE YOU HAVE DONE THAT IT IS SAFE TO UPLOAD A PICTURE.

The following types of images are accepted: jpeg, gif, and png. Bitmap pictures ie bmp, are NOT excepted. Please make sure that any picture you choose to upload is of an appropriate size, there is no reason why the picture should be over 1mb and probably should be MUCH smaller. If you don’t know how to reduce your pictures file size ask someone.

Church Info Widgets

SUNDAY SERVICES

This will display whatever information you entered into the Sunday Services section of the Church Info Menu

SUNDAY SCHOOL – if the “Same Time as Bible Class” option is selected on your form page, this widget will display a single time for Bible Class and Sunday School.

This widget offers five different options

1. TITLE

Write whatever title you wish to appear above the information when it is displayed on the website. If nothing is entered “Sunday Services” will be used.

2. ORDER

This option lets you decide what order the services are displayed in. Do not confuse this will Display Order which deals with which comes first on a particular line, the time or the service.

– Worship – will display the services in this order – Worship Service, Bible Class, and if applicable Sunday School

– Earliest – will display the services by chronological order, so if ss is at 9:00, bc at 10:00 and worship at 11:00, it will display them in that order, SS, BC, Worship.

3. DISPLAY ORDER

This option allows you to choose which will come first on a particular line the time or the name of the service.

– time – the time gets listed first eg 9:30am Sunday School

– service – the Service gets listed first eg Sunday School 9:30am

4. WRAP

This allows you to decide which type of HTML element the events will be displayed as, you can type in any valid HTML element.

Do not put them in quotes “”, or ”, and do not put them in brackets <>, simply write out the element you wish eg, li p span etc.

By default “li” is used. Whenever “li” is used the <ul> code is added in its proper place as well.

5. SPACER

This allows you to decide what will come between the items. You can type anything you want here. Remember to uses spaces before and after as appropriate as no spaces are automatically entered, eg if you enter “:” the following will display “Sunday Services:9:30am”. Instead enter “: ” to get “Sunday Services: 9:30am”.

Do not enter quotes neither “”, nor ”.

WEEKLY EVENTS

This will display whatever information you enter under the Weekly Events section of the Church Info Menu

EXCEPT any events where the display order is not entered or is “0” (the number not the letter). If you have not entered a display order or have entered it as 0 that event will not be displayed. This is useful in that it allows you to enter certain events, such as Lenten Services, which you only wish to be displayed at certain times of the year. Instead of erasing them you can simply turn them on or off by switching their display order to 0.

This Widget offers three different options.

1. TITLE

Write whatever title you wish to appear above the information when it is displayed on the website. If nothing is entered “Sunday Services” will be used.

2. WRAP

This allows you to decide which type of HTML element the events will be displayed as, you can type in any valid HTML element.

Do not put them in quotes “”, or ”, and do not put them in brackets <>, simply write out the element you wish eg, li p span etc.

By default “li” is used. Whenever “li” is used the <ul> code is added in its proper place as well.

3. SPACER

This allows you to decide what will come between the items. You can type anything you want here. Remember to uses spaces before and after as appropriate as no spaces are automatically entered, eg if you enter “:” the following will display “Sunday Services:9:30am”. Instead enter “: ” to get “Sunday Services: 9:30am”.

Do not enter quotes neither “”, nor ”.

CHURCH CONTACT INFO

This allows you to display all the information you may have entered under the Church Contact section of the Church Info Menu

It is advised that you fill out the entire form with the exception if you like to leave “country” blank, if you are going to use this widget. This widget will display all the information and if any is missing will leave a blank line in its place. If you are worried about spiders and bots capturing your email address we advice the use of CryptX plugin, which does a superb job of encrypting all email addresses so that they are visible to humans who visit your site but not to spiders, bots and other unwanted visitors.

This widget offers five different options:

1. TITLE

Write whatever title you wish to appear above the information when it is displayed on the website. If nothing is entered “Sunday Services” will be used.

2. WRAP

This allows you to decide which type of HTML element the events will be displayed as, you can type in any valid HTML element.

Do not put them in quotes “”, or ”, and do not put them in brackets <>, simply write out the element you wish eg, li p span etc.

By default “li” is used. Whenever “li” is used the <ul> code is added in its proper place as well.

3. Grouping

The grouping option decides how to group the various pieces of information. Practically the only difference is whether city, state, zip and country are all on one line grouped together or separate.

– Lines – groups the various pieces of information into appropriate lines – ie city, stat, zip and country are all on the same line

– Individual – separates all information and wraps it all individually

4. Phone Label

Type here any label you wish to appear before the phone number, if nothing is entered, nothing will be displayed.

4. Email Address Label

Type here any label you wish to appear before the email, if nothing is entered, nothing will be displayed.

Creating Tables in a post or page

There are two easy options for creating tables in a post or page, the first is to simply learn the HTML code involved. Doing this means you have total control over how you tables look, and it really isn’t that difficult to learn. The second option is to add a button to your MCE editor that allows you to insert tables into a post or page. Both options are discussed below.

1 –  LEARNING THE HTML

Learning how to write tables in HTML code is quite easy :

<table> – this begins the table

<tr> – This begins a row

<td> – this begins a cell put all the data you want in your first cell here </td> <td> end one cell and start another </td>

</tr> now we end the row

<tr> now we begin a new row

<td> a new cell </td><td> another cell</td>

</tr>

</table> – end table

The web browser will automatically line up the cells in different table rows, so the first cell in row one will line up with the first cell in row two.

It will also automatically adjust the width and height of the cells and row to optimize with regard to how much data each cell contains and how much room there is on the page.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp – this is a good link for learning html and you will down the side a tutorial on tables.

2 – USING A MCE BUTTON

Alternatively – you can add a “table” button to your Tiny MCE – that is the bar of buttons above where you edit posts and pages.

On the left under “settings” you will see “TinyMCE Advanced” here you can choose which buttons you want displayed on your TinyMCE when you are editing posts and pages. If you don’t see this option under your “settings” just write to me and ask me to enable it. sozomai@hotmail.com

One of the options is a row of buttons for creating tables. Just grab it and pull up above unto one of the grey bars then hit save changes down below.

Now go back to edit your post or page and you should see the row of buttons for creating a table.

– Matthew Ude

Part 3 – User Profile

If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In

1. Click on the “Users” option in the side menu to the left again.

2. Choose the “Your Profile” option under “Users”

3. Fill out as much of the form as you wish. Type in a new password if you like, one that might be easier for you to remember that then one sent to you.  Click the “Update Profile” at the bottom of the screen. Make a note of your new password and use this password from now on.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Ignore the “Disable the visual editor when writing” option. Leave it unchecked!!

Continue on to the next post:  Part 4 – Basic Settings

Creating Forms on a page or post

Creating forms can be a bit tricky. If you think you can I would encourage you to learn how to write the HTML code yourself. However forms are about as advanced as HTML can get. So for the less adventurous:

If you can activate plugins yourself, find the one labeled “Cforms II” and activate it. Otherwise email me and let me know you would like to add forms to your website: sozomai@hotmail.com

Once Cforms II is activated you should see this option in your dashboard way down near the bottom of your side bar menu.

IF you click on that “cforms II” you will get a couple different options, the last one says “Help” there you will find a good instruction manual on using cforms to create a form on your website.

Cforms is however rather intense, if you take a look at it and think this is a bit too much for me let know. There are much simpler much easier plugins that I could activate for you instead. However cforms gives you a much wider range of options. So if you can handle that it is a good way to go.

-Matthew Ude

Uploading Files, problems and answers

The default quota on uploading files is 50mb per file and 5 GB total space.

That is to say that technically you are allowed to upload files as large as 50mb.  And you have storage space of 5 GB.

However attempting to upload files much larger than 5 mb is very risky. You are often going to run into many problems in the attempt. This is due to the nature of HTTP uploads in general and not anything specific to this site.

If you are planning on often uploading large files, such as sermon audio files, it is a much better idea to use what is called ftp.

Inorder to do this you need a special account set up for you. Simply email me letting me know what it is you would like to do. I will set it up for you: sozomai@hotmail.com

– Matthew Ude

Part 4 – Basic Settings

If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In

Now that you have your username and profile set up, its time to start setting up your actual website. The first thing that you need to do is choose some basic settings.

If you haven’t already log in to your website and go to the dashboard.

1. Eleven options down on the left menu you should see “Settings”, click on this option.

2. You now have a page entitled “General Settings”  here you can change the title of your Blog, the tagline, the default website email address, the timezone, as well as various options concerning how time settings are displayed. For more information on these options see Settings General on the wordpress.org site.

BEFORE MOVING ON MAKE SURE TO CLICK “SAVE SETTINGS”

3. Now under the settings Option choose the “writing” option. Here you should make sure to deselect the “Convert emoticons like :-) and :-P to graphics on display” option. For more information on the rest of these settings see Settings Writing on the wordpress.org site.

BEFORE MOVING ON MAKE SURE TO CLICK “SAVE SETTINGS”

4. Finally under the settings option choose the “Reading” option.

5. Here you need to choose which of your pages will be the one displayed first when people first come to visit your site. For the purposes of this tutorial we will assume that you want the page entitled “Our Church” displayed on the home page.

6. After “Front page displays:” choose the “A Static Page” option.

7.  Now directly below that where it says “Front Page:” select “Our Church” (or the title of another page you wish displayed first) from the drop down box.

BEFORE MOVING ON MAKE SURE TO CLICK “SAVE SETTINGS”

8. For more information about the options listed on the rest of this page go to Settings Reading page on wordpress.org.

Now you have your basic settings set up it time to choose a theme to make your webpage look how you like. Continue to Part 5 – Changing Themes

Part 5 – Changing Themes

If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In

1. On the left hand menu seven options down, click on “Appearance”.

2. Now you will see a page full of possible themes you can use. Look through them, and when you think you see one you may like, click “preview” to get a better look.

3. If you like it click “Activate” on the top right had corner, if you don’t like it click the “X” button on the top left of the screen.

You can repeat this process to change your theme whenever you like. But it is best not to do it too often. You have now chosen a good look for your website, next we need to set up your side bars. See next post Part 6 – Sidebars