Technology sometimes makes us want to hold a big red sign over our head that reads, “Help! I’m stuck!” And in those moments where we’re just about to give up on formatting a photo, blog post, or changing the content on a website page...it would help to know other people are struggling with it, too. But it would really help to actually have answers.
This is the glory of frequently asked question pages, or FAQs. Think of the Ekklesia 360 FAQ page and our help site as sounding boards for your problems. We’re ready to help you master your online ministry tools.
But like everything in this world, we’re changing. As our system grows and changes, so do your “help” searches. We identified your most recent, trending questions and searches on our help pages. While we found a few random searches that entertained us, many of you have the same types of questions for us!
To bring you this blog post, we walked all the way across the office and asked the support team a LOT of questions. I picked their brains so you don’t have to.
Your Top Ekklesia 360 FAQs
1. What’s the difference between site administrators and members? And how do I add them?
A “member” is a user of your website whose information is stored somewhere on the front-end of your website’s login. A “site administrator,” however, is someone who has access to all of the modules in your back-end CMS. There is a middle category, also called “member,” where you can set limits on which parts of the site that user can edit. For example, you can set the member who is your youth pastor to only have permission to edit the youth pages.
Most people think they have to contact our support staff to manage this, but they actually have the total power to do it themselves. See the instructions here in our walk-through video.
2. Some of my church members say they have emailed church staff with prayer requests or looking for event information, but somehow contacted Ekklesia 360 accidentally. How does this happen?
A couple times a month, the Ekklesia 360 support team gets a request from someone trying to reach their own church. Sometimes, they are submitting a prayer request or asking for event information. We always forward the contact along to the actual church office, but we know how this miscommunication happens (and it’s pretty easy to prevent).
Each Ekklesia 360 site comes pre-populated with our office information and sample content and photos. This is on purpose so you can see how it all will work together. If your website admin forgets to update the “Contact Us” page, the Ekklesia 360 contact information is what will appear and emails will come all the way back to us. Make sure all your "Church" info has been updated.
3. Why is my site loading so slowly?
One of the reasons that web pages load slowly is that the images on the site have very large file sizes. The best way to speed up your load time, is to reduce the file size. Many graphic design tools have a special export setting for the web. In Photoshop, it's called “Save for the Web.” Saving images as .jpg, instead of .png, can also help reduce file size. Our system will add some additional image optimizations when a visitor reaches your website, but the more work you do before uploading the image, the faster your site will load.
4. How do I set up a redirect so that I don’t lose SEO on the page?
A simple 301 redirect will keep your website page in the same “place,” as far as search engines are concerned. They are the simplest way to make sure your audience can always find your content, even if it has moved to another page.
5. Can I start a podcast in Ekklesia 360? Or resurrect an old one we used to have?
A podcast is an awesome church resource to give your members––so hats off to you for considering one! While you can’t directly record episodes within Ekklesia 360, you can easily upload audio files and manage them in your CMS. Whether you’re starting one from scratch or redirecting an old series, here’s your guide.
If you’re looking for information how to get a podcast feed of your sermons, you can set that up using this path in the menu of Ekklesia 360. Log in and select Connect > Feeds > Sermons Feed.
6. How do I size and crop images?
Resizing images is an easy, simple thing to do once you learn a few tricks in free programs like Preview (comes on a Mac), Canva, PicMonkey, or paid graphic tools, like Photoshop. Our support team can help you manage any images in your CMS that are giving you trouble, but resizing and editing is something you can easily master on your own.
7. What do I need to do before I can launch my site?
As your ministry partner, we’ll be with you every step of of the way -- from the initial sales call to launching your new church website. But there are a few pieces of information that you can bring to make this process smoother. Have your domain name registrar and login information handy. Also, make sure everyone on your team (and your Ekklesia 360 project manager or onboarding specialist) is in the loop before you launch. You’ll want to touch-base with anyone who has their hands on the site––simply to get the “all clear” from the whole team. Then, let us know you’re ready to go!
Tip: If you’re trying to announce your new website on Sunday during church, be sure to contact us on Wednesday or Thursday beforehand. We try to avoid launching on Fridays just in case there are any snags. It doesn’t happen often, but if anything does go sideways, we want to be around to support and troubleshoot with you. If you’re launching on your own, here’s a help article about that.
8. What can I expect after I launch my site?
3...2...1...launch! Well––not exactly. Launches can take between 24 and 48 hours to become fully activated. You might see your website swap back and forth between the old and new designs as it's finalizing the transition. Once we point your domain name (www.church.org) to the new location, we'll also do some testing until it's officially switched to make sure all the remaining components of your site are in the right places.
After your site is live, care for your account transfers over to the Ekklesia 360 support team and your onboarding specialist is released to work with other new churches.
9. Can I integrate scripture into content on my website?
Of course! Your website comes standard with an integration with Bible Cloud, which is a cool way to show passages in a pop-up hover box above the reference. The Ekklesia 360 default is set as the King James version. If you’re interested in changing versions, it can be done in a few easy steps.
- Visit http://reftagger.com/customize and make your custom choices.
- Please copy+paste your Reftagger code into a plain text file (.txt format) and submit the file to our support team.
- We’ll take it from there.
Whichever translation you use, your visitors can see the passage in an overlay box without even leaving your website, like this:
