MULTIMEDIA

AUDIO

• Sermon Browser – Makes it easy to organize all the sermons on your site. It allows users to find a sermon by topic, preacher, bible verse, date, service time, or with a keyword search. Yeah, it’s pretty smooth.
• Sermon Notes – If they’re listening to the sermon at home or via podcast, you can post the notes on your site for them to follow along with at home.
• Podcasting– In 2006, Ipsos New Center said that according to their research, 1in 5 Americans over age 12 own a portable MP3 player. The days of sermons on tape or CD are just about over. Because of this, one of the most in-demand features for church websites is Podcasting. This allows people to use free services like iTunes to automatically download your sermons to their MP3 player. Most other church website companies make this feature available only with their most expensive package. We only have one price and it includes everything we have to offer on your church website.
• Streaming Audio– This allows people to listen to sermons or music on your website. There are many different kinds of audio players you can use to make this happen. Some play just one audio file and others have a playlist feature.
• Audio Download – This option allows people to download audio files directly to their computer so they can listen to them anytime, anywhere. There is no limit to the number of your sermons that can be stored on your site for download. Try finding that feature from another church website provider!!!

VIDEO

• YouTube– You can embed a video from YouTube or other sites like Vimeo, Tangle, etc.on your site. All you need to know how to do is ‘cut and paste’.
• Featured Video – This is a place on your website that always has a video for people to see. Many churches create a welcome video to help people learn a little more about the personality and culture of your church. Others use the featured video section to post highlights of sermons, services, event, mission trips, musicals, etc. Some of our designs already have a featured video section in them. You can also add a featured video section to your sidebar if the design you like doesn’t already have a featured video section.
• Video Streaming & Download– If you have a video that you need to have hosted on your site rather than YouTube, Vimeo, Tangle, etc you can do that too. It’s rare that this is the best option, but it’s an option we wanted to make available to you if you need it. Video files are normally really big files and can slow things down on your site. There are several other reasons why embedding a video from anther source is a better way to post a video on your site. Ask us about it and we’ll give you all the boring, but important details. But once again, if you need to host a video on your site, you can.

PICTURES

• Featured Content Gallery – Many of our designs already use a featured content section with rotating images. This can be added to some of our other designs as well. The images in the featured gallery can also be linked to pages on your site. This way when they click on the image it takes them to a page featuring that ministry, event, or whatever else you want to link it to.
• Photo Gallery & Slideshows– You can host pictures on your site or on other photo sites like Flickr and show them on your site. There are some really cool options for viewing photos. I can’t really explain all of them, they’re just really cool. They do things like pop up, fade into each other, expand, and a bunch of other stuff that makes you say, ‘wow, that’s pretty cool.’
• Photos– You can easily put photos on any page or post just like you would in a Word document. When you upload a photo, it is automatically compressed for faster viewing, and converted to up to four other size formats. All of this happens with one click. This way you can put quickly post the picture in various sizes like: small/thumbnail, medium, large, or x-large without having to manually resize the photo. If you need to manually resize the photo you can do that too. Just click the corner of the photo and drag-n-resize it to the size you want it.
• Photo Captions – When you insert a photo you can add a caption to the photo right there on the list of options. The same photos can even have different captions on different pages.
• Photo Thumbnail – Thumbnails are automatically created and saved as a separate file when you upload a picture. If you need a thumbnail of a picture later on, it’s already there. You don’t need a separate photo program to create a thumbnail. Some of our designs allow you to post thumbnails of your pages or posts on the home page to add some color and interest to the home page.
• Batch Uploads – If you have a bunch of pictures you want to load, you can select multiple files on your computer and upload them all together. This saves you from having to do them one-by-one.

CONTENT

• RSS Feeds – If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, that doesn’t mean you can’t use them and take advantage of all they can do. Many sites are now set up with RSS feeds. This allows you to import the content from their site to yours automatically. Churches can use RSS feeds to import the content from a devotional website, denominational news service, pastor’s blog, twitter, and more. The options are endless. Once it’s set up, you don’t have to do anything else. It’s an easy way to keep the content on your site fresh without having to create all the content yourself.
• Survey/Poll – This has been a popular way to get people to interact with your website, get valuable feedback, or get a conversation started on the web.
• Weekly Bulletin- Publish your weekly printed bulletin in .pdf form on your website. While we would encourage you to post the information on your website a different way, this is still an option. What we mean is that it would better to post the announcements in your bulletin on your website in a way that is easier for people to find and read. It’s so easy to create a new page or post that you could cut and paste the bulletin content and list it under a heading like ‘Current News’ or ‘This Week @ Your Church Name’.
• Scheduled Release of Content– If you want to create several pages at one time, but don’t want to post them immediately, you can easily set the date and time you want that post or page to appear on your website. This is great for weekly devotional thoughts, bible verses, sermon series,
• Blogs– If you’re wondering what a blog is, that’s ok. Basically it’s your own personal news feed for anyone in the world to read. Pastors and church leaders have used this technology to share devotional thoughts, upcoming events, recognize volunteers, and build momentum by sharing what God is doing in your church. You can have multiple blogs on your site, each with multiple authors if desired. If you already have a blog on another site like Blogspot, Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, etc. we can link the blog feed in with your church website. Or if you want, ask us about setting up another domain or subdomain for your blog. This is basically creating a whole other website for your blog. It can have the same layout design as your church site or be completely different.
• Pastors & Staff – Post pictures, email, bio, blog links, direct contact forms, etc
• News– Keep people up to date with what’s going on, we’ll help you set up your system so that when you post something on your website it’s broadcast to your RSS feed, staff & member blogs, email list, and social media outlets like twitter and facebook. Enter the info one time and have it sent out to all these outlets instantly.
• Location – Some people call this the ‘When & Where’ or ‘Find Us’ page. In addition to the basic info you can put an interactive Google map of your location embedded on your website so that people can get personalized directions from wherever they are.
• Ministries – There is no limit to the number of pages and sub-pages you can have. Each ministry can have its own section within your website.
• Missionaries – If your missionaries send out updates on a blog post or any other RSS feed, you can automatically import it on to your missionary page. Or you can do it the old fashion way by cutting and pasting it on to your site. That will take you about two minutes to do, and is an option if you have that kind of time.
• Mission Statement – Let people know why you exist as a church, what is your calling, what is your mission, what has God called you to do. Whatever it is, let people know about it.
• About Us – A place for history, current vision, attendance, or any other good background info specific to your individual church. In short—why they would want to visit your church.
• Links – Want to make provide helpful links to other websites, go for it. You can put links in the footer, the sidebars, or on a separate pages. You can separate them out by category or lump them all in one list. They can be in a drop down menu or listed out.
• Calendar – Link your site in with Google’s calendar application or make your own calendar listing all your events.
  • Events List – This can be used in place of or in addition to your calendar. It provided a list of upcoming events that you want to promote. For instance you might want to set this up to show that you have a pinic coming up next weekend, but not show that the office is closed on Friday. Many of the event lists that are linked to calendar programs will force you to post whatever the next thing on the calendar is, even if it’s not something you’re wanting to promote. You can set it up either way on your site.
• Contact Us – Allow people to reach you easily. Contact forms allow people to send you an email without having to open up their email system to do so. It’s all integrated on your site. They just enter their name and whatever contact information you want them to and then type in there message to you. When they hit enter it sends you an email of their message.
  • Small Groups – Post small group meeting locations, topics, schedules, sign up forms, and post content for people to download. You can put video, audio, or files like .pdf or .doc for people to download small group resources. You can also easily create password protected pages so that a small group leader can share content that only their small group will have access to.
• F.A.Q. – Visitors frequently ask the same questions? Answer them once and for all on your Frequently Asked Questions page. Or better yet, include a FAQ page in each section: small groups, worship service, membership, etc.
• Document Library – You can post files in just about any format for people to download off your site. You might want to use this to post your by-laws, doctrinal statement, committee meeting minutes, building use forms, etc.) You can make them available to everyone or put them on a password protected page if it’s stuff you want to make available to only certain people.
• Prayer Requests – You can do this all kinds of ways. You can make prayer requests public for everyone on the site to see or have them sent to your staff, secretary, or prayer team via email. Or you can offer both options to people.

Creating & Editing Pages

• Creating Pages – It only takes one click to begin creating a new page. Everything you need to get that page published where you want it is all on the same menu. Assign the page’s layout, menu or sub-menu ID and location, and so on from one place.
• WYSIWYG – The What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor allows you to preview how your content will look once it’s published to your site.
• Spell Checker– This is a must have feature. Just like using Microsoft Word, the spell checker underlines in red all your misspelled words. Click on a misspelled work and a drop down menu list of correctly spelled options appears for easy correction.
• Import Text – You have the option of importing content with or without the formatting. There’s even a button for importing things from Microsoft Word so that you can keep all the formatting features you created in Word.
• Media – There are toolbar buttons on the editor making it easy to import pictures from your website picture gallery, computer, or a url.
• Auto Saving –  As you are working on a page, the content is automatically saved in case your session is interrupted.
• Revision History– Your website will automatically save the last 5-10 page revisions. That way if you decide you don’t like the way it looks after you’ve made changes you can reset the page. This can be a real life saver if someone else on your staff makes changes you want to undo. Just click on one of the previous page versions to restore it.
• Formatting– All the basic formatting features like: bold, italics, underline, strike-through, bullets, numbered list, justify, and heading sizes are done just like you would in a word processing program like Microsoft Word.

INTEGRATION

• Import Content from RSS Feeds – Acts 1:8 Websites are compatible with just about every RSS feed. (We haven’t found one that can’t be integrated yet.) This can be used to import content from a devotional website, denominational news service, pastor’s blog, your twitter account, and more. The options are endless. Once it’s set up, you don’t have to do anything else. It’s an easy way to keep the content on your site fresh without having to create all the content yourself.
• Export Content via RSS Feed– Just about all of your content can be sent out through an RSS feed. This can be used to send the content you post on your website to your social media like twitter and facebook. It can also be used to duplicate specific content to your blog. For instance, if your pastor has a blog and wants all the current events posted on your church website to show up on his blog as a new blog post, you can do that with the RSS feed.
• Email Newsletters – Mailing list members can receive daily, weekly, or even instant updates via email containing specific content from your website. If you are short staffed or short on time, this is awesome!!!
• Embed Content – from Flickr, Youtube, Google Maps, Twitter, and a ton of other similar sites. The possibilities seem to be endless. This makes it easier to have all your internet content interconnected. It can also keep you from having to separately update all your social media sites saving you time while helping you get your message out. 

OTHER FEATURES

• Unlimited User Accounts – You can give staff members and members their own user account so they can take ownership of their ministry page. You can set the permissions for each user to control what they have the ability to change on your website.
• Form builder– You can create sign up forms for volunteer opportunities, RSVP events, nursery workers, surveys, and more. The possibilities are endless. You can customize forms with textboxes, check boxes, dropdown lists, list boxes, required fields, and more.
• Comments – Every page of your website can have a comment section on it. It’s quick and easy to configure by checking a few boxes when you create a page. The comments section can be used to allow people to interact with the material on your page. We encourage church members to comment on their church site. For instance, picture a visitor to your site reading a post about an upcoming church picnic and then seeing below the post, a list of people who wrote in comments about how they are looking forward to it and how much fun it was last year. It allows people to get a glimpse of your church community before they ever even attend a service or event.
• Mailing Lists Subscriptions – Instead of having to create a newsletter email and updating the website, we can get you set up with a system that emails everyone once a day or once a week with your latest news and events.
• HTML – You don’t need to know HTML to manage your site, but if you do, you can switch over to the HTML editor view and go to town writing up all the code you want.
• Create Blind Pages- Create pages which aren’t linked by any of the menus on your site. You can give the direct url address of the page to people who need to know about the content on that page. This is great for pages that you don’t want everyone to see. We often set up a first time visitor survey like this. This allows you to send an email to first time visitors with a link to a special page on your site for them to fill out a survey. When they’re finished with the survey, they’re on your site. Also because the page isn’t linked to your site, it keeps other people from stumbling on a page that is only for a select group of people.
• AND MORE – There’s thousands of other stuff you can add, incorporate, or do with your website, but I’m tired of listing it all out. If there’s anything you want on your site that you don’t already see, just ask us, we can probably add it to your site. If we can’t do it, chances are it will cost you a ton of money to get that feature from another company.

COMPARING WEBSITE DESIGN COMPANIES

• How much is the monthly fee? Saving $250-$1,000 on the setup normally costs you in the long run. How long do you plan on having a website? One year, two years, or more likely for the rest of the foreseeable future. You will end up paying that higher monthly fee for years and years to come. This is one of the main reasons why companies offer free set up. They know you’ll be paying them a high monthly rate for a long time. (Acts 1:8 Websites has one of the lowest monthly fees in the industry and it includes everything so there’s no up-selling involved.)
• Is the website a cookie cutter template?This is the kind of website my church had a few years ago. They look ok when you first look at them, but then later on you realize that you can’t customize hardly anything on the site. You might get a choice of a few fonts and color schemes, but the layout can’t be tweaked. Often your logo can’t even be put on the header, but rather is just printed in plain text across the upper left of the header. These sites end up looking really bland and plain. One of the main purposes of the website is to give web visitors a feel for your church’s culture, values, personality, and style of ministry. They are visiting your website to learn about your church. Cookie cutter templates are the equivalent to calling a church office and getting a voice recording of service times, directions, and ministry events.(Acts 1:8 websites uses customized theme deisgns that include your logo & colors and allows you to personalize every aspect of the site.)
• What features do their other website packages have? Often the “free church website” is the bait in the bait-n-switch scheme. The free website offer is only intended to get you to visit their website. The free site has about 5 features and anything else that would make your site functionally useful costs more money. By the time you add all the upgrades you need, you will end up paying more per month than you wanted and be locked into that website company.  (Acts 1:8 Websites gives you all the premium features for one low price.)
• What features do I get? Another trap churches fall into is features, plugins, and upgrades. If you know little about building and maintaining a website, then you have no way of knowing what kind of website and features you will end up wanting to have. Further, over time you will end up having a need for things you can’t foresee right now. You might be getting a good deal when you start out with the “Bronze Package” or the “Starter Package”. But make sure you look over at the silver, gold, advanced, or whatever else they call it packages. It won’t be long before you end up needing what’s in those packages. Believe me, they know this. That’s why they split up their features the way they did. They knew you’d balk at paying $70 per month when you start. But then after a few months, when you’re already committed and invested in their company and have a design you really like, it’s then that you will realize that you need those silver and gold package features. At that point, you’ll be forced to pay the high prices you were hoping to avoid. (Acts 1:8 Websites gives you all the premium features for one low price.)
• Can I add the features later? I’ve talked to pastors who started out with a free or cheap site with the thought, “as we grow we’ll invest more in the site and add those features.” Trust me, when you do end up adding those features, you will end up paying more than if you had just found a better company to work with from the start. (We continually find new features and upgrades and make them all available for free.)
• Can I take my design with me if I want to switch companies?This is where they really get you. If you end up getting a design that you really like with a website company, but later on want to make a change, then you will find out that you loose your site design. Normally they hold the copyright to the design so you can’t even have someone else replicate it. Further, some companies make it hard for you to even get your content or domain name from them. What I see happen all the time is that a church will grow and later on end up having someone in the church who is a real techie offers free services or you see the need to switch to another provider that costs less per month or gives you more features, file space, and so on. You will then be forced to make a tough decision which will force you to leave the website that everyone  your church and community recognizes and the one that your staff knows how to use. You end up starting from ground zero having lost all the money you’ve invested in your website over the years. (Acts 1:8 Websites charges a one time fee of $300 to pack up your site’s contents, files, and design. After that, it’s yours to take wherever you want. That one price also gives your full ownership of all lisences required to contune to use the site.)
• Who owns my domain name?Your domain name will end up being printed on your business cards, street signs, invite cards, letterhead, and so on. Make sure that you own the domain name. It’s best to buy the domain name seperatelyfrom the web designer or hosting company. That way, if you ever have to part ways, they won’t have that leverage on you. Think of how much it would cost to reprint everything that is going to end up with your domain name on it three years down the road. Further, you can get most domain names for around $10-15 per year. And if a company charges you for having your domain name registered by another company, RUN. Redirecting a domain name takes about two minutes and any reputable company will walk you though the process as a part of their standard tech support. (Because we believe strongly that you should own your domain name, Acts 1:8 Websites will not purchase a domain name for you. We will walk you through the process and tell you where to get the best deal. If my 60 year old mother could do it, you can too.)
• How much file space do I get?This is what ultimately determines how many pictures, sermons, features, and articles you can put on your website. Keep in mind that the website itself and the features installed on it can be included in your file space allotment. There’s nothing worse than reaching the max file space on your website’s hosting plan. I remember having to delete pictures and sermons everytime I wanted to add a new one. It is really hard to remember what pictures are not being used any more on the website. Time and time again we’d end up with white holes on our site because we deleted the picture that is on the bottom corner of the youth ministry page. Think about how quickly you fill up file space on your computer’s harddrive. Then look at how many megabytes your website package allows you to have. Anything under a gigabyte of space (and I think that ought to be the low end) and you’re setting yourself up for problems down the road. Think about it this way, Google offers FREE email accounts and gives people around 7 gigabytes of file space. Let that sink in for a minute. They’re giving people 7 gigs for free. Now how good of a deal is it when you’re paying $10-75 per month for a website that only gives far less file space? If Google thinks you might need 7 gigs for email, how much will you need to host all the content you want to put on your website over the next one to ten plus years? (Acts 1:8 Websites doesn’t put a limit on the amount of file space you can have on your site.)
• How much bandwidth or downloads can I have and what happens if I go over my limit? This is a very important detail that most non-computer geeks don’t know much about so they over look this key figure in a website package. In simple terms, bandwidth or download limits will determin how much content people can access on your site per month. Every time somoene visits your site, they are downloading all the graphics and text from your website to their computer. Let’s say that all the content of your home page has 2mb’s of information. If your bandwidth or download limit is set at 1000mb’s, then once 500 people visit your site that month, you will either be charged extra money or your site will be shut down or made extremely slow. It all depends on what the fine print in your website contract says will happen if you reach your limit. Further, think about how big a sermon file is. Everytime someone listens to or downloads a sermon on your website or via a podcast, that counts against your total allotment.  Now consider the following two things: (1) you have no control over how many people visit your site, (2) you have no way of knowing how many people will visit your site next year or even next month. Bottom line, this is a very important detail that can’t be over looked. (Acts 1:8 doesn’t even put a limit on your bandwith/file downloads. We hope the whole world goes to your site and downloads every sermon you have on your site.)