It's important that we speak the same language so that when we're explaining something or you're asking for something, we all have a clear understanding. Don't worry. We don't speak in technical terms and we do not want you to either (even if you have a more in depth understanding of websites).

Here's the common/correct terms to plug into your internet vocabulary.

Domain Name - A domain name is what people type into their web browser in order to open a website. Your domain name would be something like www.yourchurch.org.

Graphic - A graphic is an image on a page of your website. The appearance of your website is due to multiple graphics being placed on your web pages.

Left Navigation - This is the vertical list of text on the left side of your website that your visitors click on to view various pages of your website. It's very much like a table of contents in a book.

Links - A link is a word or image on a website that you can click on. When you click on that link you will then be taken to a different page on the website (or another website). They are not called Buttons or Tabs.

Pages - Right now you are on a page called "Tips". How do you know that? It's written at the top of the page in several pages as a page title. This is the industry standard for all websites. Websites are very much like a book. More specifically very much like a book where each chapter is only 1 page long. So, let's say you're looking at the table of contents in your book and you see a page called Airplane Engines. You think to yourself that you'd like to learn more about Airplane Engines. So, you thumb through the book until you get to that page. Websites are the same way where you see the various links on the website that you can click on which will then take you to a page about that topic.

PDF - This is a document format that is the industry standard for sharing/viewing documents over the internet. Every computer should already have Adobe Reader installed. So, if a visitor to your website has Adobe Reader then they will be able to open your PDF documents. If you upload a document that's in Microsoft Word format (.doc), then only visitors with Microsoft Word on their computer will be able to view that document. That's why you need to convert all of your documents to PDF format before uploading them to your website so that visitors will not have problems viewing the document.

Web Address (URL) - Look at the top of your web browser where it shows you what page you are currently on. All of that is called your web address. Your also notice your Domain Name is part of your Web Address. So, a Web Address more specifically refers to the specific page you are on as you browse a website.

Here's a few tips to help you create a professional looking website.

• Create the website with your primary audience in mind. Visitors want to see a user friendly and professional website.
• A website is not a competition to see how much can be packed into it.  Less is more. So, as you’re thinking about pages and content ask yourself how many visitors will visit that page, will anybody read it and how much value they will get out of it.  Unnecessary pages and text can quickly give a website a cluttered and overwhelming feeling. (Plus waste your time).
• Don't put clipart on your website. They distract from the website's message and make it look cheesy.
• Before deciding to have a feature on your website, remember that you'll also have to maintain that feature. So, if it's a feature that visitors submit something for inclusion on the website you'll need to be responsive to review those requests. You'll need to balance making your website usable for your visitors and the amount of time you expect to spend managing the website.

Here are some key items to help explain who takes care of the various aspects of your website.

These items you (website administrator(s)) take care of:

1. Editing the content on your pages
2. Uploading and including documents and photos on your individual pages
3. Managing the features that are enabled on the website
4. Approving/reviewing new submissions from website visitors
5. Approving/Disapproving new User registrations
6. Changing User's access levels such as adding new administrators

These items we take care of: 

1. The design of the website such as graphics and layout
2. Email accounts & forwarding
3. Adding or removing pages
4. Passwording pages.
5. Adding or removing features
6. Changing the navigation links
7. Changing options that are not available in the Admin Panel

One of the (many) great things about our processes and our websites is that we do not expect you to know anything about websites in order to create a great looking website.

We also throw in some more advanced options for our clients who are more technically savvy but only if it would not overwhelm our clients who are less technically savvy (which is our primary audience). The result is both benefits and pains for both ends of our client spectrum. To give you a better understanding and so that we set the correct expectations here's an overview of what you might discover as you become more comfortable with your website and our services.

For those of you who are less technically savvy:

Benefits

• We've designed our websites primarily for you. There will be a handful of items you will need to learn and become comfortable with in order to get the most out of your website. These skills are what you will be building as you set up your website.
• We create a lot of automation and email notifications to help you maintain your website.
• We have a ton of topics in our knowledgebase which will both explain and show you how to complete common tasks through your website. These topics are written specifically for our clients who are less technically savvy.
• Each of our features operate using the same basic concepts. So, once you become familiar with one of our features, you'll be able to easily start using other features because we've created them all to work in a similar fashion.

Pains

• Tough love. Let's say you're having difficulty linking to a document. So, you ask your web designer for help. Yes, it would take us 2 seconds to link to that document for you, but we will not. Linking to a document is something you will need to do on an ongoing basis as you maintain your website so you must learn how to do it on your own. Your website will not be beneficial to anybody if you as the website administrator are not comfortable keeping it updated. We're confident that you'll learn how to do it because we will show you and it is easy once you see how.
• You will probably see some icons and settings on your screen that you will not understand how to use. And that's ok. Chances are if you don't know how to use something and there isn't something more you're wanting to do on your website, then there's no reason for you to explore those items (unless you feel like you're ready). Your website is as simple or complex as you choose to make it. Likewise, the more you make your website complex, the more time you'll spend maintaining your website.

For those of you who are more technically savvy:

Benefits

• You should be able to quickly familiarize yourself with our Admin Panel and go right to work setting up your website.
• Our tools create all web code for you without you having to do anything with html.

Pains

• We have limited what you are able to do on your website. You might notice you cannot change font colors, cannot create popup windows, can't insert certain types of code, can't upload certain document types and more. There are two factors that has caused this. First, we've had clients in the past that went overboard using certain features which ended up with a very unprofessional looking website. We're sure the website looked great to that person. But, these are not personal websites. We've taken it to be our responsibility to make sure our tools create professional looking websites so that all visitors have a positive impression. Second, there's a good chance you will not always be the website administrator. We receive new clients who are switching to our services because their previous website was created by a technically savvy person who got tired of dealing with the website and the website is too much of a monster for anybody else to maintain. So, their lesser of the evils is often to start over with a company who has established and user friendly processes to help them take care of their website. Even with our own clients we've seen the original administrator create a very complex and difficult to maintain website that then gets turned over to a new administrator who is not as technically savvy. The new administrator is quickly overwhelmed and has little choice other than starting mass deleting what you put so much effort into creating in order to simplify the website. The website is not in a contest for you to see how much you can pack into it or make it do.

We put a lot of effort into making our processes efficient for both you and us. The biggest source of inefficiency is communication. We've found ourselves spending 10 minutes on a single request due to either back and forth with clarifying questions or due to information overload where we study a request far too long trying to sort through what is actually being requested. What makes these situations worse is that both us and you spent 10 minutes each sorting through the details when in the end it only took us 30 seconds to accomplish or answer what was requested.

Here are some examples to help you think about how best to request help as efficiently as possible.

Share the Details:

For example, let's say you want a new page called Toys on your website. So, you submit a request saying, "I need a new page called Toys on my website". That's fine that you want a new page, but the new page isn't going to do you any good if visitors can't get to the new page. So, when requesting a new page we'll also need to know the specific location to insert the link to the new page so visitors can get to that page. It would be best to request a new page by saying, "I need a new page called Toys. Insert the link on the left navigation after About Us."

Be Decisive Up Front:

Let's say you submit a request such as, "Can I have a new page called Toys?". Our response would be, "Yes, you can have whatever pages you'd like". You're glad you can have that page. So, then you submit a new request with the required details to have the Toys page added. It would have saved a lot of time and effort, for both you and us, if the original request would have been decisive to have the new page added instead of asking if it was possible. If something cannot be set up how you requested we'll let you know. If we had received the request to add the page along with the required details in the original request we could have taken care of it quicker and more efficiently. Of course, if you're needing to ask if something can be done to help you make a decision by all means ask.

The Choice is Yours:

You'd like a new page added to your website. So, you ask, "I want a new page called either Toys or maybe Games. Call it whichever you think will work best". The problem is it makes no difference to us what your pages are called. We know nothing about the purpose of your pages and it's not a decision we can make. It's solely your own preference what pages you have and what each of your pages are named. So, we would have to respond back to you asking you to make a decision about the name of your page before we can add it to your website.

Omit the Fluff:

A request is submitted to us that says, "Our manager Sally got an email from Ben who visited our website and said that the local library's name was spelled wrong on our website. I went to the website to see what libraries we have on there I do see a page called Brody Library. I did a web search and I see in our town it's normally spelled Brodey Library but I did see a couple websites spelling it Brody. I think it would be best to go ahead and try the other spelling. Is that something you can change or do you know what is different between the two spellings?"

This request is information overload (nor decisive) and would require multiple read throughs to determine what is being asked plus a follow up from us for you to clarify your request. In this case we don't know anything about the proper spelling of the local library nor do we know what on the website they're referring to. In the end, the request would have been much clearer and efficiently asked by saying, "Change the spelling of the Brody Library page to Brodey Library." Now we can quickly determine that a page title is needing changed and the details of what the spelling needs to be.

Write Your Own Help Requests:

You're the website administrator and a member of the newsletter committee has a new email address. Currently for your website, you have an email account of newsletter@example.com which forwards to 4 other people and this person is one of those people. So, that person emails you saying, "My email address changed, can you have it changed on our website?" You then forward that email to us. The problem is that we don't know what is needing changed because we don't know where this person's email address is needing changed plus we don't know what the old email address is that's being replaced. So, we would need a request from you that says, "On our newsletter@example.com forwarding, change the email address bob@example.com to bobby@example.com". Ah, now we know exactly where to go and exactly what email address to change.

Only the Present Matters:

While we would love to be able to keep track mentally what each of our clients have requested in the past or what they have going on with their websites, we just can't. That's why we need every request to provide all details as to what's being requested. So, if a request is referencing something that was asked about before or something that was changed, we're not able to understand or reference those items. Trying to do so just causes confusion and doesn't accomplish any further clarity. Instead, make sure requests completely document the question or what needs to be done and only what needs to be done. That way we can help take care of your request without responding back to you asking you to further explain because we didn't have all of the details.

The majority of your time that is spent administering your website will be spent using the Content Editor which is where you control the Content on your Content Pages through Content Points. Ok, that sentence was not a contest to see how many times we can say "content". So, let's break down what we're talking about.

• Content - When we refer to content we're talking about the middle or "meat" area on the pages of your website where you enter text, link to documents, add photos etc. So, what visitors read/see on each page of a website is called content.
• Content Pages - There are two different types of pages you'll find on your website. Some are Content Pages and others are Functionality Pages. Classifieds would be a good example of a Functionality Page. On the Classifieds page you do not have control over the layout of the page and you have limited control over the content of the page. What visitors see on the Classifieds page is controlled by how our classifieds functionality works and what visitors have submitted for items they have for sale. So, on a Functionality Page the functionality has full control how your Content is displayed (not you). A Content Page is a page that starts out blank and you enter and organize all content however you wish it to appear on the page. So, you have full control over the content and layout of a Content Page.
• Content Editor - The Content Editor is what we call our functionality that allows you to enter your content onto your pages. You'll find the Content Editor by going to Admin Panel > Content Editor. You'll see it works a lot like programs such as Microsoft Word and Email. You have the icons at the top that you use to create links, format your text, center text, add a photo etc. So, it doesn't require any technical knowledge to use it.
• Content Point - A Content Point is what ties all of this together. Specifically, each Content Point has a name which you will see listed in the Content Editor. You'll choose which Content Point you would like to edit based on what area on your website you would like to edit. For example, if you wanted to edit the content on your About Us page, you would choose the About Us Content Point in the Content Editor. So, for each Content Page on your website you will have a corresponding Content Point with the same name which is how you know which page you are editing.

Now that you have a better understanding of these terms, reread the first sentence above and see if it makes more sense to you.