Frequently Asked Questions How do I start and design my website? Simple Solutions Based Around the Ease and Flexibility You Want Free trial - Build from Scratch Start with a blank canvas and create a church web template that is all your own. Pick colors, layout, banner, logo, menu style, footer style and backgrounds – click HERE to get started Free Trial – Gallery Sites Gallery sites include a professionally designed template and content for the home page that helps you get started faster – click HERE and click on one of the 10 Gallery Site designs Pre-Designed Layouts - $49.95 one time setup Professionally designed church web templates and home page content customized with your logo, contact information and home page content – click HERE to find out more or check out our SPECIAL OFFER HERE All of our solutions allow unlimited pages, online Content Management System (CMS), and design tools to customize your church web template design at any time. How do I add content to my website? Cloud-based 24/7 Solution for Keeping Your Church Site Relevant and Up-to-Date What do I need? Your PC, Tablet or MAC and your Internet connection and Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox browser. You interact with your site directly over the Internet using our cloud-based Content Management System (CMS) so there is no costly web design software to buy. What can I do with the CMS? The CMS gives you complete flexibility – add unlimited pages, add and edit page content, change the navigation menu, change the design. How do I add pages? When editing your site you click the add page function and pick a pre-configured page (Photo Gallery, Member Directory, Calendar, Media Library, etc.) or a blank page. You give the page a name and then a page location. The page is automatically added to the menu buttons on the site. How do I add content to pages? Our editing system is straight forward, you edit a page, add a content component, add content to the component and then arrange the components on the page. There are about 75 different component types ranging from text, images, image galleries, audio or video files, calendar, etc. Can I have different editors for different pages? Yes, with Administrative Access you can assign pages to specific users as will as give them rights to upload to the site and make church web template design changes. How do I change the design? Simply put you can opt for a pre-designed church web template or design a church web template that is completely your own. The CMS allows you to address the layout, site header, site and page background, colors, menu and footer style, and much more. Before changing your design use the Design Manager (from the main design page) to save your current design. Is there room to grow with ChurchSquare? Yes, you can start off simply and economically and grow as your needs grow. You can add eCommerce or sub-sites for different ministries in your church. As you grow you can upgrade to larger plans with great features like the Member Directory and the Media Library. How will people find my site? A complete set of SEO tools to optimize your church site for the web. Can I register my Domain Name through ChurchSquare? Yes, you can register your domain name with us or leave it with your present registrar and point it to us. Domain based email helps publicize my website address. Do you offer it? Yes, all ChurchSquare plans come with email accounts that you can setup using your domain name. How do I know how to build my site to be search engine friendly? There is a complete guide on how to optimize your site for search engines – you will see the Marketing/SEO link on the top right of your ADMIN page. Do you have a search engine submission tool? Yes, after you optimize your church site you can submit it through your SEO tools to search engines. Of course Google does not allow automated submission so you should submit it manually to them. Is your site Google Friendly? Yes, our church web template HTML is compliant and we offer the tools you need for Google like a site map and being able to add verification code to the header. Do you offer web site statistics? Yes, we offer basic statistics with all of our church web templates that will satisfy most needs but if you need more comprehensive statistics we offer Rapid InSite Statistics that provide a full complement of analytic statistics. Do you offer SEO services? We can offer you some basic optimization on a per hour basis or refer you to one of our preferred suppliers. How do I expand my reach? Leveraging Social Media and Mobile for Your Church Web Template How does ChurchSquare support Social Media? There is a category of Social Media content components available to put on your Church site. These include links to your social media pages, sharing from your site to visitor’s social media and feeds from media sites to your site, such as Twitter feeds. You can also add links for FaceBook, Twitter and Pinterest to your Quicklinks Bar that appears at the top of every page. Can you create a mobile site with ChurchSquare? Yes, our church website templates have responsive mobile resizing. When we detect a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet, the site automatically resizes to fit that device. When you are editing your site you can toggle between desktop and mobile views. Do you offer landing pages for promotion tracking? Yes, if you create a mailing or web-based promotion to attract visitors to your site you can add a tracking component to your landing page and add a tracking code to visitors on your church web template. This helps you understand the effectiveness of your promotions.