New Update from ForMinistry - a Brand New Function for the Scheduling Tool

Remember the 90's... when everyone started the switch from organizers to digital hand-helds?

I must admit, I love gadgets. I love that we've moved from giant annual organizers, which required a separate briefcase to carry them, to gadgets that can fit your life's work in the palm of your hands.

Many of us, however, don't always use the tools at-hand to the fullest extent. Part of it may be laziness or an unwillingness to try something new; but many times we just don't know enough.

In our quest to bring you better tools to enhance your online ministry, ForMinistry has made a new function available to the scheduling tool. It's simple and easy, and will help to keep your website clean and organized!

Scheduling Content - Review

The scheduling function allows you to take an item on your website and 'hide' it from view until you decide for it to 'appear' automatically for public view. You’ll be able to see the item when you are in edit mode, but when you are logged out (or in preview mode) it will not be visible unless it is the appropriate date and time.

This is great for seasonal material such as New Year's resolutions, Easter services, and Thanksgiving celebrations. This way you do not have to be on the computer 30 seconds before New Year's Day to upload your new schedule. Just schedule it weeks ahead of time and let ForMinistry do the rest. (How do I schedule content?).

Each item that you want scheduled can be set so you have whole chunks of material come up at a time, or one item separately. You can also have similar items (such as banners with slightly different layouts or pictures) rotate one after the other.

New Update

Now with the power of the scheduling tool, you can choose to have items automatically removed from editing view when you are finished with them. This will help you keep your editor's view less cluttered, without taking the time to hand-remove scheduled the items.

All you have to do is click on the clock-icon to schedule the item, and set the date and time you want your item to appear on your site. If it's an item you want repeated on a daily basis, choose Daily Schedule, if it's an item you want up for a particular length of time (ie, a week), then choose Fixed Schedule.

Before you hit Apply Schedule, click the radio button next to 'Yes, Remove Automatically.'

Once you are ready, hit Apply Schedule. After your website refreshes, you will notice that there is a date and time scheduled shown at the top of your item. It will be in red if the item is yet not visible, and in regular black text if it is visible.

Repeat these steps for other items you wish to have automatically removed.

(Note: remember, this doesn't mean that this item is gone from your site entirely; it will still be in your content manager until you delete it from there).

Example

Many Church websites contain a section for weekly updates such as sermon notes, event schedules, and bulletin announcements. Some pages can get cluttered after awhile if you don't take the older items off regularly. Scheduling these items to be taken off automatically saves you the hassle of going back later to clean up your page.

Here's a great site from the First Baptist Church of Irvine/Tustin. If they wanted to add a running list of weekly prayer requests, they could keep a month's worth of prayer requests online, and the automatic removal function would ensure that the outdated items are removed from the page.

So whether it's your weekly bulletin, sermon notes, or articles and resources page, use the scheduling tool to make your ForMinistry website work harder (and better) for you!

Until next time...
Henry Kay, web_builder host

Contact me at support@forministry.com