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Better Mobile Sites With Weever Apps

February 27, 2012 in Apps & Plugins, Blog with 0 Comments

Internet browsing from mobile devices such as phones and tablets has been rising at an exponential rate. Fortunately WordPress has a number of solutions to help your website be mobile friendly including one I wrote about before.

There are even better solutions out there now and one is from Weever Apps. Weever Apps allows you to create a mobile version of your WordPress website along with a ton of included features that come with the free version. There’s a Pro version with geotagging, forms, custom subdomains that allows for more page views and the removal of their branding. They also have a custom solution for larger needs. 

Check Out Weever Apps

WordPress for Android and iPhone/iPad

January 10, 2012 in Apps & Plugins, Blog with 0 Comments

WordPress for Android and iPhone/iPad

As you may or may not already know, WordPress has apps for Android and iPhone/iPad. I love being able to use the apps to manage comments and with the recent updates you can do even more. But, I’m not one to type long chunks of text using my phone so I probably won’t use it to write posts unless I’m in a situation where I have no other option. 

Do you use the app on your iOS/Android device?

New Sermon Manager Plugin for WordPress

October 6, 2011 in Announcements, Apps & Plugins, Blog with 1 Comment

WPforChurch has released a new Sermon Manager plugin for your WordPress Church Website. It is designed to help churches easily publish sermons online. You can add speakers, sermon series, Bible references etc. Sermons can have audio files, as well as pdf, doc, ppt, etc adding to them. Video embeds from sites like Vimeo are also possible.

If you need to register for the support forums, use the invite code “sermons”. 

Check out Sermon Manager

Tweet and Get It Plugin – Twitter Followers In Exchange for Download

September 8, 2011 in Apps & Plugins, Blog with 0 Comments

Maybe you want to get word out about something your church or ministry is doing and Twitter is one way you want to spread the word. You can use the Tweet and Get It Plugin to have users tweet about something you want in exchange for some type of file they can download. Maybe it’s a song, an e-book, or the pastor’s home address or something else people would find value in. It can be a great way to spread the word and build your Twitter following. 

Tweet and Get It

Check Out Tweet and Get It

Page Peels

September 6, 2011 in Apps & Plugins, Blog with 0 Comments

One of the best bloggers and leaders around, Michael Hyatt, utilizes a page peel feature on his blog. At the top right you can see the Click Here image which reveals more info as you mouseover it. It’s essentially an add, but like the Footer Slider, it can be used on your church website to promote something specific. Maybe it’s a big event you do once a year or another way of subscribing to an email newsletter.

I’ve installed and used the same one Michael is using – Page Peel. It’s Flash based. You can get jQuery Page Peel if you prefer avoiding Flash. Here’s a tip, when designing the big image make sure you account for how much of it isn’t seen even when it peels back.

What else do you use to promote things in a way that stands out?

Use Footer Slider to Get Email Addresses or for Promotion

August 31, 2011 in Apps & Plugins, Blog, Tips & Tricks with 0 Comments

A footer slider (also known by other names) is just a pop up footer that allows users to see an ad or possibly subscribe to an email newsletter. Nobody likes ads, but in a ministry context you could use one to promote an event or invite people to subscribe to an email newsletter for the church or even the church blog (through Feedburner Email Subscriptions). You can see one in action on the Church Leader Insights website, which allows users to subscribe to their newsletter.

I recently had a client want one on their site for the same purpose and thought you might want to know what I used. I could not find a great plugin that made a footer slider and allowed for customization. I ended up using the AWeber Footer SlideUp plugin. AWeber is email marketing software but I simply edited the main plugin file (awfs.php) to put my own form information in there and I edited the included CSS file (style.css) to make it match the look of the site. It worked out very well.

Anyone do something similar a different way?

Contact Forms for Your Church or Ministry Website

August 9, 2011 in Apps & Plugins, Blog with 2 Comments

Most church websites need to have some type of contact form on them. Contact forms allow you to give people a way to contact you without listing email addresses on the website. If you do put email addresses on your site, you’ll want to protect them. Even if you do, you may want contact forms on your site as well. Here are some options that are out there.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS

Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress. It’s extremely customizable but it is not easy to use for anyone who doesn’t have HTML experience. I try to avoid using it for church websites I design because of how complex it is unless the client knows HTML or has used it before and prefers it.

Custom Contact Forms is another plugin that is far more user friendly than Contact Form 7. It is very customizable as well, and the more extensible something is the more complex it becomes to use. Custom Contact Forms has a pretty good balance though and most users should be able to create and modify a form to add to the site. In designing for a client, I would set the CSS for them which simplifies things even more.

Gravity Forms is a premium WordPress plugin you can buy if you want something that has the best of everything mentioned above along with a ton of extra features. Gravity Forms integrates with a number of other web applications such as PayPal, MailChimp and others. Add-on plugins for Gravity Forms are also available to help it integrate with even more applications.

3RD PARTY OPTIONS

Google Forms are a great option for putting forms on your website. It’s included in the Google Docs suite. When you create a form Google creates a spreadsheet to store the entries. When people fill out the form you can choose to be notified by email of a new entry. You can integrate the form into your WordPress site easily using the Google Forms Shortcode plugin. Sometimes you’ll want to embed the code yourself so you can lose the standard formatting.

WuFoo is another great 3rd party premium forms option. Personally, I like the way WuFoo forms look the most and they provide the best usability in creating forms and managing entries. WuFoo integrates with a ton of other web applications I love to use including Twitter, MailChimp, Highrise, and others. It integrates with WordPress through the WuPhooey plugin.

Both Google Forms and WuF0o are great options for forms that are designed for more than just contact. I’ll write about that in the next post.

What do you use for contact forms on your church website?

Use Placeholder Theme While Your Church or Ministry Website is in Development

July 12, 2011 in Apps & Plugins, Blog, Tips & Tricks with 0 Comments

If you are in the process of designing, or re-designing your church or ministry website you can use a placeholder theme until it is ready. This is especially helpful if you can’t have an old site running while the new one is in development. It’s also helpful if you’re launching a new site and want to build anticipation up to the new site going live.

WooThemes has a Placeholder Theme that is free that is great for that purpose. Couple that with the ability to use different themes on different pages and you can work on the new site while everyone else only sees the placeholder theme on the home page.

Placeholder Theme from WooThemes

Have you used a placeholder theme before?

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