Hints and Tips - Detaching Pages

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Putting Confidential Resources On Your Web Site

Providing online resources can be a wonderful use for your Web site. There are all kinds of resources you can make available on a Web site such as calendar information, downloadable flyers, newsletters, permission forms, Bible studies, sermons, etc... However, there may be times that you want to put resources online that you don't want just any old visitor to your Web site having access to. Examples of this might be a prayer request list that should only be seen by a certain group, or meeting minutes from the trustees or the finance committee, or top secret plans of the Pastor's new beach condo/parsonage. Having such resources available online could be very helpful, but how do you keep others from having access to them? One quick and easy way is by detaching your pages, outlined below. The second involves using WebMedley's Password Protection add-on. Click here for more details.

One great use of this technique is to put meeting information on line so all members of a meeting can have the information before the meeting starts. This way they can come to the meeting more prepared to make educated decisions and hopefully, make the meeting a little shorter (which is always a good thing). In this scenario, we are wanting to put the meeting minutes for the Finance Committee online. We would also like to post the budget proposal for the coming fiscal year and the agenda for next month's meeting. However, since this information is sensitive, we don't want anyone who comes to the Web site to see it - only the members of the finance committee. Here's what you do:

Step 1: Create the Page

Click this button to create a new page for your Web site.

The first thing to do is to create the page you want to put these resources on. You do that by simply going to any page in your WebMedley Management Console and clicking the 'Create New Page' button. When your new page is created, you will want to rename it since the default title is 'Your Title Here". In this scenario, a logical choice for a title might be 'Finance Committee Resources'. After renaming the title, click the

advanced button and in the field titled "Web Page File Name", rename the page something appropriate. In this example, we have chosen to name the page's file name "financepage.html. (The Web page file name is how you will be able to access the page later on - so you may not want to name it something as obvious as we did in this example. The file name can be anything as long as it is all one word, has no punctuation, and ends with .html.) After doing these two things, click 'Save This Page'.

Step 2: Detach the Page

Now that you have created your page and renamed the title and file name, you will want to detach it. Detaching a page in WebMedley is very simple. First click on the 'Advanced' Button and then click on the pull down menu in the 'Document Parent' field. At the top of the list (you may need to scroll up in the menu to see it) is the option <Detach From Hierarchy>. After choosing the <Detach From Hierarchy> option, click 'Save This Page'.

By detaching a page from your Web site, you remove it from the automated navigation that is generated in the WebMedley templates. What this means is that no one can access the page without knowing the exact address for the page and typing it into their browser address field. (A page address for a WebMedley site will have two elements: The website's domain name [i.e. www.your church.org] and the Web page file name.)

So, if we used the file name from the previous step and our church's domain name was "www.yourchurch.org" in order to visit this detached page on our Web site, they would have to type in: www.yourchurch.org/financepage.html. If you didn't know this exact address, the chances of you stumbling across this page by accident are very slim. However, if you knew the address (as the members of your committee would) you could visit it whenever you wanted to in order to get the resources you needed.

Step 3: Put Your Resources on the Page

Now that you have created the page and detached it, all that is left to do is to put your resources on it. Any documents you want visitors to this page to have access to would first go in one of your media libraries. You may want to convert them into .pdf format first if they are stored in a word processor file. To do this, you would follow the instructions found on the Newsletter Tips Page.

After uploading the resources into a media library, you would insert them on your detached page by choosing the page out of your Management Console navigation and clicking on the 'Edit this Page' button. Once on the editing screen, use the Insert Media button in your toolbar to insert the files. Details on how this can be done are also found on the Newsletter Tips Page.

Once you have finished this process to your satisfaction and saved your page using the 'Save' button in the toolbar, close the editing window, click on the "Home" link in the upper right corner of your Management Console window and then click the 'Publish' button.

After this, all that is left to do in this scenario is to tell the members of the Finance Committee what address to go to to get their resources for the upcoming meeting.

Additional Security: Password Protection

If you feel that you need a deeper level of security for your Web pages with confidential resources, WebMedley does have a "password protection" add-on that currently runs only $5 a month. Once installed, this allows you in your advanced features to set any of your pages (detached or otherwise) as a password protected page that no one can access without first providing a username and password.

Call 1-800-434-8607 if you wish to learn more about adding the password protection feature to your webmedley account.