WebMedley Hints and Tips #1
(Originally sent Friday, March 7th, 2003)
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Hello,

Matt Crandall here, Web Ministry Support Coordinator for WebMedley. I may have spoken with you directly on the phone or via email when you've had questions about how to better use WebMedley or improve your online ministry. However, with hundreds of churches currently using WebMedley, it is impossible for me to spend the kind of time I'd like to with all of you in trying to help your online ministry grow and thrive. That's why I am trying something new...

This is the first edition of a weekly Internet Ministry Hints and Tips email.   In each email, I will address a commonly asked question and provide you with a helpful idea, hint, or trick that you can use right away to improve the quality and effectiveness of your church's website.

Since this is our first email, you get two trips for the price of one. (Mainly because we have a new feature in WebMedley that I am so excited about that I had to share in addition to the trip I already had planned.) I hope you find these Hints and Tips to be helpful.  However, if for some reason you would prefer not to receive them, please send me an email at mcrandall@faithandvalues.com asking to be removed from the mailing list.

NEW FEATURE! - RE-ORDERING YOUR PAGES -

WebMedley has an exciting and much anticipated new feature. It is the ability to re-arrange the order of your pages in the navigation for your site. This can be found in the 'Advanced' options for your page. For a walkthrough of how to use this exciting new tool, visit this page: http://support.webmedley1.com/pageorder.html.

Hints and Tips - How to Create an Anchor

Anchors are similar to links on a web page, however they do a little bit more.  When you click on an anchored link - it will not only take you to a certain web page, it will take you to a certain point on that web page. Anchors can be very helpful if you have a long page and people just want to be able to go to a specific part of it without having to search through the whole page themselves.  They can also be useful to send people to very specific information or locations on other pages.

Webmedley provides you with an easy way to create these helpful 'bookmarks' on your pages and by visiting this page, you can learn how: http://support.webmedley1.com/anchortip.html

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION OF THE WEEK:

Question: How do I format pictures or documents to make them web-friendly?

Answer:

• Before placing your picture in a media Library, re-size your pictures in a photo editor program. (If you don't have any graphic conversion/editing software I recommend irfanview.  You can get a free download at http://www.irfanview.com.)
• I recommend your pictures be no larger than 200x300 pixels in width or height and be sure they are already at the size you want them to appear on your web page when you load them into your media libraries.
• Set the resolution of the picture to 72 DPI (dots per inch).  The human eye can't tell the difference at this level and it will make you pictures radically smaller than the same image at a higher resolution.  This will make them load quickly on your site, take up less space and be easier to manage.
• Make sure all graphics are either .jpg or .gif files!
• For newsletters you want to put as downloads on your site, I recommend saving them as .pdf files.  If you do not have the software to convert documents into pdf format - you can get a free converter at www.pdf995.com