Groups

Groups are a means for all the different facets of your church life to have their own expression - their own part of the web site.  All of the content, membership and security options are implemented through the group structure - to empower users and enable growth.

Group Home Page articles

Before launching the site, it is important to write some articles that provide context to each of the groups. Most groups will benefit from having a short introductory article describing the ministry/activity, which appears when you first visit the group.  This the group home page article.

For example the Children's Work group home page could describe the vision and work in general terms and include links to pages for different age groups. Writing the home page for a group is a task that should be delegated to group leaders throughout the church - it gives them an opportunity to get to grips with the document editor and encourages delegation and empowerment from the very start.

To make a homepage article, write and publish the document in the normal way.  Then from the list of published documents in that group, click the  home icon that appears by the article.  This will make that article appear when a visitor uses the menu system to navigate to that group.

Groups need articles to appear in the menu system

A group without any articles will not appear on the user web site. This reduces the number of dead ends when visitors explore, as it may be that groups are only used for administrative purposes and will never contain content.  So for a particular group to feature on the site - you need to make sure that they have written an article or two!

Group Events, Rotas and other content

Training and encouragement should be given to those responsible for the group, so that they are able to add content (such as rotas and events) into their area. Many leaders may be expecting someone else to take care of the web site, but making the leaders responsible for their own area encourages ownership and effective use.

Rotas are a good feature for leaders - as they save time and effort in compiling lists of helpers.  Make group leaders aware of the web site functionality - that rotas can be emailed out automatically, printable versions area available for those that don't have internet access and that email reminders will be sent from the web site (unless specified otherwise).

For extra assistance with setting up Rotas refer to the Web Office help system or read our Rota Quickguide.