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How
long does it take to get my website up and running?
As soon as you complete the Signup First Step, your template
will be viewable at the domain you chose within 48 hours.
It will have your organization's name on the Home Page.
Your Contact Us page, your Desk page, and your E-Mail Login Page
will work. The only e-mail account that will work,
until you send us your Checklist info, is office@yourministry.org which is accessible by using
"office" for the login and "eciffo" for the
password. (You will be able to change your password on your
e-mail login page.) The Contact Us page will send mail to
the office@yourministry.org address. You will receive an
e-mail from SentWeb at your new e-mail account giving you a
special SentWeb e-mail address that can be used to quickly correspond
with the department that oversees your particular web
account. Please refer to the section How
does the Missionary Journal, Pastor's, Principal's, Secretary's,
Director's, or President's Desk Page work? to
learn how to use this feature right away. Your
website will look this way until you send us your Checklist
information. Once we receive your Checklist information,
it can take up to 48 hours to be updated. At that point,
all pages should work including all e-mail accounts and
financial features. You should look at your site after the
Checklist information has been updated to proof it.
You should also refer to How
do Classrooms or More Than Sunday or Department Pages work?
if your website has that feature.
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How
does SentWeb do this so inexpensively?
Considering that most web design services can cost in the
thousands of dollars and then still have to pay a monthly
service fee, SentWeb may seem unbelievably
inexpensive! How do we do it? First, we are
doing it as a ministry and unto the Lord! Secondly,
our accounts are structured very similar, so that we can quickly
create a website and update it. We still offer enough
choices through our templates to allow some individualism.
Although we include some bells and whistles, we have focused our
attention on functional and practical features for ministry
websites learned from years of designing ministry
websites! .
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Why
does SentWeb cost more per month than other offers I have seen?
Most offers for websites are generally soliciting web hosting
which does not cover help with your website! These
advertisements may even offer 100 e-mail accounts, but they do
not tell you that account users cannot login to their e-mail
from your website (which happens to be the number one reason
your staff and supporters will visit your website!).
Actually, by the time you pay for your own web hosting, domain
registration, and web editing software, you will need volunteer
web help to stay under the cost of a SentWeb
package!
Some online businesses and Internet Providers
offer a free website. These usually only allow a very
small web site and do not come with your own domain name
(internet address). You may or may not get any
e-mail accounts (usually under 5 if any). You probably
cannot use financial features, web videos, or have any pages for
growth. Your visitors will also notice the level of
professionalism in using a free site (noticed by the address or
immoral advertisements)!
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What
if I already have a domain name registered? You
will have two choices: One choice is to point your
existing domain name to your new SentWeb site (which we can do
for you if you would provide your username and password for your
domain registrar OR you can request from us the domain name
server addresses for your SentWeb site and do it yourself).
Second choice is to get another domain address which is
included in your SentWeb package and use this to point to your
new SentWeb site and then later redirect your old domain address
to your SentWeb site as well, so both address will point to your
new site. This second choice is especially a good choice
if you already have an existing website that you want to be
available while your new SentWeb site is getting setup.
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How
do we send update information for our website?
Normally, you will be given a special SentWeb e-mail address
after signing up. Just put the name of your organization
or website address in the subject, then type or paste your
information in the e-mail with instructions of which page.
You can easily paste pictures into your e-mail with your SentWeb
e-mail program (or you can attach them if you are more familiar
with that). Click here
for an example of SentWeb e-mail pasting a picture. If you
do not mind waiting a couple extra days, you can mail documents
and pictures to us.
SentWeb
924
Bartlett Place
Windsor,
CA 95492
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How
do we send pictures to you? Normally, you
will be given a special SentWeb e-mail address after signing
up. Just put the name of your organization or website
address in the subject, then you may either paste your picture(s)
into an e-mail letter to us with your SentWeb e-mail or attach
them to an e-mail letter. Please include instructions as
to where you would like the picture (i.e. News Page, Home page,
etc.). If you do not mind waiting a couple extra
days, you can mail documents and pictures to us.
SentWeb
924
Bartlett Place
Windsor,
CA 95492
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Why
should we get two packages if we have a church with a school?
Yes, it costs more! But with two
separate sites, you get an extra 100 e-mail accounts, your
website does not look so busy on the side menu, you get much
more web storage for photos/videos, and your visitors can find
information quicker. A menu button can be placed on both
websites so they seem seamless to visitors. (i.e. School button
on church site and a Church button on the school site.)
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How
do Classrooms or More Than Sunday or Department Pages work?
These are text pages that can be added to by you or others
involved in your ministry. Essentially, each time you
submit information to a particular page, the information is
placed on the top of that page and older information is
below. Each entry also has the date posted with the
entry. Visitors can quickly view the most recent
information but can also scroll down to look at older
entries.
You or coworkers can click a hidden button that
takes you to a submission page that lets you type or paste your information
for a specific page. All you have to do is click
Submit, and it is added to the desired page. If
you would like to clear a particular page or have made a mistake
in your information, you can also fill out a form (on the same
page you add information) to request SentWeb to change
it. You will be sent an e-mail with extensive
information after you have signed up. This e-mail
will include the location of the hidden
button and how to train your staff to use this feature.
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How
does the Missionary Journal, Pastor's, Principal's, Secretary's,
Director's, or President's Desk Page work?
These are text pages that can be added to by you or others
involved in your ministry. Essentially, each time you
submit information to this page, the information is placed on
the top of that page and older information is below. Each
entry also has the date posted with the entry. Visitors
can quickly view the most recent information but can also scroll
down to look at older entries.
You can click a hidden button that
takes you to a submission page that lets you type or paste your information
for your desk page. All you have to do is click
Submit, and it is added to the top of your desk page. If
you would like to clear a particular page or have made a mistake
in your information, you can also fill out a form ( on the same
page you add information) to request SentWeb to change
it. You will be sent an e-mail with extensive
information after you have signed up. This e-mail
will include the location of the hidden
button and suggestions for this feature.
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Can
we add our own links on the E-mail login page?
Yes, just send the request in your monthly updating.
You may want to pursue this with websites that have a link to
your website. We have included several helpful links and
we have also included some links that are reciprocal links (they
will have a link to your website on their website) so that it
will help boost your site in the search engines.
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Can
I use my e-mail accounts with Outlook or Outlooks Express or
other Pop programs? Yes, you can use your
mail accounts as pop3 or webmail. For example, if you are using
Outlook or Outlook express, open your Outlook program, click
Tools, click Accounts, click on the Mail tab, click Add (Mail),
enter your Display Name, enter your full e-mail address, enter
mail.ministryname.org for Incoming (Pop), enter
mail.ministryname.org for Outgoing (SMTP), enter your account
name (full email address) and password, choose how you connect
to internet, and click Finish. Remember to Remove old
accounts when you are finished using them or your mail that you
write may show your old e-mail account as the return
address. Use the Contact Us page for instructions for
other Pop email programs.
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How
do we make a web video? SentWeb currently
needs to receive your video on either a VHS or VHS-C
tape. Generally, webvideos lose some quality,
especially since we make them to run on slower dial-up
connections. It is best to have a closer shot of
people talking or it is harder to see lips moving. It is
also easier to use a printed script that you can follow if
the camera is closer. Try to keep your script to the point
otherwise your video may seem long to viewers. You may
want to create a script and insert a small picture in the middle
of your page. Then cut the picture out with scissors and
place your paper over the lens of the camera. You may see
your eyes reading on your original tape, but the webvideo
distorts just enough to hide your eye movement.
Although we can lighten the video, it is good to have plenty of
light, but you do not need spotlights. Each time you
attempt to record, you may want to rewind your tape so that if
you get a satisfactory take, you will not have to copy it to
another tape OR you can just rewind your tape to the beginning
of your good recording when you send us the tape.
Please mark your tapes with your domain name (internet
address). Send it to: SentWeb, 924 Bartlett Place,
Windsor, CA 95492.
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How
much are extra web videos? Each package
includes one webvideo. Extra webvideos are $100
each. We also offer this to people who do not have a
website with us. We will give you an extra webvideo
for each referral of a SentWeb package. Let your friends
know about SentWeb!
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How
do signup pages work? You can use your
Signup page for people to signup online to various activities,
responsibilities, or requests. Whatever information
the visitor enters on this page will be e-mailed to the e-mail
address of your choice. Businesses can use this feature to
request more information, free samples, catalogs, or a recurring
service. Ministries can use this page for volunteer
signup, Bible class enrollment, camp/retreat signups, VBS
signup, trip signups, mens/womens activities, or many other
things. Visitors can order online for calendars,
cookbooks, lunch tickets, shirts, or other items with an online
pay feature. This feature can save a secretary hours and
hours of visiting time with people stopping in to take care of
something. You just use Contact Us page at
SentWeb.com to instruct us on what you want covered on the form
and what e-mail address you want the results sent to.
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How
do I add more e-mail accounts? Each website
receives 100 e-mail accounts. We start you out with an office@ministryname.org
or info@yourbusiness.com account which is used for your
Contact page. When you first signup with us, you will send
us a list of e-mail accounts that you wish to start
with. You may use the Contact Us page anytime at SentWeb.com
to add more accounts up to your 100 limit. Please
make sure you send us the exact username you want without any
spaces or punctuation in the username (usually all lowercase)
and make sure you include your organization's web address in the
contact form. If you would like
more than 100 e-mail accounts, we can add 150 more accounts for
another $35 per month (24 cents per account per
month).
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How
does the money we collect from our website get handled?
Your money collected from giving, tuition, or sales from your
website is instantly put in your PayPal account as soon as the
giver's funds are transferred from their card. You
are instantly sent an e-mail notifying you that money has been
received. You can use your PayPal login and password to
securely manage your money. You can use the Withdraw
feature to transfer any amount of money available to your
checking account. If you choose to get an ATM/Mastercard,
you can also use this card to spend your funds just like a
credit card. You can also use the ATM/Mastercard to
withdraw up to $400 from an ATM. PayPal has reporting
features that will allow you to view the History of your account
for over a year with various viewing options. You also
receive over 1% interest on the funds residing in your PayPal
account. Each deposit into your account from your
website will have the current percentage charge deducted from
the deposit. Currently, 2.9% plus a 30 cent
transaction charge are deducted from each transaction. If
you consistently receive more than a $1000 per month into your
PayPal account, you may qualify for a 2.2%
rate.
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Why
does it cost so much for people to use credit cards?
The cost of handling financial transactions from credit cards is
usually charged to the merchant or receiver of the
funds. Although there are many other bank
merchants that handle credit card services, PayPal is attractive
because there are no monthly charges, enrollment fees, or lease
costs. There are card services that only charge 1.5%
on sales, but they have monthly charges in addition to this that
add up to more than PayPal when only doing a small
volume. PayPal has over 45 million users now.
Currently, 2.9% plus a 30 cent transaction charge are deducted
from each transaction. If you consistently receive more
than a $1000 per month into your PayPal account, you may qualify
for a 2.2% rate. Schools may want to charge a
Tuition Management fee to help offset the cost of using this
structure. Some parents also benefit from air miles or
cash back from using their cards.
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Should
we use Tuition management with our school?
Yes! But! You should consider which method to
use. Tuition management is a real benefit to schools
because it uses a third party system to collect your
money. Relationships are often better when the school is
not directly billing and collecting from parents. Forgive
this next negative thought: sometimes parents will worry
more about a bill to someone else than from the
school. If you are going to consider Tuition
Management, you need to weigh out several factors.
Tuition Management systems have a cost to them and offer
different features. The cost can be worth it for
these reasons: It saves time. It reduces the
load on the secretary, administrator, or bookkeeper.
It can take care of late payments. It saves embarrassing
conversations. And sometimes, it reduces write-offs
because it stays on top of late payments.
Here is a comparison of a Tuition Management
company and using PayPal for Tuition Management: Smart
Tuition (smarttuition.com)
charge a yearly per family fee of $35. Schools will often
pass this cost onto the family. They also collect a late
fee from parents. They do not pursue collection other than
the late notice. They do not collect registration and book
fees. You will still need to contact the parents for
suspension or arrangements. Smart has an enrollment
form that must be filled out by new families.
Returning families usually do not have to complete a form.
Enrollment forms have to be collected by you and sent to Smart
in June or July. Smart gives the family either the
option of a payment book where parents mail their check to Smart
or the set up an automatic transfer from the family checking
account. Smart will send your funds to you several times a
month. They have good reporting. If you have
100 families, the yearly cost is $3500. PayPal
does not charge a yearly fee but deducts a percentage from the
money collected. Schools that use PayPal for tuition
usually qualify for the Merchant rate of 2.2% plus a 30 cent
transaction fee. Schools may want to assess a
Tuition Management fee from the parents to help offset some of
the cost. If you had 200 students charging $3000 per year
for tuition, you will be collecting $600000 per
year. This would cost $1380 per month which would be
a yearly cost of $13800. The major difference here
is that PayPal allows credit cards where Smart does
not. Parents can at least use their credit card when
their cash flow is tight which can help reduce missed or late
payments. PayPal will also keep trying the collection
until funds are available. Some
thoughts to consider: Maybe use Smart or a similar
system for your tuition management but also set up the PayPal
feature on your website for registration, book fees, donations,
and collecting tuition by credit cards for those who have fallen
behind with Smart. Always try to collect full-year
tuition payments in your school office to save fees.
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Does
SentWeb have access to our bank account(s)?
No! We may request temporary access to your PayPal account
to create features on your website but we remind you to change
your password afterward. We even send the instructions on
how to do it. Passwords should be changed regularly
on financial accounts anyway! Note: Never change your
financial information from an e-mail link sent to you!
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How
does SentWeb promote our website and how do we promote our
website? Each website is submitted to a 100
search engines every couple of months. Any more often is
usually counterproductive. We also use reciprocal
links with SentWeb which boosts you in the search engines.
The longer your website is up and the more it is used, the
higher you will go in the search engines.
You will want to use your website address on all
your publications, business cards, Yellow page ads, other
advertisements, church signs, letterhead, etc.
You should use the www. in front of your printed address (www.sentweb.com)
so people will know it is a website address. Normally, you
do not need to put the http:// in front of your address. For ministries, you may want to ask your students, parents, or
congregation some fun trivia questions that only your website
visitors would know. Encourage your contacts to
visit pages like the News page, Desk page, Classrooms or
Department pages where there is changing and current
information. Many times, people will go to a website
but feel it hasn't changed even though you have many
changes. It is best to concentrate your changes in just a
couple areas, so people can easily see new information without
it being spread out in older information. Look for
local websites such as Chamber of Commerce and other community
organizations and contact them to be added to their directory
page.
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Does
SentWeb offer anything for referrals?
Yes! Tell your friends to make sure to put your name in
the How Did You Here About Us question on their Signup
form. You will be e-mailed a choice of rewards!
Contact us for more information using the Contact Us page.
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Does
SentWeb use flash in their websites? We can
add a flash intro or other flash features to your website for an
additional cost, but we have not included features such as flash
in our standard packages because of the significant number of
dial-up internet connections still in use. This will
probably change in the next 12-24 months, but until then,
SentWeb is trying to make all their websites functional for ALL
visitors! We realize people love to use cool special
effects, however most of these effects slow down visitors from
getting to information that they came to your site for.
Please use our Contact Us page to inquire about flash or other
features.
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Can
we use the financial features if we are located in another
country? Yes! In these countries:
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Canada
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
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- Hong Kong
- Italy
- Japan
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Singapore
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- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
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Our
school presently has a web-site. Can you use our existing domain?
Yes, we can host it. We would need to change what is
called the nameserver addresses on your current domain name to
point to our server. Usually, we have to have whoever initially
registered your name to do this because they have the login and
password to access the changes features. We will send you
instructions on how to do this. Once this is done, you will
automatically have your 100 e-mail accounts.
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How
do I choose a good domain name?
A domain name is the unique address of YOUR website (www.yourname.org).
You will have to make two choices in deciding a domain
name: the first choice is the first part of the name (www.yourname)
and the second choice is the extension (.com, .org, ,net, .us, .ws,
.info). Originally, most business sites used
.com and most non-profits used .org. Today, we see many
ministries using .com because most people remember .com out of
habit. However, if the organization's preference for a
name has already been registered by someone else, the name can
still be registered with .net, .org, .us, .ws, or .info.
The major problem with this approach is the visitors to your
site might forget what extension you use and go to the .com out
of habit. Generally, a short name without hyphens (-) that
is easy to remember is going to be a good choice. Most 3
and 4-letter .com's have already been registered, but sometimes
the other extensions are available. So the possibility for
www.bgbs.us might be considered for Blue Grass Baptist
School. Many organizations will choose their full name for
their domain (www.bluegrassbaptistschool.com) even though it is
long because people will be sure to remember it every time and
it will help them to be found easier in the search engines.
We have found in marketing that it is better to have a longer
domain name that is easy to remember than a short one that might
be confusing. People will also be able to remember your
e-mail addresses. Here is a suggested process in
choosing your domain name:
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Have us look for your initials that people
are familiar with (www.bgbs.com) and we will immediately let
you know what is available including other extensions.
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Consider using (www.bgbsonline.com) as an
alternative so you have a better chance of getting a .com or
.org.
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Use your full organization name (www.bluegrassbaptistschool.com)
which may have a good possibility of being available.
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If you have a very common name (Grace
Christian Academy), you may want to consider
www.gcaonline.org or www.chicagogca.com or www.graceca.org
or www.gcaofchicago.com or
www.gracechristianacademyofchicago.com.
Special Note: We can register more than
one name for you that will take visitors to your site.
Your first domain name cost is included in your package.
Each additional name is $35 per year and will be redirected to
your website. You may only use e-mail addresses with your
main domain name. Contact us for details.
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Do
you provide spam filtering/e-mail virus protection?
Our servers check for viruses automatically but we
handle spam differently than most services. We recommend that
each e-mail user go to their e-mail options within their account
and set their account to deliver mail to the trash if the To:
box is not the account holders e-mail address. Generally, if you
receive an e-mail that was sent in groups, your e-mail address
is in the CC: or BCC: and not in the To: Anyway, the above
recommendation will eliminate most spam but it also eliminates
Forwards from friends and family where they have sent out info
to groups. You can choose to allow a particular address to send
you group mail though. Another feature our e-mail has is a Block
feature, so when you receive a message that you don't want
again, you can block it instead of taking the time to
unsubscribe from their list. Unfortunately, the spammers are
always trying to keep ahead of technology so we have found the
above method as successful or more successful than spam blocking
programs which spammers are always advancing to get around. In
our e-mail instructions, there is a section on how to not get on
spammer's list in the first place along with some other good
training.
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Who
is responsible for updating the content on the website?
Schools have a couple of areas that are maintained by
the school: Secretary's or Principal's Desk and the Classroom
Pages (these areas are very easy to update and are instant).
However, most pages are maintained by us. We are structured
somewhat like a support secretary in your ministry. We handle
the technology aspects and leave the documents and content up to
the administration/secretaries. We have found that most
ministries have someone that knows how to use e-mail and e-mail
attachments. We normally process your e-mails the same day.
Rather than having to learn complicated programming, schools can
focus on what they do best. SentWeb is unique in that we are
looking out for you instead of letting you figure it out.
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Do
you back up e-mail and websites and if so, how often?
The servers are backed up daily by a service that we
pay for. However, we backup and download your website/e-mail to
our computers on a monthly basis in case for some reason the
above service fails.
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What
kind of program files can we send to SentWeb? SentWeb
can normally use any type of file created from any program to
extract information for your website. You can send
SentWeb your already created documents by attaching them through
e-mail. We do recommend Microsoft Word (any
version), Word Perfect (any version), Microsoft Works
(any version), Word Pad (any version), Excel (any
version), and Microsoft Publisher (all except version
98). Programs not listed above may take us an extra
day to extract or convert for usage such as Print
Shop and Publisher 98. If
you would like to have printable documents available (i.e.
enrollment forms and newsletters), we recommend having web
visitors click a link to open the document in its original
form. This keeps the printed web version the same as if
you printed it in your office. We recommend
using a .doc (Word) format for visitors to
open. We can convert Word Perfect, Works, and Word
Pad files to .doc format. Some
organizations will offer their files in Acrobat format (.pdf)
as well. Visitors will need to have Acrobat Reader
installed on their computer to view .pdf files. We can
place a link to a free download of the Acrobat Reader program on
the same page. We recommend offering .doc files in
addition to .pdf, because there are many people who will be
intimidated with the task of installing Acrobat Reader. Mac
users can normally view both .doc and .pdf files. For
users of Microsoft Publisher, we can easily extract
information to put on your site. If we need to make a
Publisher document available for printing, we make each
Publisher page a picture (graphic) which will look exactly as
the original. Every line, box, signature line, and
paragraph will appear in the exact place of the original
document, but the printed page will be a fraction smaller than
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