Work is underway to redesign the A Church Near You (ACNY) website. It is due to be launched in early November.
Before then, the team at Church House need some help from parishes to ensure their records are up to date.
The team are asking that all those who have not logged into their existing ACNY account in the last year to do so in the coming weeks.
This is also a good time to check your church's details and service times are accurate.
Any account that has not been logged into in the last 12 months by October 2017 will not be transferred to the new site.
If you were a church editor but are no longer, please ask your successor:
1. To go to the church page and click the 'update this church' link on the right
2. Register for an account
3. Click the 'request transfer' button.
A Church Near You wouldn’t work without the dedication of editors updating their church’s profile. So thank you for all you editors do.
That work really pays off.
Last year, the site received more than 12 million page views - that means more people than ever are looking for churches in their local area – and they're finding you.
Some churches like St Martin’s, Ruislip, received 15,000 hits last year and All Saints, Reading received nearly 8,000 hits. That’s thousands of people reading about your service times, facilities and contact information.
The aims for the redesign are simple:
- to make it easier for you to update details
- easier for users to find the church they’re looking for – along with all the activities and services offered
- Churches will be able to add extra information to events and services, such as a location other than the church, times, accessibility and contact details. This will enable churches to showcase their one-off services out in the community or parish away days outside the church building.
- Space to include information about the facilities the church has, from a post office to foodbank or Alpha.
- Churches will be able to see the number of page views their profile gets each week, month and year thanks to a new analytics feature built into the logged in view.
- Users will not only be able to search for their nearest church - and now Church of England school - but able filter the search to show them results that include the features and facilities they're looking for, such as accessibility, car parking or service type.
- In phase two, churches will be able to turn their simple page into a full church website - even having the option of using a unique URL, or the URL of their current website. From the launch in November, profiles will already begin to look far more like a website, with editors able to add pages, images and customise the tiles on their profile.
- It will also be possible for churches to have up to five editors. This will mean it's even easier for churches to stay up to date.
If you’re looking ahead to Christmas, there's good news there too. The site will sit at the heart of the national Christmas campaign under this year's theme of #GodWithUs
Any services added before October will be transferred to the new site, so don’t wait – add yours today.
Any difficulties updating your church webpages - contact the A Church Near You helpdesk.
Or contact local administrator Chris Freeman.