Here you will get an introduction to the concept behind the ChurchTools Website and an overview of your admin section, which you will use to manage and design your website.
How does ChurchTools Website work? #
Before we take a closer look at the individual sections of the menu and before you dive into editing your website it is important for you to understand how ChurchTools Website works.
First of all, creating and publishing a piece of content (e.g. a page, a post, a group, etc.) only means that this content exists and can be accessed under its specific link. However, it does not necessarily mean that the created or imported content will be displayed to your website visitors.
In order for content to be visible or findable through navigation on the website, you must link it, i.e. make it visible. You do this by inserting the content as an element on a page, in a sidebar or in the navigation, for example.
To customize your ChurchTools Website to your congregation, we offer you a website builder with which you can easily build and design your website even without extensive knowledge.
You can find everything you need to do this in the admin section of your website.
Admin section #
At the top you will find the navigation bar of your admin section:
1. Show or hide menu #
Here you can activate or deactivate the menu
2. ChurchTools logo #
A click on the ChurchTools logo always takes you immediately to the Home of your admin section.
3. Search #
The search works in a similar way to the quick search in ChurchTools. You can search for existing content such as pages, posts, events, etc. here. If you have saved favorites (see point 4), these will be displayed when you click on the search bar so that you can quickly navigate to pages that you visit often.
4. Save as favorite #
By clicking on the pin symbol, you can save the page you are currently on in the admin section as a favorite or set it as your Home page. The Home page is the page that is displayed first when you log in to the admin section. The overview is set as the Home page by default. You can also specify these settings via the default settings.
5. Help #
Behind the ?-icon you will find the links to the ChurchTools Academy, the ChurchTools Forum, you can give feedback on the ChurchTools Website, request missing external roles and look up keyboard shortcuts.
6. View website #
Use the screen icon to the left to open your ChurchTools Website as your visitors see it. This view will open in a new tab.
7. Profile #
Click on your profile picture to navigate to your profile and log out.
You can also set your preferred language for your admin section under preferences, determine the Home page that is displayed to you after login to the admin section and add, duplicate and delete favorites.
Menu #
On the left-hand side of your admin section you will find the menu, which you can use to quickly navigate to where you want to go.
Overview #
Die Übersicht zeigt dir kurze Wege zu vielen Funktionen deiner Website und eine kurze Zusammenfassung der Verbesserungen und sonstigen Änderungen der aktuellen Version.
Contents #
Pages
A page either uses various elements to display different other content such as posts, events, people, groups, images, etc. or it simply contains text.
Under Pages, you will find a clear list of all the pages that exist on your website and you can see which pages are subordinate to others. You can also create new pages from here. We explain the different types of pages here.
Posts
Posts can be imported from ChurchTools and displayed on overview pages. You use tags to make your selection and set filter options for visitors to your website. Posts on your ChurchTools Website work in a similar way to posts on a social network: you can use them to automatically display news from your church on your website.
Under Posts you will find all posts imported from ChurchTools or created by you directly on the website. Only posts imported from ChurchTools are updated automatically.
Appointments, Persons and Groups
Appointments, people and groups can also be imported from ChurchTools and are used to display important information that already exists in ChurchTools Website on the website. If something changes in ChurchTools, it is automatically updated on your website.
Imported appointments are automatically assigned tags that correspond to the calendar name under which they are created in ChurchTools. If a calendar is assigned to a campus in ChurchTools, this is also transferred to the calendar name on the website. Active sign up groups are automatically displayed in the appointment.
Persons and groups are also automatically provided with tags transferred from ChurchTools, which you can use for selection and filters. If a registration is active, visitors to your website can sign up directly to the group.
Under Appointments, people and groups, you will find all the data imported from ChurchTools or content you have created directly on the website. Only the content imported from ChurchTools is updated automatically.
Sidebar
The sidebar is a column that is displayed to the right of the actual page content. You can group different elements in a sidebar and save them as groupings. You can save one of these groupings as the default for your website. The sidebars are displayed on standard pages. We explain more in the article How to create and edit sidebar elements?
Files
All files that have been uploaded to your website are displayed here. For a better overview, you can organize them in folders. You can either upload new files here and then select them for display in elements or you can upload them directly when creating content. They will then also be displayed here. You can find more information on this in the article Manage files.
Navigation #
Header and footer
Here you configure which pages should be displayed in the header of the website and how they should be arranged there. External links are also possible here.
You can also set here which links should be displayed in the footer.
In our article on the Navigation menu, you can find out how to edit the header and footer.
Setup #
Settings
In the settings, you will find extensive options for customizing the design of your website. You can also make basic settings such as the name of the website, the logo, the default settings for placeholders and much more. You can read more about this in our articles on the Settings.
Contact forms
With contact forms, you give visitors to your ChurchTools Website the opportunity to get in touch with your congregation quickly and easily. You can either send the form data as an e-mail and/or save it as a CSV file for further editing. You can find out all the details in the How to create and edit a contact form?
Tags
You can add tags to posts, groups and events. For example, you can display only certain posts or events in different places or display a filter option for visitors to your website. You can find out more about Tags here.
Tools #
Statistics
Anonymized data from visitors to your ChurchTools Website is recorded in the visitor statistics. No sensitive, personal visitor data or IP addresses are stored, but everything is taken anonymously from the logs. We have described how to use the visitor statistics for your website in the How to use the visitor statistics?
SEO report
SEO ensures that your website is found better in search engines. In this area, you can create reports that show what works well on your pages and where there is still room for improvement. We provide more detailed information on this topic in the article SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Forwarding
This section is of interest to you if you have changed the domain of your website, for example. Here you can define rules for redirecting old paths to avoid incorrect links after the migration. You can find more information on this in the article How to set up redirects for my ChurchTools Website?