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Who chooses the daily text?
The best source of the daily text is from your church, and we provide excellent tools for your leaders to publish the daily text right to your Messenger. If your church is not able to do this, or if you are not part of a church, then Bible.com is happy to provide the days scripture. |
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Can we write daily texts for our members?
Absolutely! We provide you with an easy to use "text builder" that lets you write up to a years worth of daily texts. |
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How do people download a Messenger with the daily text we write?
Easy... your church will have its' own special link which members can use to download "your" Messenger. The daily texts you write will only be accessible via Messengers downloaded from your website. |
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Can we write a discussion of the daily text?
Yes! If you already publish a text and discussion on your website then you can paste the url for the discussion right into the Messenger so people will link to your website whenever they click on the text. We also provide an easy to use "Discussion" area within the daily text builder which you can use in case you are not quite so HTML savvy.
Either way you will have an excellent tool for spreading His word and enhancing your ministry. |
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What is a "flash message" and how is that different than the daily text?
This is a utility that enables you to interrupt the scheduled daily text with a news flash. This can be used for any purpose within your congregation; including announcements, prayer requests, or other important communications. |
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What features can be customized?
The online sign-up system allows your church to customize the logo and accompanying url in the Messenger. You can also build your own list of daily text's, as well as daily discussions of each text. And you can use the adult filters, as well as put together a list of special keywords you want to block along with target url's for each keyword. For large organizations, we can customize the search results pages, and even the church control panels. Furthermore, we can handle almost any special programming or database request. |
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Can we request additional customization?
Of course. The Church Services group at Inspired Text would be happy to sit down and discuss your needs. |
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We have a group of churches, can we set up a single account so they all get the same daily text, but still have separate control panels so they can each send flash messages to their congregations and customize some of the features?
Absolutely. Each individual church will have its' own unique control center where they can customize their Messenger, send flash messages, and monitor their traffic. At a higher level, your reporting systems and management tools give you everything you need to manage and track each site. |
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Our church has one location but a variety of ministries, can we set up a master account and give each ministry their own control center?
Of course. In the same manner as organizations who have many churches, we can provide your church with a master control center. With that you will be able to give each ministry their own control center under yours. |
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Do you have adult filters?
Of course! Our adult filters, which your church can turn on or off, screen out the porn and other adult content. For a list of terms, please contact us directly as we don't publish this in a public place for obvious reasons (our staff doesn't even like looking at this list!). |
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How does keyword blocking work?
Our proprietary keyword blocking utility enables you to create lists of words which, though not in the general adult filter, are ones you don't want people to be able to use in the web-search system. When you enter a word you want to block, you can also specify a target url for that word. Thus, for example, if someone searches for "God" you can direct it to a specific url such as "www.yourchurch.org/godslove" instead of just giving the user a bunch of web search results. |
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How long does it take to set everything up?
When you create your account via the automated sign-up system, everything is set up instantly. The HTML code for your Messenger is accessible from your church control center, as are other utilities such as the daily text builder, adult filters, and keyword blocking. If you have any needs for special customization we usually fulfill those requests in 5 to 10 days. |
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What are the system requirements for the Messenger?
The Messenger works on Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher on Windows 2000, NT, or XP. If your computer has this configuration then the Messenger should work just fine, regardless of CPU speed, hard drive space, or RAM. |
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Are versions available for Mac or Netscape?
We are working on providing the Messenger in several additional formats, including Mac (both I.E. and Safari) and Netscape. These will be released as soon as they are finished and tested; hopefully sometime in late 2005. |
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How does someone uninstall the Messenger?
If you want to install a new Messenger over an old one (e.g. if you downloaded the Messenger from the Inspired Text website, but now want to use the one from your church website instead), simply click on the "Install" link from the website who's Messenger you want, and it will automatically install over the old one. Very easy. If you want to just delete the Messenger altogether, then click on the "i" button on your Messenger, and then select "uninstall" from the drop down menu. |
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How much does it cost? Are there any set-up fees? Who pays for this?
There are no set-up fees, and there are no service or other fees. As you probably know, Google and Yahoo earn billions of dollars each year from their search engines... well, we simply put a search service right into a corner of the Messenger. Thus the money that would normally go to Wall Street now goes towards God's kingdom. Servers, software, bandwidth, engineers, office rent, phone lines, and other expenses are covered by revenue from the search service, allowing us to provide the Messenger at no cost to you and your church. |
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Our church gets some funding in addition to the Messenger? How does that work?
Yes! While some of the Messenger revenue is used to cover the costs of servers, bandwidth, engineers, etc., the good news is that as the number of people using your Messenger increases, the business economies allow us to share some of the revenue with you.. From the start we will send you 5% of the search revenue every month; this increases to 10% when you have 1,000 people using your Messenger, 15% at 5,000 users, 20% at 10,000 users, and 25% for 50,000 users or more. |
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What's the catch?
We get asked this all the time. It does seem like the Messenger is too good to be true, especially at no cost. But the credit is certainly due elsewhere, as the simple fact is that there is no catch. The internet has changed in ways which enable us to provide this wonderful service for free to you and your church. |
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What about churches or members who are not based in the United States?
God is everywhere, and thus we do not limit the Messenger to any border created by man. |
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