SOAR

A "theme" is a collection of components that define the look & feel of a website. The components include fonts, colors, images, etc... A theme is seperate from the content (announcements, events, etc) of your unit website.

The Theme feature allows you to easily change the look & feel of your website without touching your website content. That is the power of a theme.

All of the Theme features can be found in the Control Panel under the Site Theme section.

By default, a SOAR website is Private - content can only be viewed (other than the home page) by using a username/password to login to the website.

This Access setting provides a means to remove the security from your website and create a Public website - all content is viewable to the public without logging in. It is accessible through the Control Panel and the "Access" button.

SERIOUS THOUGHT SHOULD BE GIVEN TO CHANGING THIS SETTING!

Email Lists are an easy and effective method for communicating with your members.

Email Lists can be used to create a single email address such that will forward email to multiple members at the same time. You can create lists to communicate with all members at once and also create lists to communicate with subgroups within your organization. Examples are:

• announce@
• committee@
• fundraising@

Email Lists protect members from SPAM by only allowing authorized members to send email to the list. A variety of options are available for determining who is authorized to send email to an Email List.

An Email Alias will create an email address on for your organization that will forward email to another email address.

Examples of email aliases are 'president', 'secretary', and 'treasurer'.

Email aliases can be used to setup generic email addresses for leadership that will remain constant while actual leaders change over time. When a leader changes, just change the email alias forward-to address!

Anyone can send email to an Email Alias - as such they are susceptible to SPAM.

Care should be taken when customizing your website to NOT include any email addresses in the About Us, Welcome Message, or the "teasers" for Announcements. If you can see an email address on your home page, so can SPAMMERS.

The Advanced package comes with the following Email features.

Email Aliases

• Create a generic email address such as 'secretary@' that will forward email to a specific member's email address.
• Other examples are 'president@' and 'treasurer@'.

Email Lists

• Create a single email address such as 'announce@' that will forward email to multiple members at the same time.
• Other examples are 'fundraising@' and 'committee@'

EBlast

• Sends out a weekly email to all members with new/updated website content and a list of upcoming events
  

For larger organizations, the Filter feature will be invaluable.

With this feature, you can create sub-groups within your organizations for such things as finance, recruiting, fundraising, etc. You can manage these segments under "Members" on the "Administration" menu by clicking on "Group" button. Once you have created your filters, you can assign Announcements and Events to them.

A Group Filter will now be displayed to all members under the "Menu" on the left. Members can select the filters they are interested in viewing and presto, all other content will not be displayed for them.

The Custom Page feature provides you the ability to create your own website pages with a menu item listed under "Menu". This is a great way to record more information about your organization.

To create a Custom Page click on "Add Content" under the "Administration" menu then click on "Pages". The first Title field will be shown at the top of the new page. Optionally, you can add an image to the page by selecting the file from your local hard drive and then selecting where the image should be placed on the page. You can then enter the page contents and the Title that will be shown in the left hand "menu".

The Site Counter feature will keep a running tab of the number of visitors to your website. It is only shown on the Home page so as not to take up valuable space in other sections of your website.

Each time a visitor accesses your website Home page, the counter will increment. All other activity by that visitor (i.e. logging in) will not change the counter.

This feature is a great way for you to see how often your website is being accessed and for your members to get excited about it as well.

Links are a great way to record other useful websites and remember them for later. It is also a great way to provide this information to everybody in your organization.

As with Files, Links are sorted alphabetically.

The Files feature provides you with a means to store files on your website that general members can download anytime they want. Stop sending attachments in email right now !

For display purposes, Files will be sorted alphabetically. Use the Title of each File uploaded to sort them as you see fit.