Media Outreach

Ladies and gentlemen, as a man of the north I am usually not prone to the lack of weather tolerance displayed by many of my friends and co-workers who were born with the thin blood of those who do not know the joys of a white Christmas. However, this week in Texas there is no denying it… it’s cold outside. Furthermore, I have it on good authority that it’s going to get even colder starting on Thursday. There is a very real possibility that I will not be able to continue my blog next week, having been transformed into a giant Andy flavored popsicle by the near Arctic condition. Therefore, if you had a question you wanted me to address in the “Frequently Asked Questions” series, but failed to submit it this week, then you have no one to blame but yourself. Of course I may decide to turn on the heater, in which case you’ll be fine.

This week I’d like to address something very near and dear to my heart… that being the go live process. In faithHighway terminology, going live with your website means that we move your site from its production domain to your live domain for everyone to see.  As you might imagine, this does tend to bring up a few questions:

1. Perhaps the most frequent of all the frequently asked questions as pertains to going live that I receive is, “I don’t have 100% of my content done yet, but can I go live anyway?” The answer to that is a resounding YES. Obviously it does not do well to launch a website with gaping holes that leave a visitor searching for information only to find none. However, as long as your website contains enough information to be a resource for the church, then there’s no reason to not launch the site. Areas that are not yet complete can simply contain “Coming Soon” messages, as you can always continue to add content after the site has gone live. The content of your website should remain as dynamic as possible in order to avoid becoming stale, which will in turn attract repeat visitors.
2. Another aspect of the go live process that goes hand in hand with the website is email hosting. Most primary domains tend to be used by churches for their email as well. The question that a lot of people have is, “Will the go live process affect my email?” In general, the answer is yes. Some churches do have their own email exchange servers, allowing them to host their own email. However, most churches have their email hosted by the same company that hosts their website. faithHighway is no different in this regard… our clients receive unlimited email hosting with their websites. Therefore, when a website goes live, not only does the website host change, but so does the email host as well. When this happens, there are usually a few settings changes necessary from the user’s end for email, but the most important aspect of the new email hosting is that all of the existing email addresses for the domain must be setup on the new host’s servers BEFORE the Go Live request is processed. Failure to do this will result in broken email addresses, which most people usually tend to frown upon.

While the Go Live process can seem a bit ominous at times, if you take out all the annoying acronyms (DNS, IP, etc), it’s  really not so bad at all. The best way to avoid having issues is to ask questions.  Whether your site is with faithHighway or with another company, there should always be a technical representative available to answer any questions you might have, and to provide assistance wherever it is needed. Until next time then loyal reader(s), stay warm, stay dry, and always look both ways before crossing a busy intersection on a pogo stick.

Photo By: Pink Sherbet Photography