If you answered...

• Yes, continue on to the next question
• No, you should consider it
  
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Those of you who have established a Discipline for Sermon Prep, the next logical step is organizing your information.

For those of you who still use mind maps or webs to organize your thoughts check out Bubbl.us. Below is a teaching series I was kicking around doing on Christian Sacraments. Bubbl.us is an awesome online tool because it's free, easy to use and you can share/collaborate (via website, email, print, etc.) with other users.

Terapad is the real deal if your interested in using a Blog as a church website and/or Brochure as a church website. Those of you who are looking to create a church website or move away from your current provider to something more flexible and functional, check it out.

Content Management System, Blogging, Online Store, Message Boards, Online Calendar, Video, Images, etc. - all FREE!

We would like to get to know our readers and their technology better. So over the summer we will be polling you on your technology, struggles, abilities, etc.

Let's start with an obviously one. Here it is...

Most churches have greeters. They're helpful, friendly people (or should be) that meet people at the door, make them feel welcome and offer useful information. Wouldn't it be great if you could replicate some of those characteristics for visitors to your church site?

Demofuse is a tool that allows you to build-in a tour of your website with step-by-step comments, arrows that point to key functions and emulated mouse actions.

I envision this as the virtual door greeter for your website, meeting people at the homepage and asking, "May I show you around?" Walk visitors through your Visitor Info page, then on to information about small groups and getting plugged in, service times, family programming and then to your contact or login page. The possibilities are endless, but the idea is that Demofuse provides you the chance to make guests feel a little more at ease with your site, and, hopefully, your church. Even the most usable site has some degree of learning curve, this may help alleviate that.

Of course, if you do create a tour, don't forget a prominent link on the homepage of your site.

The set-up is reasonably easy, although access to your site's html is needed to pop in a brief script to get things rolling.

Click the "Start Tour" button at right to see the process in action on the Church 2.0 - the blog site and then check out the official Demofuse sample tour and sign-up (free) over at www.demofuse.com.