| How this free Live Chat
plug-in works... -and can work for your church!
Imagine a visitor or member coming to
your church website and instantly being able to chat live with your
pastor or staff member? It's completely possible and easy to do.
How it works...
You sign up for this free plug-in at
www.plugoo.com. They ask you
which instant messaging program you regularly use (Yahoo IM, AOL IM,
MS Live, etc). You fill out the form and they generate a small bit
of code which you copy onto your webpage's main page. That
code links to your instant messaging service via the internet. Any
time you turn on AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo Instant Message, a
signal is sent to your church website plug in (where you put the
code) telling that plugin to announce you're online with a green
light and welcome message. Then, if someone visits your page and
types a message into the plugin form, it automatically and instantly
gets sent to your Instant Messaging program. It's just another way
to do instant messaging. Even works with mobile IM if you have that
set up on your phone. Best of all, it's free.
Even when that person isn't in
the office, anyone in the church office can "be on chat duty" by
signing-in under that screenname in their instant messaging
program. All they need is the password. And if you are away from
your computer, you simply click the "away message" in your IM
program so that visitors to your website see that you are online
but away.
When you turn off your
computer, the plugoo senses that and changes the chat message to
say you are 'offline.' But people can still type and send a
message to you for viewing the next time you sign on.
Best of all, you can talk to
people visiting your website ANY TIME from ANY WHERE you have
logged on to the web using your IM program.
What you'd need to do in the
church office...
1. Make sure your staff/pastor's
computer has an instant messaging program installed. By default, it
will turn itself on every time that computer boots up. They're free
from any number of providers.
2. Create a free instant messaging
screenname, such as, "ChatLiveWithTheChurch."
3. Go to plugoo.com and sign up for
their free service using your IM screenname.
4. Take the snippet of code their
sign-up form generates and copy it into the code section of your
church's main page. Upload the page, turn on your instant messaging
problem, and you're ready.
That's it. Go to
www.plugoo.com to learn more. |
