Would you answer the phone at church if you knew it was someone calling for directions or worship time?
Of course you should.
Now imagine that same person has come to your website, instead of calling the church. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the pastor or church secretary answer THAT “call” too?
Of course it would.
The answer is a Live Chat feature at your website.
You probably already know what I’m talking about when I say “Live Chat.” It’s a great tool that many businesses on the web use for live support. But here’s what you probably didn’t know: you can get it fors FREE …and can be added to almost any website quite easily. The live chat code you put on your webpage works with your instant messaging account and the instant messaging software you install on your computer (instant messaging software is free and easy to install too, read more below.)
Pictured: Graphic of what my plugoo chat window looks like at www.sundaysoftware.com. If you click the image, it will take you to my live chat window.
HOW TO INSTALL “LIVE CHAT”
at your website….
4. Finally, paste the code they gave you into your website’s mainpage code. Upload your mainpage, and go to your mainpage on the web to see your Chat box magically appear with the formatting you selected! (If you’re using wordpress, see my notes below)
One thing you want to remember to do when you have an instant messaging program installed is keep your computer’s volume button turned up. When someone sends you a message in the chat window, you will hear an audio alert.
A second thing to remember is to let your Yahoo or Live Instant messaging program turn on when you boot up your computer. If it’s on, it can tell people you’re available. If you have your messaging program turned off, people at your website will see a “not available” notice.
How it Works:
When you have a Yahoo or Windows Live chat account, everytime you start your computer and the chat application starts, it “pings” the Yahoo or Live chat server to let it know you are online. It also “pings” your meebo or plugoo account on the meebo or plugoo servers. “Ping” means it sends a short single saying, “I’m available!”
When the meebo/plugoo server sees that ping from your chat program, it knows you’re online and ready to chat. So….meebo/plugoo now “pings” your website where you installed the special code to say, “hey code, make a green light appear on this page to tell people I’m online right now.” That’s how people coming to your website see you as “available online to chat.” If meebo/plugoo’s server sees that your offline, it sends a signal to the code on your website to say “not available” and a red light appears on your website.
When you’re online and available and someone types into your webpage chat form, their text is shot over to meebo/plugoo server and sent to your Yahoo or Windows Live software on your computer. (In internet terms this is called “relaying”). Your yahoo/live chat software opens up a chat window on your desktop and shows you the incoming message. Now you can type messages back and forth with the person who’s come to your website.
NOTES:
Both meebo and plugoo work with virtually ALL websites.
If you have a WordPress created site that’s hosted on wordpress.com’s server (which I recommend that a lot of churc
hes do), you can only use Meebo. In fact, Meebo is already pre-installed. Just open up your list of widget and drag the Meebo box onto your wordpress site menu. If you have a WordPress created site that uses the free robust version of WordPress.org and is hosted on your OWN website host, you can install plugoo as a plug-in. See my example on the BOTTOM of this resource page!
Recapping:
1. Sign up for, download and install Yahoo chat or Windows Live chat from www.live.com
2. Sign up for either a free “Meebo” or “Plugoo” account and it will give you a couple of lines of code to copy.
3. Put the code on your webpage.
4. Be sure that your office or home computer is logged onto your chat account so people coming to your website see that someone is available. You’ll be surprised how many want to chat at 10 pm at night when you’re surfing Facebook!
__________________________ My original article about creating a church website in WordPress has proven very popular, — just what the doctor ordered for many churches that have stale websites. This post adds some advanced notes to that discussion. (Note: that original article points to my full article on the subject at http://www.sundaysoftware.com/wordpress.htm) ______________________________________________________________
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