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If you are interested in having a website for
your United Methodist church, board, agency, committee, or workgroup, we can provide it through
Wisconsin Conference Internet services.
Your URL (web address) would be in one of two possible forms:
1.
www.WisconsinUMC.org/ChurchName
For example, look at
www.WisconsinUMC.org/BurlingtonUMC.
2.
Alternatively, you can have a registered domain name that is entirely unique to
your organization. (For an example, look at
www.StoughtonUMC.org).
We can help you get your domain name registered with a domain registrar. The domain registrar
will charge a fee for setting up the domain name account plus a yearly fee to maintain your domain
name. These charges need to paid for by the church or group whose domain name is being registered.
Wisconsin UMCommunications does not charge to host your website nor
for any of our services. (This is apportionment dollars at work!)
We do not limit the size of your website, nor the number of times you upload information
to the server. (A server is the computer that has your webpage information on it and connects to
the Internet so that your webpage can be seen on the Web.) We also have the capability of hosting
streaming audio/video, guestbooks, and chat rooms, among other features.
The basic steps to setting up a website are as follows:
There is a website request form on the web
 HERE. This form will
ask you for your desired web name and a password so that an account can be set up for you on the
WisconsinUMC.org web server.
Your name could be something like City-ChurchName or ChurchNameUMC (Examples: Beloit-ChristUMC
or BethanyMadison). Your password should be something you can remember but have upper and lower
case letters in it along with some numbers. (This is for security purposes.)
2. Once your request form is received, an account will be set up for you on the
web server. This is called an FTP account. (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.)
Once your web server account has been set up, you will receive back a confirmation email
verifying your account name on the server and your password.
3. Once you receive this confirmation, you can upload your html files to the web server.
(Uploading means that you transfer the files from your computer to the server.) To do this
you will need to use an FTP program such as WS-FTP or CuteFTP.
CuteFTP can be downloaded from
www.cuteftp.com.
WS_FTP can be downloaded from
www.ftpplanet.com.
Both of these programs can be downloaded as a free evaluation. Or WS_FTP LE may be
downloaded free under certain conditions.
Please remember that once you download any of these FTP programs, you will need to install
the program on your computer. Just downloading the program is not enough.
Once you have installed the FTP program on your computer, the program will need the
following information in order to connect to the Wisconsin UMC server:
Host name/address is ftp.wisconsinumc.org
UserID is the name you choose for your account.
Password is the password you choose to use.
4. You will be designing your webpage using HTML, which stands for hypertext markup language.
UMCommunications has a website totally devoted to helping you get started on making a webpage.
You can find this information at
www.web.umc.org.
The Wisconsin UMCommunication office is always happy to help as well. We may not be able to
design your webpage for you, but we can answer questions and offer suggestions as to how to
make your webpage look better and be more user friendly. One thing you should keep in mind.
Your main page is the first impression that people get when they go to your website, so we
recommend that you list church name, address, phone/fax numbers, name of pastor, and hours of
worship on the main page. Somewhere on your webpages you should give directions to your
church. In order to work on the Wisconsin server, your main page must be named index.html.
Reminder: If you have pictures on your webpage you will need to upload these pictures to
the server in addition to the html page(s).
To view a very simple, basic webpage, please go to:
Oconto Falls UMC/.
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We depend on email and the web for a variety of uses, including regular information flow from
districts and conference, regular correspondence among church staff and pastors, conversation between
pastors and parishioners, collaboration among committee members on both the local church and conference
levels. We have been doing things via electronic communication that were not possible or practical
before. We are connected and connectional in ways that were not possible before.
One of the things that makes it all work is constant maintenance of our listservers and email
address rosters.
During times when many pastors are moving from one community to another, changing internet
service providers as well as doctors, newspaper subscriptions and favorite grocery stores, email
addresses that worked last week are suddenly no longer active.
That's where we can help.
If you are a pastor, sign up for a WisconsinUMC.org email account. No matter how you connect to
the internet (dialup, cable modem, satellite, or dsl) your address will work because our mail servers
use standard internet protocols, and when you move you will not have to change email addresses.
A WisconsinUMC.org email address is as permanent as it gets, and there is no added cost because
our internet services are your apportionment dollars at work. A side benefit of a WisconsinUMC.org
address (or one of the domain addresses we host, like "StoughtonUMC.org") is that your email is
extensively filtered for junk advertising and solicitation (a.k.a. "spam").
There is an email sign-up form on the web
HERE.
Though some conferences have assigned email addresses for all their pastors, our system has been
voluntary and we've tried to attract subscriptions rather than assign. We're currently hosting over
800 email accounts, and have been in operation for over five years. All our servers are located in the
Conference Center Communications Office in Sun Prairie. We do not outsource any of our services, and
as a result we can provide a much higher quality and degree of specialized service.
WisconsinUMC.org email addresses are available to all Wisconsin United Methodists, and there
are a number of churches that have used our services to get addresses for all their staff and
committee chairs (Waukesha: First and Whitefish Bay are two congregations that come to mind). Kent
Ingram sends out a weekly "e-votional" to a listserver of members from Appleton: First UMC that we
maintain on our mail servers. Much of the work of Program and Arrangements Committee preparing for each
Annual Conference session is done via the P & A listserver.
If you are a church or pastor who do
not have internet access and are not reached via your district's listserver, please
contact the Conference Communications and Technical Serives Office
and we will work with you to provide access as a service of the
communications office. We do not want churches/pastors to be excluded because of cost or unavailability
of a local internet service provider account. Our toll-free number is 1.888.240.7328.
Even if you do not sign up for a WisconsinUMC.org email address, please send us your new address if
you move or change providers! Send a note to
email-update@WisconsinUMC.org.
Tell us your name, the church you are serving, your old email address and the new one.
As always, we welcome your suggestions and ideas for new services or improvements to what we currently offer.
In addition, we can provide you with dedicated
message boards
(electronic bulletin boards like the ones we have for
Discerners),
and a dedicated IRC channel (Internet Relay Chat, for
real-time keyboard-based "conversations").
Our IRC server is private, so there is virtually no lag and no clutter. We can set up your
IRC channel so it is "permanent" with its own "bot" to greet people as
they join your meeting.
The Capital District channel is called "#Capital_District"
and it's at irc.wisconsinumc.org.
If you are using an IRC client like mIRC, connect on port 7000.
If you have a web browser capable of running java you can try the web interface
HERE!
If you would like to know more about IRC, please visit
What is IRC?.
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