How to use A Church Near You

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 12:46

A Church Near You is a fantastic resource provided by the Church Of England.

It lists every church in the Diocese of Derby and should be one of your first ports of call when getting information about your church and its activities out to a wider audience.

If you're not already using A Church Near You, you should be!

The minimum you should include on your A Church Near You page is: contact details and regular services.

The details need to be added by your page editor - this isn't something we can do for you at Derby Church House - but if you need help, please do contact the communications office for advice.

As well as the basic details about your church, ACNY also lets you do the following:

Add extra information to events and services, such as a location other than the church, times, accessibility and contact details. This will enable churches to showcase their one-off services out in the community or parish away days outside the church building.
Include information about the facilities the church has, from a post office to foodbank or Alpha.
The ability to point your domain name (the URL of your site, for example www.mychurchname.co.uk) to your ACNY page. This means you don't have to pay a fee to a website host or designer. It is estimated that this will save Church of England churches £1 million nationally. A Church Near You editors will get a step-by-step guide to help make this change.
An opportunity to add news stories and notice sheets to your pages, allowing you to promote upcoming events, good news stories from your church and notices.
Add a gallery of pictures to show off your church building. This is capped at at 20 images to ensure that these photos are kept up-to-date.
Greater customisation choices – from the ability to select the branding of national campaigns for your page, to which news stories and events will appear on your church's homepage.
Analytical information will be visible to editors on the homepage when logged in – showing you how many people have visited your page this week, month and year.

Who in my parish controls A Church Near You?

The short answer is that the incumbent is the editor of your ACNY page, and can also authorise up to four additional editors.

Where there is no incumbent, please see this page for more information about how to become an editor for your church.

If your church is in vacancy:

If your church is in vacancy you’ll need to ask for manual verification; once you have created an account on AChurchNearYou.com and have requested to edit a church make sure you’re logged in and click the purple Help button on the right hand side of any page of AChurchNearYou, or the Submit a request button at the top of the Help Centre...

Tell us that you're requesting manual verification because your church is in vacancy.

Tell us your email address with which you registered and the AChurchNearYou ID of the church you have requested to edit.

You'll find this ID by going to the AChurchNearYou church page in question and looking in the browser address bar where you'll see: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/ followed some numbers, please provide us with those numbers.

For instance, the URL for St Alkmund's in Duffield is: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/13370/ so their AChurchNearYou ID is 13370.

Information for A Church Near You editors in parishes

The following information is specifically for A Church Near You editors:

The new upgrade includes the ability to add news stories and news sheets, a gallery and, most excitingly, the option of using your A Church Near You page as your website by forwarding your domain name to A Church Near You.

When logged in, you will now also be able to see your analytic information on your church's page, showing you how many people have visited your page this week, month and year.

The editor help centre is on hand to guide you through the new features, so if you would like some help, do read the help articles provided: