I am at the point where I need to train the church staff in how to login as Front End Users and manage their own pages on the site. To do so, I must put together some sort of training program for them. Some folks are tech-savvy, others are very NOT.

I looked around the WEC site here and did not see any info about Front End User training assistance. I KNOW I cannot be the first person to attempt to train new folks in Front End procedures, so I was hoping I could start with whatever had been produced by someone else, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Did I miss a page on this site that provides some documents to get you started with Front End User training? If not, I would think this would be a popular need. Is there any help out there anywhere?

Thanks so much!

-Barry Gresens
barry@gresens.org

Barry,

We might have a few How-Tos for using specific extensions. What aspect of FE User activities are you interested in teaching them? Are there specific extensions that they will be using? This information would tend to be in manuals for our extensions or in How-Tos. We have not planned to create a manual because sites can be configured so differently.

In Him,
Mark

Initially, the training will just be how to logon and add/modify/delete text and images on a page. This would include an explanation of the two content sections on each page that we have on our site that can be modified and how the basic information on the page is displayed. Then there would be a section discussing all of the options available when adding text and images, and a detailed practice session with the Rich Text Editor.

The Rich Text Editor would no doubt be the item that causes the most problems for users. The editor behaves strangely in certain situations, especially if you have bullets or tables. Understanding how images are embedded and how they "float" around text can also be tricky. I know that I oftentimes have to go into the source code to "clean up" what the editor has not automatically deleted or edited properly. Since most users won't be able to do this without knowing HTML, a troubleshooting procedure is also needed if they get into a situation they cannot seem to get out of.

The manuals and How To's I have seen so far are great for someone who is an administrator and at least some experience in technical matters. However, for some of the staff members we have the languaging of those manuals would leave them very confused. I need a set of instructions/tutorial that can be understood by those who have the least experience, with maybe an Advanced section in the back for those who want to know more like understanding the HTML code in the Rich Text Editor source view.

Anyway, does that make sense?

-Barry Gresens

Barry,
Well, we have some of what you are asking in the WEC classes. And we even have documents for most of it. Here are the "classes" of potential interest:

WEC 101: Getting Started
WEC 102: Content Entry
WEC 103: Rich Text Editor

We currently have documents for 101 and 103. So you have a full RTE document if you want it. The open office documents are available for download if you want the source documents and to modify them for your needs. We will be creating a WEC 102 document but we are not there yet. However, there are How-Tos for everything.

See: http://webempoweredchurch.com/support/classes/

Depending on what we are teaching, we try to adjust the tech language level. Also, we assume that users work through the training from the beginning. So if they leap into something then they may not have the background. You should be able to skip them past the admin stuff and do pretty well. If you like the Flash approach, I suggest creating your own. We did that at our church. I did one for adding sermons and a few things. It works great and can have your own examples and specific terms. We have instructions on creating them with Wink here: http://webempoweredchurch.org/products/developer_resources/manual/

In Him,
Mark

You answered my question. Thanks!