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Posted by Kenny Tomlin
Thursday, December 13, 2007 04:39 PM
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Fourthbook.com has seen steady growth since launching last year. I've enjoyed getting to know many wonderful church leaders who use Fourthbook.com and we have received great ideas to improve the product along the way. As a business of Rockfish Interactive, Fourthbook.com has not received the steady attention that I would have liked. Our business has been growing rapidly and it seems at times we had to put Fourthbook.com on the back burner. Not any longer. We've recently added a new developer to our team who will be focusing on making Fourthbook.com an even more exciting church management system!
Following is Aaron's welcome we recently sent to the churches that actively use Fourthbook.com.
Greetings Fourthbook users!
My name is Aaron Risener. I have recently begun working with Rockfish Interactive, and one of my primary responsibilities will be maintenance, improvements, and updates to the Fourthbook website. As many of you have discovered, this is a great web application for managing important aspects of church ministry. Fourthbook has fantastic potential for even greater functionality, as we seek to meet the varied needs of congregations and church leaders. We appreciate all the helpful feedback we continue to receive from all of you. While of necessity we will not be able to meet every request, we want you to know we are listening, and we will do our best to implement the changes and updates that will most benefit our broad spectrum of users.
I have a ten-year background in ministry, working with churches in the Dallas area, western Oklahoma, and most recently here in northwest Arkansas. I can appreciate the challenges involved in efficiently and effectively organizing church data in a usable and understandable manner. I believe Fourthbook can meet those challenges in a dynamic way. I am excited to be a part of the Rockfish team, and I look forward to helping Fourthbook continue to evolve into an accessible, user-friendly application, servicing your church management needs.
As a foretaste of things to come, be looking for the following updates soon.
1. Private Care Notes – Admin users will have the ability to allow designated users to view / edit private care notes – notes that might contain sensitive information meant only for select users
2. Email Filters – More options for emailing select groups in your contact directory
3. Improved Financial Reports – Users will be able to create end-of-year financial reports for tax purpose
These improvements are in the works because of great suggestions from users like you.
I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Aaron Risener
Rockfish Interactive
aaron.risener@rockfishinteractive.com
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Posted by Kenny Tomlin
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 02:07 PM
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 In Fourthbook.com you can add events to the calendar or resource manager, post topics in the forum, and publish website links that can be shared and viewed by everyone with access to Fourthbook.com. We really want to provide a platform where churches can connect, encourage, and support one another in the work of ministry.
(Please note that adding public resources in not available with a trial account. You can view public resources, just not post anything as public).
Say, for example, that your church just did an awesome servant evangelism project that really impacted your city. As part of the project you created posters, road signs, and other graphics to promote your project. Why not share that idea and resources with the rest of the churches using Fourthbook.com? Many church planters are using Fourthbook.com and would benefit greatly by having access to some of the materials that your church has created!
Sharing these resources is easy. Simply upload them to the Resource Manager and mark them as public. Files uploaded as public don’t count against your total storage space and can be accessed by every church that uses Fourthbook.com!
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Posted by Kenny Tomlin
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 01:45 PM
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 With the new Fourthbook.com you can optionally add a photo of your contacts. The size of the photo is 125 x 125. If you upload a large photo the system will automatically crop the photo to the correct size and discard the original. This process normally works fine. However, depending on how the photo was taken, it is possible that the contacts head could be partially cropped out of the picture. Also, if you use the high-res version of the photo the file size will be over 3MB and take longer to upload. Once the file is uploaded we resize it to the smaller version and discard the high-res version so there’s no benefit in uploading large files.
Here are a couple tips that can improve your results when adding contact photos:
1) Most digital cameras come with software that allows you to manage your images. If you crop your image to 125 x 125 prior to uploading it, not only will it upload very quickly, but it will show up exactly as you prepared it.
2) When taking pictures, try to take them from the shoulders up. That will ensure you get a good picture of the contacts face.
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Posted by Kenny Tomlin
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:38 PM
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For those new to this website the question is “What’s new about Fourthbook.com?” A little history…
In September of 2006 Fourthbook.com launched as a 100% web-based Church Management application. In the summer of 2006 I was involved in planting a new church and was looking for a Church Management solution that would help me manage a growing contact database. Churches have unique contact management requirements and traditional contact management tools were not flexible enough to meet my requirements. Additionally, I wanted to be able to send emails to my contacts, record financial giving, and run detailed reports.
After visiting with other church planters, I found most were using a combination of Microsoft Excel, Quicken, Microsoft Outlook, and possibly a web-based email tool to try and meet their needs. These multiple software applications don’t all work together, creating multiple contact databases. Additionally, using multiple desk-top applications makes it extremely difficult to delegate some tasks out to church members – something that church plants and small to mid-sized churches often need to do.
After a little research, I did find a couple online church management applications and considered them. However, they were expensive, had a steep learning curve, and wouldn’t easily accommodate a church that didn’t already have an administrative staff.
Therefore, Fourthbook.com was developed to meet a personal need and the need I assumed many other churches have. With almost a no money spent to market Fourthbook.com, the number of churches using the software steadily grew to more than 200 churches. We got a lot of great feedback and suggestions from churches and about 3 months ago we decided to take Fourthbook.com to the next level!
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