General Questions
We sure do. In fact an online User Guide is available 24/7 via the "User Guide" tab at the top of every screen in Radius.
Yes you can! Add new menu items, remove old menu items, or simply rearrange the order of existing menu items. And—just as you'd expect—no programming skills are required. Radius' menu editing tools is design for simple use by parish staff and volunteers.
Your site visitors will be able to stream any MP3, Windows Media, or Real Media files you post on your site.
Getting Started
When you order your site, it will be fully functional and ready for editing within about five minutes of ordering. (Seriously!) So when you're ready to order, just let us know.
When you order your site, it will be fully functional and ready for editing within minutes. That means you'll be able to receive site visitors within about five or ten minutes of placing your order. (No kidding!) So when you're ready to order, just let us know.
Domain Names
That's not a problem. In fact, the best approach is to order your domain name through us when you order your site. It's included in the price and it's hassle free.
We want you to keep your domains during your transition, so transfer assistance is included for your primary domain—no additional charge. If you have secondary domains, there is a one-time $50 fee for domain transfer assistance.
No. Some services give you a domain that includes their company name along with your parish name. But you won't see any hint of us in your domain name once you activate your site. If your parish name is "St. Mary of Boston," your domain could be www.StMaryBoston.org, not www.StMaryBoston.RadiusforParishes.com.
Technical
Absolutely! The HTML and associated coding of every Radius site is fully optimized to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Furthermore, since search engine optimization is primarily related to the text on your site, Radius helps you create keyword rich page content by correctly tagging the page title and various header levels on your pages. Simply use the predefined text styles in Radius (Header 1, Header 2, etc.) and your pages won't only look good, but they'll be well optimized for search engines.
This is one of those yes-and-no answers...
No, you will not have access to the HTML code that generates your site's design. This code is carefully crafted to optimize your site for search engines and to assure that it looks its best in the various web browsers that your site visitors will likely use. So, we keep that under lock and key. But...
Yes, you will have direct access to the HTML code that generates your page content.
Nope, sorry. Radius is a hosted service. This means that your site must reside on our servers to access the features of Radius.
To ensure that your website is always fast and accessible, it will reside on one of our public web servers which boast 99.99% uptime. These servers reside in a secure, climate-controlled data center with redundant internet connections, mirrored hard-drives, and back-up power generators. In addition, your site data is backed up on a daily basis.
All Radius sites operate on MySQL, the industry standard open source database.
Costs
There is a one-time set up fee of $500 and a monthly hosting fee of $80 a month which gets you a fully personalized Faith in Action website with frequently updating feeds from OSV publishing to ensure rich engagement with your parishoners.
If you're asking this question, you've obviously looked around and noticed that many sites built on content management software like Radius cost thousands of dollars. The fact of the matter is we've been at this long enough that we've developed some proprietary technologies that streamline the complex process of setting up a new website. Call us crazy, but we figure it makes sense to pass those savings directly on to you.
The set up fee covers installation of the software for your site on the web server, application of the design of your choice from the Design Library, personalization of that design by our in-house design team with your logo and colors, and full access to all the features of Radius.
The monthly hosting fee covers all costs related to providing online services to you including the use of all the features of the Radius website management software, all future system upgrades, customer support, website hosting, database hosting, and email hosting. The cost of registration or renewal of your primary domain is also included in this fee.
We understand that hosting costs can be difficult to understand and that they vary widely depending on what's included. While cheap hosting can be had for $15 per month, it requires a deep technological understanding and commitment to doing it all yourself; Working with a tech agency for all your changes can easily be several hundred dollars per month; We fit in between this gap by providing easy, yet powerful tools and assistance to empower you—all at an easily affordable rate.
If you'd like to understand more about this cost, feel free to give us a call or drop us an email. We'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Looking for the fine print, eh? Sorry to disappoint, but we're not big fans of fine print.
We've worked hard to pack everything into Radius that you need to have a great website. Though some features are dependent upon the design you chose, you won't find any features that require additional cost to "activate." Of course, there are plenty of things you can add to your site if you wish like forums, secondary domains, or secure transactions (SSLs) to name a few. We use Radius to provide custom web services to parishes of all sizes and have been doing so since the early days of the internet. So we can confidently provide nearly any online service or feature that you can dream up. As you can imagine, most custom features have some setup and/or hosting cost associated with them. Give us a call or send us an email. We've love to hear from you and will be happy to hear your vision for your parish's online presence.
Email
You sure can. In fact, email hosting is included with every Radius website. You don't have to use it, but most parishes like to have at least some email accounts that use their domain name. Imagine having pastor@myparish.org instead of jim64@hotmail.com on the parish letterhead and in the bulletin. And if you just can't part with your old email addresses, you can easily set your new addresses to automatically forward all incoming mail to that old Hotmail account.
We'll start you out with ten email accounts that you can specify and manage easily with Radius. Additional addresses can easily be added upon request.
Yes. In fact, we filter tens of thousands of spam message each day on behalf of our clients. We have crafted a careful filtering protocol that blocks the majority of unwanted email, yet does not prevent legitimate email from reaching you.This delicate balance is monitored regularly by our programmers resulting in extremely dependable email hosting.
Ownership
You own the content and all data collected from your website. We own the Radius Web Tools software and designs from our Design Library. If you choose to leave, your site content is yours to keep, but neither the Radius software nor designs from the Design Library are transferable.
If we build a custom design for you, it is yours to keep. Designs from our Design Library—even though they are personalized—are not transferable away from Radius.
Design
Good question. Any design that is used by a content management software (CMS) like Radius can rightly be called a "template." This is because Radius dynamically generates your site pages on demand. When a site visitor asks to see your "About Us" page, Radius pulls together the site content you've created as well as the template (the visual design and general layout instructions) and gives them to your site visitor's web browser to show your site visitor a complete web page. So, in this sense all designs are templates whether they come from the Design Library or are designed from scratch. Of course, even our library designs are personalized with your logo and colors.
Yes. We'll be happy to change your design in the future to another design from our library for half of the setup fee. All sites are also easily upgradeable to fully-custom designs.
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