It is very important that the information on A Church Near You is kept up to date and that potential new visitors can find you and contact you.  

Churches on A Church Near You are not edited centrally but by people in the parishes.

To update your own church you need to become its editor.

1. Register on the website and then login to the control panel.
2. When you login you can add the church you want to edit to your account (usually you just need to transfer the existing entry). Either return to the public page for the church you want to edit and click the Update this Church link, or visit your control panel and click the Add Church button.
3. Fill in the form to request the church you wish to edit.

Once the transfer request has been approved by your local A Church Near You administrator the church will appear as a line in your control panel.

You can add as many churches as you like to your control panel, you do not need to register again.

Click Edit Church to change the details of any church in your control panel and the changes should appear instantly on the site.

Click "Photo Album" in the Admin menu if you want to add pictures to your church pages.

Click Add Event if you want to add a service or event to your church.

The Admin drop down menu contains several other options to enhance your listing.

Print this guide

A Church Near You contains information about parish churches and the services and events that take place there. It's FREE for visitors and parishes. 

It's a great help to visitors to have accurate information about the churches they might want to visit. Many parishes that have added information to A Church Near You have noticed an increase in visitor numbers.

The site helps people find out:

• which parish they live in (based on the post code search, this is useful for weddings and funerals as well as general churchgoing
• their nearest church (its distance from their own location and its position on a map)
• what it is like
• what events and services are happening
• who to contact to find out more

Someone from a parish registers on the site and takes responsibility to maintaining the information, it not managed centrally.

The information you add to A Church Near You helps other sites too, including the Church of England website, diocesan websites and mobile apps such as the MyCofE iphone app.

Some statistics

• 16,000 Church of England churches listed
• 53,000 services and events listed
• 5,000 messages sent to churches each month
• 266,000 unique visits per month

Print this guide

In 2014 A Church Near You had 3 million unique visitors viewing 13 million pages. Visitors also sent 64,759 enquiries to churches using the email form.

There are 16,454 churches listed of which 13,250 are currently being updated by one of the 7,984 active editors.

A Church Near You only lists Church of England churches. However we would like to hear from you if you are interested in helping to expand it.

Print this guide

The parish finder tells you which parish you live in and what are the nearest churches to your location.

It's helpful to know which parish you live in if you want to get married in church.

You can enter a post code, partial post code or a place name in the search box.

Try it

A map will load which shows the location the name of the parish and the locations of the nearest churches. Usually the parish finder will also draw the parish boundary. You can click on the map to indicate your exact location for a more accurate result and the map will update if this changes the parish.

If you search for a place name and there are multiple matches the page will try to offer suggestions to help you narrow the search.

Print this guide

Forgotten username or password

Visit the lost password page.

Enter your email address and you will be sent a temporary password. It should alert you if there is no matching account which may mean you registered using a different email address.

You can keep the new password or change it to something of your own choosing: in this section: Control Panel > My Account > Change Password.

I have changed my email address.

If you have changed your email address then obviously the above method will not work. In this case:

1. Re-register using your new email address
2. Transfer the churches under your control to your new account.
3. Ask us to delete the old account.

Print this guide

For both logistical and administrative reasons it is currently not possible to associate a church entry with more than one account. We have found that having more than one editor managing a church entry can lead to disagreements and confusion.

If you need to have multiple editors you will have to share the login details for that account.

As an editor remember that you can add as many churches as you need to your account. You do not need a separate account for different churches.

Print this guide

If you have left the church for which you are currently the editor you should take the following steps:

1. Remove your contact details.
It can be annoying and unhelpful both for you and for potential visitors if your contact details remain on a church that you have actually left.

• Login to your control panel and for each church click: Edit Church > Contact Info
• Remove any personal contact information and save the page.
• Preview the church page to double-check that the contact details are gone. 
• You may find that the Crockfords details now show instead.  If these are correct for the church then do no more.  If they are missing check that they are not being hidden. You can do this the same page: Edit Church > Contact Info. If they are actually wrong then you can hide them.

2. Inform the parish (optional but important!)
It is important that the parish now take over the entry so that visitors have a point of contact for the church.    It's not your responsibility to ensure they do but it does not help visitors at all if the church listing has no contact information on it! You can use the template further down as a starting point.

3. Transfer the venues back to us
When you have removed your personal contact information please go to your control panel and click the Remove Church button for any venues you no longer need to edit.  They will be transferred back to us until the parish is ready to find a new editor. If you have changed parish yourself and want to take over your new church for editing simply use the Add or transfer another church button: Add Church

4. Delete your account (optional)
If you removed all the venues from your control panel and you no longer need the account then you can delete your account in the "My Account" section.

=============================

EMAIL TEMPLATE

Dear ...
I'm writing to let you know that I have now given up editing the pages for ..... on A Church Near You.
Please would you take over the page so that potential visitors and enquirers can make contact with the church.
http://www.achurchnearyou.com/quickstart/
Regards ...

Print this guide

It is easy to pinpoint your church's location, we just need the latitude and longitude.

Add these in this section: Control Panel > Edit Church > Map References

Then click the button marked: Find Map References (make sure your browser allows pop-up windows from achurchnearyou.com)

Type the place or a postcode in the search box and click the button marked: Centre map

Click and drag the map image so the marker sits right over the church building (switch to satellite view if it helps) then click: Set as ACNY location.

The correct values will be copied to your Edit church page but be sure to save the changes.

Other ways to find the location.

On Google Maps.
1. Search for the church (You can use Satellite view to pinpoint the church exactly. )
2. Right click on the church 
3. Choose Drop Lat/Lng marker.  
4. Copy the values for latitude and longitude and paste these into the boxes on the Edit Church > Map References page.

On Streetmap.co.uk
1. Search for the church.  Streetmap users ordnance survey maps so you can see the church marked with a symbol. 
2. Use "Move Arrow" so the arrow is over the church symbol. 
3. Click "Convert Coordinates" link.
4. Copy the values for latitude and longitude and past these into the boxes on the Edit Church > Map References page.

A word of warning!

If you copy the values incorrectly then your church will be shown in the wrong place.  For example.  If you miss of a minus symbol in the longitude then your church may well end up in the North Sea!  We recommend you use the pop up map as this will copy the values in for you.

Print this guide

Add a map like this to your site:

(Sorry: Temporarily the map will not show the boundary, we are working to fix this)

You can add the map to your parish web site as long as you credit A Church Near You and do not obscure the copyright and licensing details shown below the map.

To add the map

1. Visit your church's entry on the site.
2. Click the More Info tab.
3. In the section marked Parish Legal Name copy the parish number in the form xx/xxx
4. Add the following code to your web page replacing xx/xxx with your own parish number.

<iframe scrolling="No" src="http://www.acny.org.uk/parishmap.php?pcode=xx/xxx" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Please also link to A Church Near You

Copy and paste this link into your web site:
<A HREF="http://www.achurchnearyou.com/">A Church Near You</A>
Or grab a specific church url from the address bar when you are on the page you want to link to.

Print this guide

Using the free Google Analytics tool you can track visitors to each of your church / venue pages in considerable details.

1. Register with Google Analytics.
2. Create a profile for your church or churches.
3. Obtain the tracking code the bit that looks like UA-1234567-1
4. Log into your control panel and click modify for your church entry
5. Select the "Detailed Statistics" menus item and paste the code into the box.
6. Save your changes.

Print this guide

When you edit your church you can select the parish it is in.

Control Panel > Edit Church > Basic Information

The parish names come from a database sent to us by the Church Commissioners.

All the other connections (benefice, deanery etc) are made automatically based on that selection.

You can edit the name of the church or venue but not the name of the parish, benefice etc.

Bear in mind that sometimes the name a parish is known by is not necessarily the legal name of the parish.

If you notice that the parish name is wrong or it is in the wrong benefice or deanery or if it is missing entirely we cannot fix it at A Church Near You.

Please email the Church Commissioners research and statistics department explaining the error so that the data that they send us can be corrected.

Print this guide

The parish boundary shown for your parish is set by the parish you have selected for your church.

If no or the wrong parish boundary is displayed:

Make sure the correct parish is selected:

Control Panel > Edit Church > Basic Information

If the correct parish is definitely not on the list it may be because our database needs to be updated with new information following a pastoral reorganization.  We have to await updated parish and parish boundary data from the church commissioners.  If this is not the case please submit a support ticket for further assistance.

If the boundary contains errors please submit a support ticket explaining which parish boundary has errors and what the errors are.

Print this guide

If the church has closed, is going to be declared redundant or you need to delete the entry for some other reason all you need to do is send us a ticket via the helpdesk explaining the situation.

Please do not remove all the information from an entry.

Entries that have been edited out in this way will simply be restored from an older backup.

Print this guide

Sometimes you may find that the "Our Other Churches" section of your pages does not list the correct other churches in your parish or benefice.  This can often happen as a result of Pastoral Reorganization... e.g. benefice mergers, the creation of new parishes etc.

The display of the "Our Other Churches" links AND the display of the Parish Boundary Map are both determined by which parish you have selected for your particular venue.

As long as you have selected the correct parish for your church/venue:

• Control Panel > Edit Church > Diocese [Dropdown]
• Control Panel > Edit Church > Parish [Dropdown is only shown if diocese selected and page saved]

then the venue will be in the correct parish/benefice/deanery/diocese etc as far as our data will allow.  If it is wrong OR the correct parish is not available then we must await an update from the Church Commissioners.
 
The reason for this is that A Church Near You associates each venue with a specific parish, all other associations are based upon that parish's entry in the Church Commissioners database.
 
We generally receive an update from the Church Commissioners every three or four months but their own updating process depends on their having received the necessary paperwork etc. and can therefore lag further behind.

NEW
If you can't wait and you want to add a link to the Our Other Churches section you can add it as a link via the Pages and Links tab in the control panel. Print this guide

For attention of editors only

This refers to when you try to find a church to transfer from the control panel.

The function which populates a list of candidate venues as you enter search details requires Javascript to be enabled in your browser, and doesn't work on some browsers.

Supported browsers are

• Internet Explorer v5 and greater, under Windows;
• Firefox v1.4 and greater
• Safari
• Opera 9 and greater

• Google Chrome masquerades as Safari, so that is supported too.

If you are having difficulties, please go to WhatsMyBrowser and check your browser's compatibility. If it shows that you are using a supported browser and Javascript is enabled, please raise a ticket and report its findings.

Print this guide