For Advent and Christmas 2024, we've updated AChurchNearYou.com to make it even easier for millions of visitors to find your services and events.
Add and tag your services
Throughout the year, and particularly at Christmas, the Church of England drives the public to discover churches on AChurchNearYou.com through adverts, social media posts and printed resources. If you haven't already, now is the perfect time to list your services and events, using the tag 'Advent' or 'Christmas'. You can also use tags such as 'Christmas Eve', 'Christmas carols', 'Crib/nativity', 'Christingle' and ‘Midnight Mass’ to help people find the right service for them.
How to add and tag your Advent and Christmas events and services
What's changing?
AChurchNearYou.com will again have a makeover for Advent and Christmas in line with this year’s ‘Follow the Star: Calm and Bright’ campaign. Similar to last year, you can choose, through the Marketplace, to opt in or out of displaying the Christmas branding on your church site. Other changes this year include:
- On your church’s services or events page, there will be a panel highlighting your tagged Advent and Christmas events, as well as a separate page specifically for those events.
- At AChurchNearYou.com/christmas visitors will be able to refine their search using a list of seasonal tags, a distance toggle and a date filter to find Advent and Christmas events in their area more easily than ever before. This special Christmas page will be promoted on our social media accounts during the season to help as many people as possible find services local to them.
- Improved search results for Advent and Christmas services and events, with ‘share’ and ‘add to calendar’ buttons.
- We are automatically tagging any one-off services or events happening from 24 December with a 'Christmas' tag, to help your community find services.
- Finally, to save time, remember you can list your services and events at benefice level and choose which of your churches they should display on.
How to toggle the Christmas branding on and off for your church site
- Log in to AChurchNearYou.com.
- Open your church in editor view, so you can see the editor menu. Show me how.
- Click 'Marketplace' in the editor menu and find the Christmas branding tile.
Here you can click or tap the slider next to ‘Enable Christmas branding’.
Once you have done this, you will notice that all the pages on your church site will now display this year’s Advent and Christmas branding.
Note: All benefice sites will appear with a blue header and purple background regardless of the Christmas branding being toggled on or off. An example of this can be seen below:
Highlighting your church’s Advent and Christmas services and events
On your church site, you will notice on your services and events page, there is now a panel highlighting Advent and Christmas events. Simply click on the heading to see all the Advent and Christmas events happening at your church.
A new Advent and Christmas search and results page
At AChurchNearYou.com/christmas visitors will be able to refine their search by finding events in their local area or explore events further afield by searching by post code.
Once a primary search has occurred, users will be presented with a list of Advent and Christmas services and events. Here they can choose to:
- Refine the search even further using the distance toggle, date filter and/or seasonal tags.
- Share an event from the results list via Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Email or simply copying the link to another platform.
- Add the event to a calendar of choice.
- Expand the description by clicking on ‘Read more’.
- See more Advent and Christmas events being held at the church.
Feature images for Advent and Christmas services and events
When uploading the feature image for your Advent and Christmas services and events we are recommending that editors choose an image that has its most important visual features in the centre of the image. This is due to the different locations where your Advent and Christmas services and events are displayed. It is also recommended that you use a photograph rather than a graphic with text, as these are inaccessible for screen readers and those who use them.
- You could either upload the regular feature landscape image (2:1 aspect ratio), making sure the middle section of your image has the most visual features.
- As an alternative you could also upload a square image (1:1 aspect ratio), which will show the whole image when displayed on your Advent & Christmas tab and search results page.
More information about recommended image sizes can be found here with links to Canva templates for the correct image sizes.
Need help?
We have a step by step guide to listing your services and a demonstration video.
For information on how to browse and download Advent and Christmas resources on AChurchNearYou.com, watch this video.
Or learn how you can get the Advent and Christmas brand guidelines and assets from AChurchNearYou.com to make a brand kit in Canva.
To find out more about our Follow the Star: Calm and Bright resources, visit the Church of England website.
If you have any problems with this or need help with editor access or approval, don't hesitate to contact us for help.