Please register and then email support@achurchnearyou.zendesk.com to say you are a diocesan user who wants access. We will then approve you as a diocesan user on AChurchNearYou.com.
As a diocesan user, you get:
- Editor access to our demo churches and a demo benefice (to help you see and try out all the features we offer). We warmly invite all diocesan staff to attend one of our training webinars about how to edit AChurchNearYou.com. Find the next dates at cofe.io/WebinarACNY
- Access to a Diocesan ‘dashboard’ which shows some analytics on use of AChurchNearYou.com in your diocese. You will see something like this:
Can I get editor access to all my diocese’s churches?
At the moment, diocesan users don't automatically get editor access to all the churches in their diocese and we don’t have an easy one-click switch to enable this for you. However, if you would like or need editor access to some or all of the churches in your diocese, please get in touch and we will work out a solution with you.
Useful features for diocesan users
Diocesan training sessions
If you would like a webinar or in person training session about AChurchNearYou.com run exclusively for churches in your diocese, contact digital@churchofengland.org with the subject line ‘Digital Labs’.
Diocesan event export
You can also export a list of events listed in AChurchNearYou.com that are happening across your diocese. This is only available on desktop, not on mobile. On AChurchNearYou.com, open the profile for any church in your diocese, go to ‘Services and Events’ and select ‘Calendar’ tab. There’s a purple button that says ‘Calendar feeds’ in the top right. Click that, you’ll see the option ‘Download calendar feed for this diocese’, when you click this, this downloads an iCal file. Click on the file and you should be asked if you want to import it into your calendar application (such as Outlook or Google Calendar) and if you do this you will then be able to view the events there. This is a snapshot of the events in the diocese at a moment in time, it doesn’t live update.
API for developers
We have an API that we can make available on request. It requires a password and the user to sign a usage agreement. Typically, Church of England dioceses use this to display events and churches in their diocese on their diocesan website. The API allows developers to choose from all the publicly available data for their diocese and choose what to display. This is only possible for people with coding knowledge. Contact us if you are a diocese who would like access to the API.
Example: Diocese in Europe Find a Church feature was built using the API from AChurchNearYou.com. Find a church | Diocese in Europe (anglican.org) They pulled the ‘building image’ ‘contact details’ ‘location’ and ‘facilities tag’ fields among others to display listings in the way they wanted.
Dioceses in the DC2 consortium also pull from the AChurchNearYou.com API for their websites: DC2 | ACNY Integration (churchedit.co.uk)
Getting access as a diocesan user
- Register at Sign Up - Accounts - AChurchNearYou.com
- Email support@achurchnearyou.zendesk.com and ask to be given diocesan access.
We will usually approve your access request within one working day - you'll get an email when you are approved. Please contact us if you think there has been a delay, at: cofe.io/SupportACNY
Once you have been given editor access, log in at Log in - Accounts - AChurchNearYou.com.
Once you've logged in, click Churches and Benefices on the top menu and you will see the demo churches and benefice listed.
Everything you need to know about how to edit is on the Editor Help Centre at cofe.io/EditorHelpACNY
As an editor you also have access to the Resource Hub, once you've logged in you'll see Resource Hub on the top menu.
The Resource Hub gives churches access to a wide range of free materials to use across their websites, social media, print and services.
We regularly update it with new content, including social media templates, stock photography, music tracks, customisable videos and campaign branding.
Support
We run regular training webinars for editors, find the next dates at cofe.io/WebinarACNY
If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to contact us at cofe.io/SupportACNY