Example: Create a Portal page on your ChurchDesk website

In this article, you'll learn how to create a beautiful portal page. In the example, we've made we're highlighting popular events from parishes within our portal to motivate visitors to explore similar events within the portal itself.

Note: To complete this guide we assume that you've already set up your portal (created categories and asked some of your parishes to link their categories to yours). If not then please begin by having a look at how to set up your portal_._

Let's begin!

Create portal plugins

To create a beautiful portal page, you should create a couple of portal plugins to show different types of events on your website. You can create two types of portal plugins; 'Portal search' and
'Event feed'.

Create your portal page

By now you should've created a couple of plugins. All you need to do now is copy the code of the plugin, which you can find within the 'Actions' button in the list of plugins. The code now simply needs to be pasted into your website.

Add portal plugins to your ChurchDesk website

When you want to add a portal plugin to your ChurchDesk website you need to first copy the plugin code. Now you need to navigate to your ChurchDesk website and create a new text view.

_Note: Text views allow you to enter code, such as the portal plugin code and thereby embed elements onto your website. This could also be used for youtube videos, Facebook feeds, etc.





Start by entering a title to your text view. If you want you can hide the title. This is a good idea if you're inserting the 'Portal search' plugin. Next, you should click the 'Source' button in the text editor. This allows you to insert your copied plugin code.

If you want you can add a background colour or maybe a background image (the portal search plugin looks really nice with a background image).

Now all you need to do is create more plugins. One plugin per text view and when you have created 3-4 you can add your text views to any or multiple pages. Congratulations, n_ow you're done!_

Add portal plugins to any website (not ChurchDesk)

As there are many different of creating websites outside of ChurchDesk, there's also many ways of adding a plugin to your website. Our best suggestion is therefore to read the instructions above in the "_Add portal plugins to your ChurchDesk website"_ and apply the same logic to your current website provider. If you're able to make it work, then please give us a call and we'll try to help you as much as we can.

FAQ

How do events appear in my event feed plugin?
Event feeds are basically able to show all events from all the parishes/churches that you've added to your portal. But based on what categories and locations you chose when creating your 'Event feed' plugin we only show those events that match those criteria.
What happens when I make changes to a plugin?
Any changes you make to your plugins will get updated within 15 seconds. You can therefore easily change the location, add one more category or change the colors. If you after 15 seconds are not seeing any change, then please refresh your page, and any changes should now be updated.

Updated on: 02/05/2023