TentmakerHelp

For the pastor: your safety net

On this page

You are the Owner of your church's site. You do not have to watch it day to day. This page explains what could go wrong, how little a volunteer can really damage, and how to put things right. It is short on purpose.

The idea behind it

Tentmaker is built for churches that rely on volunteers. The design rule is: an Editor can write and publish, but can never delete. Almost every change an Editor makes can be undone. The few that cannot are listed below, so you know exactly where the edges are.

What an unhappy or careless volunteer can do

An Editor can:

  • Change the words and pictures on any page, and publish them. Visitors would see the change at once.
  • Take a page, or a blog post, off the site (Unpublish).
  • Change or empty the staff list, events and missionaries, which save live.
  • Hide a missionary.
  • Upload pictures and videos.
  • Make and publish shared blocks. A shared block appears on every page that uses it, so a careless change can show up in many places.
  • Choose a page's layout, and fill in a page's own sidebar.
  • Place an embed from a site that is already on your allowed list.
  • Until a Manager publishes a menu for the first time, the Show in the menu tick on each page controls what is in the menu.

An Editor cannot:

  • Delete anything for good: pages, posts, people, events, pictures, videos or shared blocks.
  • Open Settings, Look and feel, Templates, Menu, Sidebar, Custom CSS, Embeds, Redirects, Modules or Domain.
  • Invite anyone, remove anyone or change anyone's role.
  • See anyone's email address.
  • Close the site, or download a copy of it.
  • Add a script or any code to a page. Everything an Editor types is cleaned, and the public pages run no script of their own.

A Manager can do everything an Editor can, plus delete things, change the look and settings, and invite or remove Editors and other Managers. A Manager cannot touch an Owner, change their own role, or manage the domain or the site's closing. Keep the number of Managers small.

Which mistakes can be undone

Easy to undo, because Tentmaker keeps every version:

  • A page that was changed or blanked: open the page, open History, find the version you want and press Restore, then Publish.
  • A shared block that was changed: its own History works the same way.
  • The menu, the sidebar and custom CSS: each has a Version history with Restore.
  • A page that was unpublished: open it and press Publish.

Not undone by Tentmaker:

  • A change to a staff member, an event, a missionary or a blog post. These have no version history, so an edit replaces the old words. If it matters, ask the person who made the change what it said before.
  • Anything deleted for good by a Manager or Owner. Deleting a page deletes its history too.

In an emergency, the people who run Tentmaker keep database backups for a limited time. Restoring from one is their job, not yours, and it affects the whole system. Do not count on it. Prevention is better: few Managers, and Editors for everyone else.

How to see who did what

  • On a page, open History. Each version shows the time and the Who. Shared blocks, the menu, the sidebar and custom CSS show the same.
  • On the Overview, Recently edited shows the latest pages, who edited them and when.
  • Open Activity in the left menu to read everything your team has done, newest first, with who did it and when. You can filter by person or by kind of change, and each line has an Open link to the page or screen it is about. Managers can read it too; editors cannot.

The Activity screen

Activity needs no email: it is the record Tentmaker keeps of changes to the site, in plain words. Small autosaves are left out so the important things are not buried. Each line says who, what and when.

Safety-net emails

You do not have to watch the site. Under Settings, the Safety-net emails section controls what Tentmaker tells the owners. Only an owner can change it; managers can read it.

  • Email the owners right away about risky changes is on to begin with. You are emailed when someone who is not an owner deletes something, when people are removed or their roles change, when a manager or owner is invited, when the template or the site-wide sidebar, menu or footer changes, when custom CSS is published, when an embedded website is allowed, when the custom domain or the church's name, language or timezone changes, when someone hides the whole site from search engines (or turns that back on), and when many redirects are added or removed at once. The email names the person, says what happened and when, links to the screen, and says how to undo it.
  • Email the owners one summary each morning is off to begin with. It arrives at about 7 in the morning, your church's time, only on days something changed, and lists who published, took down or restored pages and who changed posts and events.
  • Which owners get them lets each owner turn the emails on or off for themselves. Every email also has a link that turns them off for that one owner without signing in.

When one person does the same thing many times in a few minutes, such as deleting a page's worth of blocks, you get one email with a count, and no owner gets more than 20 emails a day. If you are the only owner and you did something yourself, you are not emailed about it. Nothing in these emails shows what a page says.

How to remove a person

  1. Open Members in the left menu.
  2. Find the person. Press Remove beside their name.
  3. Confirm. It says "Removed from the team."

They lose access at once. Their permission is checked every time they ask for anything, so they are locked out without waiting. What they wrote stays on the site. If you want it changed, edit it yourself or ask a Manager.

If the person is a Manager, their open invitations stop working as well.

If the person is another Owner, you can remove them too. A church always keeps one Owner, so you cannot remove the last one.

Protect your own sign-in

Tentmaker signs people in by emailed link. Anyone who can open your email can sign in as you. So protect your email account: a strong password and, if you can, two-step sign-in.

Plan for the future too. If you ever step down as pastor, make the new person an Owner first, then remove yourself. A church can never be left without an Owner.

Things only you can do

  • Make or remove another Owner.
  • Manage the custom domain (see Domain).
  • Download a copy of everything the site holds. Download my site is in the left menu and in Settings. See Download my site. The other Owners are told by email when you ask for one and when you take it.
  • Close the site. Close this site is at the bottom of Settings. Download your site first: Download my site is a plain link on that screen, and it does not stop you from closing. It takes the site offline at once and then permanently deletes every page and its history, every blog post, the team page, events and photos, the logo, the custom domain, and everyone's access. You must type the church's name to confirm. It cannot be undone. If you only want to take a page down, unpublish it.

Where to read more