Frequently Asked Questions
New Users Signup for your free Prayer Book
I apologize for the length of this Frequently Asked Questions, but the service has more than 50 options and features that can be customized by you, the webmaster. It is intended to give you a complete working knowledge of your prayer book and its capabilities, so you can get the most that it has to offer.
The FAQ is broken down into 15 sections to make it easier to find the answer to any question that you might have. Each section title is highlighted in blue and has a brief explanation of the section. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me at prayerbook@homewithgod.com.
Modify Prayer Book Features
Modify Your Personal Info
Delete/Block Entries From Book
Get HTML Code For Your Site
Mail All Prayer Book Entrants
Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses
Add/Edit Your Bad Word File
Make Your Prayer Book Ad FREE
Edit Your Mailing List
View/Edit Your Prayer Team
Email Your Prayer Team
View/Edit Request Log
Send Requests To Team
Account Statistics
Special Notices
Modify Prayer Book Features
All features that control the look of your prayer book are located on this page. After you have made the necessary changes, click on "Save Information" located at the bottom of the page. All changes will be made immediately to your book. If the new settings are not reflected on this page, you can refresh the page.
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Change the background color
Specify the background color for your page here. If you use an image for your background you should enter #FFFFFF
in this field in the event your image becomes broken. You may enter the color in three different formats. By color name ( i.e. red, white, or blue ), by hexadecimal value ( i.e. #FF0000, #FFFFFF, or #0000FF ), or by RGB value ( i.e. 255,0,0 255,255,255 or 0,0,255 ). We have also provided a color chart where you can obtain the hexadecimal value of 216 colors. Click here for Color Chart.
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Change the font color for the title of your book
Specify the color for your prayer book title here. Your title will appear at the top of all pages in your book. You may enter the color in three different formats. By color name ( i.e. red, white, or blue ), by hexadecimal value ( i.e. #FF0000, #FFFFFF, or #0000FF ), or by RGB value ( i.e. 255,0,0 255,255,255 or 0,0,255 ). We have also provided a color chart where you can obtain the hexadecimal value of 216 colors. Click here for Color Chart.
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Change the font color for the header of your book
Specify the color for the text in your prayer book header here. The header is located immediately to the right of the praying hands. You may enter the color in three different formats. By color name ( i.e. red, white, or blue ), by hexadecimal value ( i.e. #FF0000, #FFFFFF, or #0000FF ), or by RGB value ( i.e. 255,0,0 255,255,255 or 0,0,255 ). We have also provided a color chart where you can obtain the hexadecimal value of 216 colors. Click here for Color Chart.
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Change the font color for the links in your book
Specify the color for all links in your prayer book header here. You may enter the color in three different formats. By color name ( i.e. red, white, or blue ), by hexadecimal value ( i.e. #FF0000, #FFFFFF, or #0000FF ), or by RGB value ( i.e. 255,0,0 255,255,255 or 0,0,255 ). We have also provided a color chart where you can obtain the hexadecimal value of 216 colors. Click here for Color Chart.
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Change the font color of the text in your book
Specify the color for all text other than then title, header, and links in your prayer book header here. You may enter the color in three different formats. By color name ( i.e. red, white, or blue ), by hexadecimal value ( i.e. #FF0000, #FFFFFF, or #0000FF ), or by RGB value ( i.e. 255,0,0 255,255,255 or 0,0,255 ). We have also provided a color chart where you can obtain the hexadecimal value of 216 colors. Click here for Color Chart.
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Activating the Prayer Partners feature
The prayer book allows you the option of starting and maintaining your own prayer team. If this feature is turned on, visitors will have the option to join your team at the top of all of your prayer book pages and at the time of submitting a request. To activate the feature select Yes. You will receive an email notice when a member joins your team
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Setting mail delivery to Prayer Partners
If you choose to activate the Prayer Partners feature, select whether you would like for the request to go to the team members immediately after a request is submitted or if you would like for the request to be held until you decide to send the requests to members. If a visitor submits an urgent request, the request will be immediately sent to the team members, even if you have the option set to delay the sending of prayer requests. A maximum of 100 requests may be held and then sent to team members.
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Setting email notification of request added to your book
The email notification, if turned On will send an email to you each time a prayer request is made to your book. The notification will not be sent to your team members if that feature is activated. However, if a visitor submits an urgent request, you will receive the request regardless of notification being turned On or Off.
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Instructions and information for Prayer Partners
If you choose to activate the Prayer Partners feature, add any information that you would like to have on the prayer partner signup page. This could be requirements of the team member, information on what the prospective member could expect if joining your team, or anything you would like to add here. You may also use html tags and include images here. If you use html tags, DO NOT use any quotation marks in your tags. This information will also be sent in the Welcome email when the new member joins your team.
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Allow/Disallow html tags in your book
Allowing the use of html tags can at times hinder the appearance of your book, should the person submitting the request use bad html code or offensive colors or images. I do not allow tags in my own personal book for this reason. However, you can choose to remove all html tags, remove only image tags, or to allow all tags that a visitor enters. If a visitor enters any of the tags that you have disallowed, they will be stripped from the request before the entry is added to the book.
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Add a background image to your book
If you would like to have a background image added to your book, enter the url of your image in the text box. You must enter the full url to the image (i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/images/picture.gif). You may use .gif or .jpg files. If you use a .jpg or .gif image, the file type must be in lower case. Our server does not recognize .JPG or .GIF files. If you do not want a background image for your book, type none in the text box.
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Add a midi or wave file to your book
If you would like to have background sound added to your book, enter the url of your sound file in the text box. You must enter the full url to the file (i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/amazinggrace.mid). You may use .mid or .wav files. If you use a sound file, the file type must be in lower case. Our server does not recognize .MID or .WAV files. If you do not want background sound for your book, type none in the text box.
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Modify Your Personal Info
All your personal information is located on this page. From this page, you can change your email address, the title of your web site, title of your book, where you want your visitors to return to on your site after viewing your book or sending a request, and whatever you would like to have in the header area of your book. After you have made the necessary changes, click on "Save Information" located at the bottom of the page. All changes will be made immediately to your book.
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Change your name for owner of book
Your name will be used in all of the requests sent to your prayer team, if you have the feature activated, and any mail that you might send out to the people that have submitted a prayer request and to mailings sent to your prayer team. Enter what you would like to be addressed as in your emails.
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Change your email address
It is very important to keep your email address current and accurate. Your email address is used to send you notifications of prayer requests, urgent requests, and is needed for your prayer team to keep in touch with you. Please remember to keep your address accurate. All undeliverable email will be forwarded to HomewithGod.com. We will make three attempts to contact you. If we are unable to contact you, we will be forced to delete your account. Once an account is deleted, all requests and team member information is deleted and we will not be able to retrieve it.
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Change the url of your web site
A return link to your web site is on the top of every page of your prayer book and used in the email sent that is sent automatically by the service. Enter the url of the web page that you want your visitors to return to.
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Change the title of your web site
The title of your web site is used as the return link to your web site. Enter what you to appear on the link. DO NOT use any punctuation, with the exception of an apostrophe, in your title. It will cause your email to be undeliverable and can cause your prayer book to not work properly.
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Change the title of your book
Enter what you would like for your book to be called. The title of your book will also be used in email sent to your team members and any email sent by you from the administration panel. DO NOT use a comma, colon, or semicolon in the title of your book. These will cause your email to be undeliverable.
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Change the header for your book
The header of your book is located immediately to the right of the praying hands on the top of all pages of your prayer book. You can put whatever you want to in this area. It will accept all html tags and image tags. DO NOT use any quotation marks in your text or in any tags that you might use.
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Add special links to your book
You may enter any special links to other areas on your web site or to other websites in the header of your book. This is useful if you want to direct your visitors to maybe a statement of your faith or a devotional area in your web site. It is used more effectively if you make it the last line in your header and separated from the rest of your header with a line break.
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Delete/Block Entries From Book
If you have an entry that is damaging your book or is not appropriate you can delete it from your book. In addition, you can also ban the visitor's IP address and email address from your book. If you mistakenly ban someone, you can easily remove the ban on the Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses page of your administration panel.
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Delete entry and ban user's IP address
The remote IP address and host address are recorded on all entries made to your prayer book. If a visitor is causing a continuous problem with your book, go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete & Ban IP" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your book and the IP address is banned from adding entries. If you mistakenly ban someone, you can easily remove the ban on the Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses page of your administration panel. Once an entry has been deleted from your book, it cannot be later retrieved.
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Delete entry and ban user's email address
If a visitor is causing a continuous problem with your book and you do not want to ban the IP address, go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete & Ban E-Mail" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your book and the IP address and email address are banned from adding entries. This is the least effective of all the bans because the visitor can submit a request using a fake email address. If you mistakenly ban someone, you can easily remove the ban on the Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses page of your administration panel. Once an entry has been deleted from your book, it cannot be later retrieved.
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Delete entry only
If you have an entry that is causing problems with your book or is not appropriate, you can delete that entry from the book. To delete an entry go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete Only" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your book. Once an entry has been deleted from your book, it cannot be later retrieved. If you have the prayer partner feature turned on and also have the delayed requests activated, you will also have to go to the View/Edit Request Log and remove it from your log if you do not want your prayer team members to receive the request.
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Get HTML Code For Your Site
There are two different codes that you may use for your prayer book. The first code will use our View and Post a Prayer Request buttons. If you already have your own buttons that you would like to use, choose the second code and insert the url to your buttons. You may add these codes to as many pages on your web site as you like.
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Selecting the code to use our Prayer Book buttons
To use our buttons for your prayer book select the first set of codes from your "Welcome Email" or from your administration panel. Highlight the entire code and then copy and paste the html code to your page where you want them to appear. The buttons will be centered to the page or table cell that they are inserted in. Do not alter the codes in any way, unless you are certain of what you are doing. If you want the buttons to be right or left aligned to your page or table cell, add the codes to accomplish this immediately above and below our html codes. You may add these codes to as many pages on your web site as you like.
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Use your own buttons or links for the book
To use your buttons for your prayer book select the second set of codes from your "Welcome Email" or from your administration panel. Highlight the entire code and then copy and paste the html code to Notepad or whatever editing software that you use. Find Your Sign Button URL in the code and replace that with the full url to your button to Post a Prayer Request. Then find Your View Button URL in the code and replace that with the full url to your button to View Prayer Requests. When finished copy and paste the html code to your page where you want them to appear. Your buttons will be centered to the page or table cell that they are inserted in. If you want the buttons to be right or left aligned to your page or table cell, add the codes to accomplish this immediately above and below our html codes. Do not alter the codes in any other way unless you are certain of what you are doing. You may add these codes to as many pages on your web site as you like.
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Add the HTML Code to recruit Prayer Team members
If you have the Prayer Partner feature activated and would like to place links on other areas of your web site, click on the View Prayer Request button. Once you are at your prayer book copy the url from the address bar of your browser. It will look something like this: /cgi-bin/prayerbook/multi.pl?31935968703311:16:0. Replace multi with partner. You can now use this address in a text link or use it to link an image that you have made and it will take them directly to your prayer team signup and information page.
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Mail All Prayer Book Entrants
Using this feature will send email to everyone that has added a request to your prayer book. If you only need to email individual people, go to Edit Your Mailing List and click on the individual person's name. All mail sent using HomewithGod Prayer Books uses html (Rich Text Format) mail. You can use all html and image tags in your email to have them appear as a web page. If you are not skilled in html and would like to send a plain mail this can be done by adding <br> everywhere you want a new line to start. If you want to start a new paragraph add a <p> at the beginning of the paragraph and a </p> at the end of the paragraph.
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Add a subject to the email
Adding a subject is required when sending email. Enter whatever you would like to appear as the subject.
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Add a personal greeting to the mail
The personal greeting is optional when sending email. If you add a personal greeting (i.e. Dear or Hello) this will appear before the name of the person receiving the email. If you do not want to use this option, leave this text box empty.
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Preview your message before sending
It is always a good idea to preview your email before sending to avoid errors. To preview a message before you send it, click on "Preview" at the bottom of the page and the email will appear at the top of the page. Your email will look like this when sent to your mailing list. If you need to make changes, scroll down the page and enter any necessary changes and click on "Preview" again. Continue this until you are satisfied with the results. When you are satisfied with the results, click on "Send Email". Be patient. DO NOT click on "Send Email" more than one time. The time needed to send your email will vary depending on how many people are in your mailing list. After your mail has been sent, you will be returned to the main page of your administration panel. DO NOT refresh this page! If you do the email will be sent again!
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Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses
If a person is damaging your prayer book by adding unnecessary or inappropriate entries you can block them from adding them again. This is not a 100% solution if they are determined on continuing their mischief, but it can do the trick by slowing them down and making it harder to add entries. Hopefully, they will become discouraged and go on to other things.
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Add an IP address to be blocked
To block an IP address, look in the Delete/Block Entries From Book and get their IP address, then enter that address in the IP text box and click on "Block". The IP will now be visible in the text box below. This is not 100% effective because many ISP's no longer use static IP's. To get around this you may use wildcards in your addresses. For instance if the IP address is 209.245.44.28, you can enter 209.245.44.* and that will prevent them from logging off of their ISP service and logging in again. The last set of digits in their IP will most likely be different, but the * will block any IP that they now get. The drawback to this is, by using a wildcard you will ban everyone else using that IP address.
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Add an email address to be blocked
This is the least effective way of banning a person. If you have banned an address, they can always enter a fake address while submitting an entry. But it will work some of the time. To block an email address, look in the Delete/Block Entries From Book and get their email address then enter it in the Email text box and click on "Block". The email address will now appear in the text box below and that address will no longer be able to add an entry in your book.
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Remove an IP address that is currently blocked
If you make a mistake while banning an IP address it can easily be removed.. Click the erroneous IP in the Current IP List text box, it will now be highlighted. Next, click on the "Delete IP Address" button and the ban on that IP address will now be removed.
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Remove an email address that is currently blocked
If you make a mistake while banning an email address it can easily be removed. Click the erroneous email address in the Current Email List text box, it will now be highlighted. Next, click on the "Delete Email Address" button and the ban on that email address will now be removed.
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Add/Edit Your Bad Word File
This feature will keep mischievous souls from entering bad words into your prayer book. If a word that you have designated as a "Bad Word" is entered in a prayer request, it will be stripped from the request and whatever word that you have designated as the "Replacement" will be substituted in its place.
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Add a bad word and its replacement
To designate a bad word, enter the bad word in the Bad Word text box then enter the word that you want to replace the bad word with in the Replacement text box and click on "Add Word". The bad word and its replacement word will appear in the text box to the right.
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Remove/Change a bad word and its replacement
If you make a mistake while entering your bad words or you want to change its replacement word click on the mistake in the Bad Words - Replacements text box the word and its replacement will now be highlighted. Next, click on the "Delete Word" button below the text box and the word will be removed from your files. However, any bad words that are entered in your prayer book will still be there. So it is a good idea to add any bad words before they are given the opportunity to be entered.
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Make Your Prayer Book Ad FREE
A Christian or family friendly banner is displayed at the top of all pages in your administration panel, on all pages in your book and in the different emails that are sent out. If you should see an unfriendly banner anywhere on the system, please note if it is from a banner exchange and click on it and copy the url of that banner and immediately forward that information to prayerbook@homewithgod.com and we will take the appropriate action to have it removed. You can at anytime have all banners and footers containing the inspirational quotes removed from the administration area and your prayer book for only $6.00 per year. All major credit cards and debit cards are accepted and the banners and footers will be immediately removed. You will then seen additional links where you can put whatever you want to in the area where the banners and footers are located. At this time, we have not been able to remove the banners from the email but are working on having those removed also when you purchase an Ad Free Book.
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Edit Your Mailing List
You can view all of the people and their email addresses in your mailing list from this page. If you have a person request to be removed from your mailing list, find their name and email address and click on the "Delete" button to the right of their address. The email address will be immediately removed from your mailing list. In the very near future the people receiving email from you will have the ability to automatically be removed from your list by clicking on a link and you will also have the ability to edit any erroneous email addresses. Watch the "Special Notices" area for when this is available.
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View/Edit Your Prayer Team
This option will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated. You can view all of your prayer team members' names and their email addresses in your mailing list from this page. If you have a member request to be removed from your team or if you would like to remove a member, find their name and email address and click on the "Delete" button to the right of their address. The email address will be immediately removed from your mailing list. In the very near future the members receiving prayer requests from your book will have the ability to automatically be removed from the team by clicking on a link and you will also have the ability to edit any erroneous email addresses. Watch the "Special Notices" area for when this is available.
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Email Your Prayer Team
This option will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated. Using this feature will send email to all your prayer team members. If you only need to email individual members, go to View/Edit Your Prayer Team and click on the individual member's name. All mail sent using HomewithGod Prayer Books uses html (Rich Text Format) mail. You can use all html and image tags in your email to have them appear as a web page. If you are not skilled in html and would like to send a plain mail this can be done by adding <br> everywhere you want a new line to start. If you want to start a new paragraph add a <p> at the beginning of the paragraph and a </p> at the end of the paragraph.
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Add a subject to the email
Adding a subject is required when sending email to your team members. Enter whatever you would like to appear as the subject.
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Add a personal greeting to the mail
The personal greeting is optional when sending email. If you add a personal greeting (i.e. Dear or Hello) this will appear before the name of the member receiving the email. If you do not want to use this option, leave this text box empty.
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Preview your message before sending
It is always a good idea to preview your email before sending to avoid errors. To preview a message before you send it, click on "Preview" at the bottom of the page and the email will appear at the top of the page. Your email will look like this when sent to your mailing list. If you need to make changes, scroll down the page and enter any necessary changes and click on "Preview" again. Continue this until you are satisfied with the results. When you are satisfied with the results, click on "Send Email". Be patient. DO NOT click on "Send Email" more than one time. The time needed to send your email will vary depending on how many members are in your mailing list. After your mail has been sent, you will be returned to the main page of your administration panel. DO NOT refresh this page! If you do the email will be sent again!
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View/Edit Request Log
This option will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated. It is a good idea to review all requests prior to sending them to your members. You have the option of deleting an individual request and banning the IP or email address of that request prior to sending them to your team members. Deleting a request from your log does not delete the entry from your prayer book. If you wish to also delete the request from your prayer book go to Delete/Block Entries From Book and delete the entry to remove it from your book.
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Delete entry and ban user's IP address from the request log
The remote IP address and host address are recorded on all entries made to your request log. Review all request prior to sending them to your members. If you want to delete the entry and you do not want to ban the IP address, go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete & Ban IP" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your book and the IP address is banned from adding entries. If you mistakenly ban someone, you can easily remove the ban by going to Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses in your administration panel. Once an entry has been deleted from your book, it cannot be later retrieved.
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Delete entry and ban user's email address from the request log
If you want to delete the entry and you do not want to ban the IP address, go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete & Ban E-Mail" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your book and the IP address is banned from adding entries. If you mistakenly ban someone, you can easily remove the ban by going to Block Visitors IP & Email Addresses page in your administration panel. Once an entry has been deleted from your logs, it cannot be later retrieved. Deleting the entry here only removes it from your request log, it does not remove the entry from your book.
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Delete entry only from the request log
If you have an entry that you do not want to send to your team members, you can delete that entry from the request log prior to sending. To delete an entry go to the problem entry and click on the radio button to the right of "Delete Only" then click on "Submit". The entry is now deleted from your request log. Once an entry has been deleted from your request log, it cannot be later retrieved.
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Send Requests To Team
This option will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated and only if you have requests in your log file that needs to be sent. Clicking on this button will send all of the request that have been delayed to your members. Be patient. DO NOT click on "Send Mail" more than one time. The time needed to send your email will vary depending on how many members are in your mailing list. After your mail has been sent, the page will refresh and you see the message "Requests sent to members: near the top of the page. DO NOT refresh this page! If you do the email will be sent again! If you attempt to send requests to your team and there are no requests in the logs, you will get an error message stating "No requests logged" and your team members will receive an email without any requests.
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Account Statistics
The account stats that are visible to you depend on the different features of the book activated. All stats are in real time and updated each time any given activity occurs.
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Date Joined
The Date Joined has no significance on the service or program. It is only shown for you to see how long you have had your prayer book.
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Mailing List Total
This is the total of addresses in your mailing list. Duplicate email addresses are not added to the list to avoid sending more than one email if the visitor has made more than one request using the same email address.
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Number of Entries
This is total amount of request in your book. It will increase and decrease as new requests are added and old or problem requests are deleted.
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Number of Visitors
This is the total of visitors that have viewed your prayer book.
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Total Prayer Partners
This statistic will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated. It is the total of all members in your prayer team.
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Total Delayed Requests
This statistic will only be visible if you have the Prayer Partners feature activated and you have the requests set to be delayed until you decide to send them to your members. After you have sent the requests to your members, this number will return to zero. It is a good idea to keep a watch on this number to avoid sending too many request to your members at one time. The maximum numbers that can be sent is 100. If you have more than 100 requests in your logs, only the first 100 will be sent. The requests exceeding 100 WILL NOT be sent and deleted from your logs after the maximum numbers are sent.
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Special Notices
The Special Notices area is used by HomewithGod Prayer Books to keep you informed of any important information related to your prayer book and to let you know about other exciting features and resources that we have added to HomewithGod Christian Search. Be sure to see if new notices have been added each time you log in to your administration panel.
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