Now’s the Time to Print Your MPGA Report

The Ministry Partner Giving Analysis Report

Are you preparing MPD goals for the coming year?  One thing you should do is print your MPGA report before February 7th, even if you won’t look it over right away.  You can see this report any time in the Staff Services area on the Staff Web for a detailed look at your ministry partners (with your actual reimbursement expenses to help you in your planning for next year and also lots of helpful graphs about distribution, frequencies, and more).

Why You Need It Now

I can think of two times when you might want to download a hard copy:

1. any time before taking an extended MPD trip (see below about MPD trips) or
2. after the January 10th paycheck and before February 7th, when the report reflects a complete year.

The MPGA report is a moving window into your current MPD information on our servers for any twelve-month period.  Therefore, between the January 10th and February 10th paychecks is the perfect time to get a copy of your MPGA report.  During this time period your report will have all your data for the previous year.  Why not make it a habit to get your own copy of the report every year in mid-January? (I have all our MPD reports on file in an MPD notebook; I can compare how our account looked this past year to any previous year if we ever needed to.)

How to Find It

You’ll find the report under “shortcuts” in the lower left corner of the Staff Services home page.  Click on “MPGA” to read your report, download it, and/or print it.

What to Do with It

The report is actually a collection of reports.  After you have your MPGA, you might flip through to the second report on frequencies to see if you need to encourage any donors to sign up for EFT.  Also, look through the lost donors report to see if you need to contact anyone.

I mostly use the fourth report every year (the report sorted by percentages).  Because 15 to 20% of our total donors provide 50% of our annual income; I save these names in a group in TntMPD. I also have a group for the additional 10% who provide the remaining 80% of our income.  I recommend doing this because you can’t possibly keep up with several hundred people equally.  (Learn how to create Saved Groups in TntMPD. )

While you’re looking at your MPGA report online, notice the drop-down menu in the green bar across the top of the page.  Click on the drop-down arrow where it says “MPGA” and select the Thirteen Month Report for January 10th.  Download or print this report, too, because this report is a great supplement to the MPGA, especially the summary page, and will give you a good overall look at the previous year. (It’s not so critical when you print the January 10th report because you can retrieve it later, but why not print it now and keep the two reports together?)

NOTES:

• MPD Trips:   (The following link will work if you are signed in to the Staff Web.)  Go to the 8-week plan for MPD trip planning for details about using your MPGA report to prepare for a trip.
• This link should take you to the 13 Month Report.
• Click here for more ideas to use TntMPD.

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Categories and Tags for Blogs, Part One

No matter whether you read and/or write blogs, knowing something about categories and tags can help you.   (Part two of this post will be written more for readers of posts, but still of interest to bloggers.  If you’re not a blogger, you can skip to the last part of this article.)

For bloggers and web-designers

When I started blogging I didn’t have a clear idea of the difference between categories and tags.  This article, “Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog,” from Problogger will help you to get the big picture.  I recommend you read it to learn the difference and then return to this post.  I like to think of categories as the table of contents for my blog and the tags as if they are part of the index in the back of a book.

Welcome back!  I hope that explanation was helpful.

Navigation

As the Problogger article states, preferably use just a few categories and also reflect that in your navigation. Our family/ministry site uses these two principles (see MikeAndSus.Org).  You’ll notice pages are across the very top of the blog.  The categories are under the blog title and also have a dropdown feature for sub-categories.  Also see Michael Hyatt’s popular blog for another similar structure.  (Depending on your blogging platform, you should be able to get the look of a website with the use of categories.  Read more and also find additional Campus Crusade staff blogs that look like websites.)

The structure for Mashable is a good example of how to use many categories when you have to; their categories are easy to navigate.

Your Posts

You should be able to decide what categories and what tags to use for every post you publish.  The category you choose should reflect your navigation.  Your tags can help your readers find more of your posts about the same  subject and also draw in new readers who are searching for these keywords on the internet. (Read “Best Tags and Keywords for Your Blog.”)

I disagree with Problogger that a blog post should only always use one category. Occasionally, I like to add one or two more categories to some of my posts.  For instance, if I wrote about our daughter sharing her faith, I would put the post in two categories: “how to share your faith” and “Jenn”.  A family friend may be interested in posts about Jenn and her news while another reader is checking out my posts on sharing your faith as a way of life.  (If your blog has a featured slide show across the top, you’ll need to have just one category for your post until the post is no longer featured.)

I recently spent many hours re-structuring eQuipping for eMinistry (e4e) using categories. Ideally, I would have spent time thinking through the tags, the categories, and the structure when I started e4e, so I hope this post is especially helpful to beginning bloggers to incorporate categories and tags properly in your new blog as you start out.   (I still have some “cleaning up” to do in categories and tags.)

Stay Tuned

Part two is for bloggers and readers and will cover using categories and tags to:

• create a partial feed from a blog to an RSS reader (such as posts about productivity or leadership only instead of all the posts on Michael Hyatt’s blog)
• do better searches on a site
• bring more readers to your blog
• get the most out of the content on e4e

Part two will also present some uses for multiple categories and tags.

NOTES: 

• Learn more about  e4e’s categories and tags on the Get Started page.
• The tag image is available from Wikimedia Commons.

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When Photos are TOO Big

Unless you’re shooting pictures professionally, your digital camera’s photos are most likely stored in jpg format and are probably over  2MB in size.  (Don’t worry about that number.  All  you have to know is, GB is enormous, MB is still very large, and KB is manageable).

How Large Photos Affect What You’re Doing

If you use your photo, as is, from your camera, you may experience the following:

1. The photo  will clog up your storage for emails or may contribute to filling up your friend’s inbox.  It seems, though, that email providers are giving us more room for our bloated correspondence (I’m guilty, too.  My inbox is too full!)
2. When you use that photo in a newsletter and send it to your printer, it groans under the weight of all that digital information and you impatiently wonder why it takes so long to get your letters printed.
3. Over a long period of time blogging happily with multiple photos per post, you could conceivably use up your media storage for your blog.  If you want plenty of room for photos and videos, compressed photos will take up less room and, even more importantly, will load more quickly for your readers on dial-up.

Compress Your Photos

So, you’ll want to compress your photos–save a renamed copy of this compressed file or you’ll replace your original with a smaller version!

• I use Windows Explorer to find the photo.  
• Right click on the image and choose “open with”  Microsoft Office Picture Manager and then follow these steps.  (The smallest compression is “for email messages.”  I never use it since it’s so small.)
• I have a separate photos folder to place my compressed images.  This forces me to remember to SAVE AS a new image so I don’t tromp on top of the original.

If you have problems with compression your photos may look boxy.  This orchid shows successive compressions from left to right.  So, too much of a good thing resulted in the pixely look on the right side; however, jpg files are designed to handle compression pretty well if you don’t do too much.

What do you recommend for compression (especially since my answer is only for Microsoft Office users?)
Do you pay attention to the size of images you intend to use from the intenet before you download them?  (Read about Wallpaper below).

For more advanced information: Lossy and lossless compression

And a Bonus Word about Wallpaper

If you’re searching for striking wallpaper for your computer’s desktop, you’ll want a large image, but most of the time you don’t need something so big except to maintain the quality of your original photographs. (Don’t replace an original with a compressed file.  Can you tell I’ve done that accidentally?)

The photo of the anemone was taken by my son, Ben, at Sea World.  I cleaned up reflections on the glass with free photoshopping software and made a nice 65 kb size copy. Right-click on the above anemone and then right-click here.  You’ll see my anemone photo is a nice size for blog posts and the second anemone photo is large for you to use for wallpaper.  My small image would look boxy when expanded to fill your monitor screen.

How to Create “Back to Top” on a Page

This tutorial will help you create a “Back to Top” link on a page in two easy steps, using named anchors.  (Don’t worry, it’s not that difficult.  If Emmeline du Faur could scale Mount Cook in New Zealand, you can do this!) You’ll be able to “jump” from linked text at the bottom of a web page to return to the top of the page. Hopefully, your blogging platform allows you to write HTML when you need to.

You can see a “Back to Top” feature on Our Blogrolls page.  The A to Z list on the page is a more complex version of the same type of code, which uses anchors or bookmarks.  (I explain how to code an A to Z list here.)

Step One: Make sure you are on the HTML version of your post and type this anchor code at the very beginning of  your blog.

<a name=”top”></a>

Step Two: Type this code at the bottom of the page:

<a href=”#top”>BACK TO TOP</a>

That’s all there is to it!

You’ll notice, only the words, “BACK TO TOP” show up for your reader.  All the instructions are invisible to them.  Click the  “Back to Top” link at the bottom of this post to see how it works.  If you were able to follow my directions on your post, this will look and function exactly like I have it working here.

You can also use this same coding concept for other reasons to have links within a page.

BACK TO TOP

How to Make A to Z Links for Your Blog or Website

Do you have a lengthy list on one of your blog posts or web pages? Would you like an A to Z list similar to this list of colors to help your readers move down the page easily?

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A List of Colors

Aqua
Blue
Crimson
Green
Hazel
Ivory
Jade
Lavender
Maroon
Mauve
Olive
Orange
Orchid
Sapphire
Silver
Taupe
White

Click on “M” or “S” in the A to Z list and see what happens. (You can get an idea of a more complex use of the A to Z list on Our Blogrolls page.)

Hopefully, your blog has an option for you to write HTML (a computer language).  This tutorial will tell you how, using named anchors.  Don’t worry, it’s not that difficult.  You’ll be able to “jump” from a linked letter in your A to Z heading to the A to Z named anchors in your listed items. In the above, Maroon is the named anchor for M and Mauve is just part of the list.

Step One: Paste this A to Z code in your blog (if you have an option to write HTML for your post) to get the A to Z heading with links for all twenty-six letters.

<a href=”#A”>A</a> <a href=”#B”>B</a> <a href=”#C”>C</a> <a href=”#D”>D</a> <a href=”#E”>E</a> <a href=”#F”>F</a> <a href=”#G”>G</a> <a href=”#H”>H</a> <a href=”#I”>I</a> <a href=”#J”>J</a> <a href=”#K”>K</a><a href=”#L”>L</a> <a href=”#M”>M</a> N <a href=”#O”>O</a> <a href=”#P”>P</a> <a href=”#Q”>Q</a> <a href=”#R”>R</a> <a href=”#S”>S</a> <a href=”#T”>T</a> <a href=”#U”>U</a> <a href=”#V”>V</a> <a href=”#W”>W</a> <a href=”#X”>X</a> <a href=”#Y”>Y</a> <a href=”#Z”>Z</a>

Step Two: You probably don’t need a link for every letter as in the color list example.  If you don’t want to start with A or don’t have an X Y Z, for example, just replace the parts of the HTML code you don’t need.   You would probably start links with the first letter that  does not appear on “page one” of your list.   For instance, you would replace <a href=”#A”>A</a> with A and <a href=”#X”>X</a> <a href=”#Y”>Y</a> <a href=”#Z”>Z</a> with X Y Z in your A to Z link heading.

Step Three: Paste this code in front of the appropriate members of your list that are going to be the named anchors and change G to whatever the letter is that you need for the named anchor:

</a><a name=”G”>

Step Four:

Then, you will need </a> at the end of each named anchor to indicate the end of the link destination.

This is the HTML code for the color list to help clarify the steps for you.

This is the HTML code for the A to Z heading with links to only the needed letters:

A B C D E F <a href=”#G”>G</a> <a href=”#H”>H</a> <a href=”#I”>I</a> <a href=”#J”>J</a> K <a href=”#L”>L</a> <a href=”#M”>M</a> N <a href=”#O”>O</a> P Q R <a href=”#S”>S</a> <a href=”#T”>T</a> U V <a href=”#W”>W</a> X Y Z

This is the HTML code for the color list with its named anchors:

Aqua
Blue
Crimson
<a name=”G”>Green</a>
</a><a name=”H”>Hazel</a>
</a><a name=”I”>Ivory</a>
</a><a name=”J”>Jade</a>
</a><a name=”L”>Lavender</a>
</a><a name=”M”>Maroon</a>
Mauve
<a name=”O”>Olive</a>
Orange
Orchid
<a name=”S”>Sapphire</a>
Silver
<a name=”T”>Taupe</a>
<a name=”W”>White</a>