Portal Modifications
You have direct control over several items on the Portal, and it's best to engage a SPoC to facilitate any changes. Be sure to review this information before making any changes to the Portal installation on your server.
Supported Modifications
There are several modifications that are supported. You may be able to do these changes yourself, but you may also request assistance from Support. If any changes are outside of your Support Agreement, a separate statement of work may be required.
- Skins: Additional Portal skins can be created and used if you have multiple websites or if you need to change the look/feel for different sections of your website. Also, changes to your existing skin may be needed to keep up with changes to the look/feel or navigation of your church's website.
- Content Pages: The Portal may be used as a Content Management System to create custom pages.
- Email Templates: Changes to your Portal email templates may be needed to better communicate with people who register for events, give online, or set up an account.
- Resource Files: Files that control the appearance of Contribution Statements, Background Check notices, Online Directory, and so on.
- Configurations: The Portal's Configuration Settings may need to be updated to enable/disable certain functions, change certain field labels or page names, or determine default values when data is added to MinistryPlatform due to action on the Portal. Configuration Settings are particularly important in the initial setup of the Portal.
Unsupported Modifications
There are some modifications that are not supported. In general, these are any modifications outside of the Portal skin file, like:
- Modifying stored procedures in the database that are used by the Portal pages.
- Modifying ASPX files in the Portal's IIS application.
- Modifying any files that cannot be edited or uploaded using the Portal Admin page.
- Adding any files to the Portal's IIS application outside of _DomainData.
- Adding custom redirects to any Portal pages.
For example, adding a block of text to your Online Giving page encouraging people not go into debt to give or to understand that the credit card gifts incur a percentage fee for the church to process.
Warning: If you make these modifications, we cannot support your Portal, and all Portal software updates will break or erase these modifications. Once a Portal update is deployed to your system, you will be responsible to remember and re-apply any of these custom modifications.
Hide Fields, Buttons, or Other Elements
In some cases, you may identify one or more fields, buttons, or other elements on portal pages that are not needed and should not be displayed to the end user. This should be done in the portal skin using CSS. This is typically accomplished using display:none.
Note: Thinking of moving your Portal to a different server? A SPoC should contact Support before moving the Portal.