Equip the Faithful has come a long way since we started this project just over a year ago. Today, we will take a little time to highlight all of the great features and tools we've assembled for you guys.
We want to make sure everyone is aware of all the benefits available to you on our website and I'll try my best to explain how everything works. With that let's get started!
Feature Walkthrough Video
Hello. Thanks for joining us. Today I will be demonstrating the features available to users of the Equip the Faithful website with a video walkthrough. I'm doing this demonstration on an iPhone, so you are seeing the mobile site. The desktop browser experience will be slightly different, but all of the main site features are available either way you access the site.
Cookie Selection
The first thing you see when the website loads for the first time is the cookie selection menu. I highly recommend that you tap "Accept" when prompted. Rest assured, we do not store or track your information for any purpose other than for basic site functionality. Some third-party cookies are required for integration with our payment processor and with YouTube. If you decline cookies, videos embedded in our posts will not be available to you. If you wish to change your cookie selection at any point, this can be easily done through the site menu as I'll demonstrate later.
Information Panel
After making your cookies selection, you will see the home page. What you see here will be slightly different depending on whether you are logged in with a member account or not. Right now, I am not logged in, so I see an invitation to join the Equip the Faithful community and an overview of how many posts are currently available of different categories. Public posts are viewable by any visitor to the website, whether they have a user account or not. Member posts are only viewable if you have joined the site with one of our membership options. We offer both a free membership and a premium paid membership. You can learn more about those options by tapping the "Learn More" button.
Top Navigation Bar
Please notice the navigation bar at the top of the page. This stays pinned to the top as you scroll. Tapping on the Equip the Faithful text in the upper left takes you back to the top of the home page no matter where you are.
Search
There is a magnifying glass icon at the upper right that opens the search bar, from which you can search the available posts for words appearing in either the title or tags. Tapping the icon a second time closes search.
Profile Menu
At the far right is the profile menu. If you are not already signed in, this gives you the option to either sign in or sign up. If you are already signed in, it gives you the option to sign out or view your account and make changes to your membership.
Hamburger Button
Directly next to the profile menu icon is a hamburger icon which opens the left navigation menu.
Left Navigation Menu
The left navigation menu will help you easily navigate the site to find what you are looking for. You can scroll up and down within the menu to see all of the available links.
Themes
At the top is a button that says, "Select Theme". Tapping this lets you change the look and feel of the site according to your preference. The default selection is the "Light" theme. You can also select "Midnight", "Whitesmoke", "Mossy", or "Dark". Let's stick with the Dark theme for now.
Home
The "Home" button operates the same as tapping the Equip the Faithful title and returns you to the top of the home page.
Featured Posts
Before returning to the left navigation menu, let's cover what is available directly on the home screen. "Featured posts" appear underneath the top information panel. There are left and right buttons to navigate through them. Any posts discussing important site features or information relevant to new users will show up here.
Filter Bar
Below this, you will see a filter bar followed by each of our most recent posts in reverse chronological order. By default, the filter is set to "Show all". Tapping on it will allow you to change the filter to limit the results by categories based on the tags associated with each post. Only the most popular tags show up here, but I'll show you how to see all available tags shortly. For now, let's filter on "Welcome". Now we only see posts that are tagged with "Welcome".
Up Arrow
You'll notice as we scroll down, an up arrow appears in the lower right corner with a circle around it. As we scroll down the page, the circle fills in to represent how far down the page we are. Tapping on the arrow will take us back to the top of the page.
Post Panels
Each post in this list is represented by a panel containing several key elements. First, we see the picture followed by the top tags associated with this post. In this case, our introductory post was only tagged with "Welcome". Tapping on a tag will take you to a list of all posts associated with that tag. Next, we see the title of the post. After this is the post's visibility (in this case, it's Public) followed by the estimated time to read the post. Below that is an introduction to the post's contents. Then, at the bottom, we have the publish date of the post as well as the post's author. Tapping on the author's image will take you to a page showing the author's bio, current number of published posts, as well as a list of the posts published by that author. Tapping on a post's picture or title will open that post for viewing.
Author Avatars
Each of the posts at Equip the Faithful are authored by either me or my wife, but we decided to use avatars for our authors as a fun way to group posts by theme. Our main categories of posts are represented by a unique author avatar. This introductory post entitled, "Welcome to Equip the Faithful", explains the kind of content you can expect from each author. Let's take a look at that post now. Posts with hymnologies are authored by the Hymnologist. Posts with devotional content or Sermons are authored by the Devotionalist. Posts with homeschooling content are authored by Homeschool Mom. Posts with a theological focus are authored by the Theologian. Posts relating to news and information or missionary reports are authored by the Reporter. Posts with information about the site itself or technical support related content are authored by the Admin. Lastly, general observations or posts about key events and upcoming plans related to Equip the Faithful will be authored by Dad.
Post Contents
Now let's take a moment to get familiar with posts themselves. You'll notice that the up arrow appears in posts as well. This is a convenient tool for seeing how far you are into a post and how much more is left to read. Just as before, tapping it will take us to the top of the post.
Tags
At the top, you see all tags associated with the current post. In this case there is only one, but tapping them allows you to see other posts associated with that tag.
Star Indicator
If you see a star next to the publish date and estimated time to read, that indicates that this post is one of the featured posts on the home page.
Share Options
Below the picture, you will see a list of icons. The first three, starting on the left, allow you to share the current post on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. The next three allow you to email the post, copy the link to the current post, or bookmark the post. We'll go over bookmarks in a bit more detail shortly, but for now let's go ahead and bookmark this post.
Table of Contents
You'll notice as we scroll down that there is an icon of a dog-eared page with a circle around it in the lower right corner right above the up arrow. Tapping this opens the Table of Contents for the current post, which allows you to see an overview of the contents and quickly jump to a particular section of the post. Not all posts have this feature, but many do. Let's jump to the last section.
Author Card
At the bottom of each post, there will be information about Memberships followed by a card showing the author who published the post. Tapping on the author's card will show all posts by that author.
Comments Intro
Below this is the comment section. Commenting is a feature available to members of Equip the Faithful. Public and Member posts can be commented on with a free membership and all posts can be commented on with a premium membership. We'll take a deeper look at comments shortly.
Below this you'll see recommendations for other related posts followed by buttons allowing you to get started with a membership or contact us through our contact form, which we will cover momentarily. Finally, at the bottom of the post are Navigation links, Quick links and links to the most popular tags. All of these links are also available in the left navigation menu.
Posts that do not have a Table of Contents will have a few additional sections that I'll show as well. Let's use the search to find our second post, entitled, "Why did we create Equip the Faithful?".
Newsletter Subscription
Beneath the comment section, you'll now see a box with a place to provide your email address to subscribe to the Equip the Faithful Newsletter. This is an alternative way to sign up for the free membership. A free membership includes a subscription to the newsletter and signing up for the newsletter allows you to log into the site, so essentially they are one and the same.
Beneath this is a card with quick links to the most recent Featured posts. Next is the Explore topics card with links to the most popular tags. Finally, you will see a card with quick links to the Latest posts.
Home Page
Let's return to the home page by tapping on the Equip the Faithful logo at the top left. From here it is possible to scroll through all of the published posts starting from the most recent and going back to the very beginning. The site will load twelve posts at a time and you can keep tapping the "Load More Posts" button to go back further. Below this is a card showing the current total number of published posts. Next is the Explore topics card followed by a list of all of the authors. You can tap on any of these to access posts by that particular author. Finally, we have another section with links to the most popular tags.
Left Navigation Menu
We will now return to the left navigation menu by tapping the hamburger button on the top bar.
Archive
You can view a list of all previous posts in chronological order starting with the most recent by tapping on "Archive".
About
"About" will give you more information about our site.
Authors
Tapping on the "Authors" menu item takes you to a list of cards showing each author with his or her bio. Tapping on an author's card will allow you to see the posts published by that author.
Tags
As we saw earlier, each of our posts are "tagged" based on the subject matter being covered. The "Tags" menu option takes you to a page where you can view the complete collection of tags used across all posts published on the site. Tags are ordered by the number of associated posts. As you can see, "Videos" is at the top, because a large number of our posts contain video content. Tapping on a tag will show you a list of all posts associated with that particular tag.
Donations and Memberships
Below that, we have options for "Donations" and "Memberships". For Equip the Faithful to reach its potential as a resource for the body of Christ, we are dependent on support from our users. This is a project created and operated by our family. We have no sponsors. It's entirely independently run. In addition to running this site, I have a 9 to 5 job. My wife is a homemaker and we are homeschooling our children. The support received through donations and paid memberships is greatly appreciated. With sufficient support we will be able to dedicate more time and resources to making content that we hope will glorify God and edify believers.
Premium Content
Next in the left navigation menu we have a link to "Premium Content". This is a quick way to access the content available to premium members. All users will be able to open a Members or Paid Premium Members post, but if they are not logged in with an account having the correct membership, they will see a card with the option to either subscribe or sign in, but will not be able to see the content. Let's take a look at how to sign in.
Signing In
Tapping "Sign in", either here or from the profile menu, will take you to a page where you can provide your email to request a secure sign in link. Please be aware that equipthefaithful.com accounts do not have passwords. Instead, we use email authentication. When you provide your email address and request a login link, you should then receive an email containing your secure sign in link. Tapping that link will log you directly into the site. If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check the spam, junk or promotions folder in your email application. If you ever have any trouble signing in, please use the contact form and let us know. We will do our best to help.
Now that we are signed in with a premium member account, all premium content is unlocked. For example, the premium post we're looking at now contains a video with a dynamic reading of Henry Müller's devotional, "On Christian Joy".
Posts with Video Content
Any posts containing video content will have a direct link to view the video outside of our website. This is to accommodate any users who decline to accept third party cookies and therefore cannot access embedded video content. All other users should see the embedded video appearing below the direct link. For users who are not seeing the embedded video, there will be a link to an article to help troubleshoot the issue further. Embedded video content can be viewed full screen or in picture-in-picture mode on supported devices. This allows you to follow along with the text as the video plays.
Bible Verse Pop-ups
You'll notice that all Bible verses are highlighted. Tapping the verse will open it up in a pop-up window. Equip the Faithful is integrated with Faithlife's Logos Reftagger. So, if you wish, you can share the verse on Faithlife, Twitter or Facebook using the social media buttons at the upper right. And if you have the Logos app installed, tapping on the "more" button in the lower right will open the verse directly in Logos.
Comments Demo
Since we are signed in, the comment feature is now available for use. We can leave a comment by filling in the text box and tapping "Post". So, we'll leave a comment saying, "Hi, I hope you enjoy this devotional!". You have the ability to Edit or Delete your own comments and you can Reply to any comments. You can react to comments by tapping the heart icon with the plus sign and selecting an emoticon from the list. Now we'll go ahead and delete this comment and return to the top of the post.
If you enjoy our video content, you can see more posts containing video by tapping the "Videos" tag. This will give you a list of all posts with video content.
Footnotes
Let's take a look at another post to see the footnotes feature. Some posts will have footnotes to reference sources. When you see a superscript number with an underline inside of a post, tapping the number will take you to the corresponding footnote. If you tap on a number next to the footnote, it will return you to the top of the referenced section containing that footnote. Any post containing footnotes will also have a Table of Contents. The footnotes section can be quickly navigated to from the Table of Contents menu.
Bookmarks
Now we'll take a moment to review the Bookmarks feature. As we saw earlier, you can bookmark any post by tapping the bookmark button which is the rightmost button underneath a post's picture. Let's bookmark this post in addition to the one we previously bookmarked. Since we are signed in now, let's return to the left navigation menu and see what has changed. You'll notice that we no longer have the Subscribe panel at the top, and we now see the "Bookmarks" menu option underneath "Select Theme". If you are not signed in, you can still access your bookmarks, but this menu option will be at the bottom of the left navigation menu instead. Tapping "Bookmarks" will bring you to a page where you can quickly access any post you've bookmarked. There are two ways to remove a bookmark. The first is to single tap the post name and then tap the trash icon. The second way can be done from the post itself. To open a post from the "Bookmarks" menu, just double tap the post name. If a post is bookmarked, the bookmark icon will be highlighted. If you wish to remove the bookmark, you can just tap the bookmark icon again. As you can see, our "Bookmarks" menu is now empty.
Providence Report
Now let's return to the left navigation menu. Underneath the "Premium Content" link is a link called, "Providence Report Weekly". One of the exciting additions we made this year was integration of Equip the Faithful with a second site we have been working on for some time called Providence Report. Providence Report was actually our first online project and was created to help address the need for access to better sources of information from an informed Christian worldview. The intention was to aggregate and curate news and information relevant to Christian believers. Our motto at the top of the page is, "All news, even bad news, is ultimately good news for those in Christ". This is our attempt to view the news in the context of Romans 8:28. It is vitally important that we as Christians are informed about the things happening in the world today, both good and evil. Unfortunately, much of today's news is not age appropriate for children, so we strongly recommend that this site only be used by Christian adults and that you shield your children as is appropriate.
Top Navigation
Let's take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the main features of Providence Report. At the top of any page on the site you will see the Navigation Menu and two icons with the letters "ETF" and "PR". Tapping on "ETF" will take you back to Equip the Faithful and tapping "PR" will return you to the Providence Report home page. We'll discuss the Navigation Menu momentarily, but first I'll explain the primary feature of Providence Report which is the Weekly Digest.
Weekly Digest
The Weekly Digest contains a series of curated links to important articles, videos, or podcasts published that week. These links are presented in the form of "snapshots", which are designed to look like polaroid pictures. Each snapshot will have a picture and text describing the source material. To open an article, just tap either the picture or text. Snapshots with video content can be played directly on the page. Tapping an image with a play button in the center will start a video. To go to the video's source page, tap on the related text at the bottom of the snapshot. Some snapshots link to podcasts and will have embedded controls to listen to the podcast while viewing the page. Just tap the play button and the podcast will play in the background. You can continue to scroll while the podcast plays. On supported devices, the audio will even continue to play in the background when you tap to open an article. For example, while this podcast is playing, I can open the source article and look through it then return to Providence Report and the podcast continues playing in the background. Snapshots may cover a variety of topics including news and events, religion and politics, special interest topics and more. At the bottom of the weekly digest, will be a hexagonal button linking you to the Providence Report Archives. Below that there is a series of links to other helpful resources. Let's tap to enter the Archives.
Archives
The Archives are divided into two sections. First we have an archive of every week since the current weekly digest format began in 2021. The links are grouped by year in chronological order. Tapping a link will open the weekly digest for that date. When viewing an archived weekly digest, you will see the date range for that particular digest at the top of the page underneath the Navigation Menu. Right above the first snapshot is a navigation bar with "Previous" and "Next" buttons. This gives you the ability to navigate through the entire archive of weekly digests from the first one published all the way up to the current week's. Another navigation bar appears beneath the last snapshot on the page as well. You'll notice that as you scroll, a green button appears to the lower right that says, "Top". Tapping this will return you to the top of the page. You can always get back to the current weekly digest by clicking on the "Providence Report" title or the "PR" icon to the right of the Navigation Menu. Let's return to the Archives now. We also have a section containing the Legacy Archives. Legacy Archive links are organized by month in chronological order. Just tap a link to see the report for that date. We first launched a prototype of Providence Report in May of 2018 and it was operational for about a year. The format was different at that time and these archives preserve the initial incarnation of the site. As mentioned in the explanatory text, some of the links are now broken due to lapse of time. Now we'll take a closer look at the Navigation Menu. There are five links here. "Weekly Digest" returns you to the current week's digest.
Missionary Updates
The "Missionary Updates" link takes you to a page containing a world map, pictures of missionaries and some text explaining the importance of missions work. Eventually we intend for these pictures of famous missionaries to each link to their own articles on Equip the Faithful. Providence Report is also integrated with Faithlife's Logos RefTagger and so tapping Bible references brings up the same popups we saw on Equip the Faithful with all the same functionality. The main feature of the Missionary updates page is the Missions Map. You'll notice the text above the map that says, "Click on a continent below". If we tap on a continent, it will take us to a page with missionary updates for that particular continent. These updates are presented as snapshots and will link back to the corresponding Missionary spotlight on the Equip the Faithful site. In this way, the map becomes a convenient tool to locate missionary updates by the region the missionaries are serving in. Now we'll return to the Navigation Menu.
Other Menu Options
The next link takes you to the Archives page, which we've already covered. After that is a link to a page giving some information about the origin of Providence Report and our intentions for it. The last link in the Navigation Menu takes us back to the Equip the Faithful website. We really hope Providence Report will be beneficial to you as you seek to stay informed and understand current news and events in the light of a Christian worldview.
Left Navigation Menu
We now pick up where we left off on the left navigation menu.
Providence Report and Missionary Updates
Below the "Providence Report Weekly" link, is a link to "Missionary Updates". This will quickly take you to the Missions Map which we just went over.
Next are links to our "Privacy Notice" and "Cookie Policies".
Cookie Preferences
Below that is the link to manage your "Cookie Preferences". For any site users who mistakenly declined cookies when first prompted on their initial visit, this will allow them to adjust their preferences. All we have to do is click on the "Manage Cookie Preferences" button and make our selections. I'm going to Allow All.
Terms of Use, Privacy, and Cookie Policy
Next in the left navigation menu we have a link to the "Terms of Use". "The Terms of Use", "Privacy Notice" and "Cookie Policy" are just documents that we are required to include on the site to protect ourselves legally and to comply with certain regulations.
Contact
The last link on the left navigation is "Contact". Clicking this will take you to a form that will allow you to send us a message. It may take us a few days to get back to you, but we will try our best to help answer any questions or concerns you may have.
Alright, that covers all the main features of our site as of the publishing of this video. We really hope that Equip the Faithful and Providence Report will be a benefit to you and your loved ones and we thank you for joining us for this full walkthrough.
Until next time, Keep the Faith and God Bless.
Admin
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