When using any online tool as part of your daily web production routine, it might be easy to miss some powerful features in those "uncharted" territories.

At MonkDev, we want you to be able to reach, captivate, and grow your community using technology. To help, we regularly improve our CMS in big and small ways. And we're here to tell you about some of the latest and greatest features that could help you better carry out your mission online.

Here are five features you can use to boost your organization's mission using our CMS.

Feature more audio and video on a page

Audio and video communicate stories that evoke powerful emotions. In the CMS, media-driven templates like those for Articles typically have media player functionalities built in. Did you know you can use this same technology on any page?

Here's how to get started: 

1. While editing your page content, select a piece of text or an image to serve as the link to your media.
2. With the item selected, click the link (chain) icon to call up the Insert/edit Link options.
3. In the Link List menu, select your media item. Choose the "popup" version.
4. When finished, preview your page. The link you inserted will bring up an HTML5 media player to play your audio or video file, and the HTML5 compatibility will keep the media recognized by almost any modern desktop or mobile browser.

Pro tip: Using this technique, you can create full lists of media files separate from an Article or Sermon list.

Greet people with a better search listing

Ever wondered how search engines like Google come up with the description text for your website's search result? With a few simple steps, you can provide search engines with your own description and control what might be the first thing people learn about your organization.

Here's how to get started: 

1. Go to Content > Pages > INDEX to edit your site's home page.
2. Add a Description for your site using your target keywords in a sentence format. This could be a warm welcome to potential new visitors or a simplified version of your mission statement, including geographical information using your city name (if your website is associated with a physical location).
3. Add a few of your target keywords in the Keywords field.
4. Click Save.
5. Visit your site's homepage.
6. Right-click in an empty space on the page and select "View Source".
7. If you see your entered Description in the tag labeled "<meta name='description'...", your edit is now in place.

Pro tip: Search engines will likely be using this text as the description of your search listing. With a helpful description on the homepage as well as on key interior pages, your site's search visibility will improve, allowing more people to find your content. 

Subscribe to a Calendar with event feeds

Wouldn't it be great if when you added a new event to your website it automatically appeared in your personal calendar?

Good news! With the Feeds module, you can create a calendar feed and view your Events created in Ekklesia 360 in iCal, Google Calendar, Outlook, or any app that supports ICS. When a new Event is created in Ekklesia 360/ MonkCMS, your calendar application will automatically be updated with the new event.

Here's how to get started: 

1. Go to Connect > Feeds > Add A New Feed.
2. Select Type: Events.
3. Select a Category or Group if you want to limit the feed to only a particular set of events.
4. Click on the Location link to add to your calendar (this is the ICS file).
   OR
   Copy the link (Cmd/Ctrl + C) and add to the subscribe section of your calendar application.

There you go, no more missed events!

Reorganize your navigation quickly

Let's say you've noticed in your analytics data that an important section of your site seems overlooked, and you'd like visitors to find the pages more easily. Ever wanted to reorganize an entire navigation branch, but didn't want to manually move each item up or down the list with the arrow buttons? There's an easier way.

Here's how to get started: 

1. Go to Content > Pages > Navigation.
2. Note the navigation item POS (position) numbers on the left.
3. When editing an item with the pencil icon, this number can be changed.
4. Enter the number of the position you'd like the current navigation item to occupy.
5. Click the checkmark to save.

Bam! It's been moved to the new location.  

Use Monklets to populate your pages automatically

Monklets are a powerful tool allowing you to build mini-templates of your CMS content. These can be inserted into any Page, Blog Post, Article, or Sermon and allow you to do neat things like add lists of blog posts of a given category, add profiles of site members, or add a gallery of images.

Note: In order to use this feature you will need the Monklets module and basic HTML knowledge. (If you are a Site Administrator and don't see the Monklets module, contact us to get it).

Here's how to get started: 

1. Go to Content > Monklets > Add A New Monklet.
2. The box on in this screen is where your Monklet code will go.
3. Build or paste in your Monklet code and Save.
4. To insert a Monklet while editing a Page, click the template button on the WYSIWYG editor and select your Monklet, or, type in the Monklet's name in slug format between two double curly brackets. Done!

Our API (code syntax) is simple to use, and full documentation is available at http://developers.monkcms.com. We recommend starting with an example Monklet like these and modifying it to suit your needs:

5 latest articles | 5 latest blog posts | 5 latest sermons

Pro tip: You can embed any Section (created in Content > Sections) into another page by using the same syntax used to insert a Monklet. Simply use the Section name, in slug format, between the double curly brackets to call the Section content.

We hope you've been helped by these tips; leave a comment with any questions you may have!