If
your Church needs to replace an old bell tower,
you have come to the right place. Please click here if that's the
case.
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Here
is the standard welcome letter I send to new ChurchBells Licensees:
(It is wise for you to print it.)
Hello,
and thank you for registering ChurchBells.
Please print this letter. It contains important information.
(If you did not order a ChurchBells License then this page does not yet
apply to your own situation... if that's the case, please click here!)
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Especially, please see some crucial information further below,
which will prevent your system from ending up nonfunctional.
You will find that crucial information beneath the following tag:
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If you ever have any trouble reaching me,
You should always be able to reach me
via the form on my website.
In fact, if you need to write to me about
ANYTHING having to do with licenses,
please use the web contact form every
time. Just about every internet provider
spam-filters out important email sometime.
It may not happen that often, but let's not
take any chances with your own mail.
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One small step remains to solidify your installation.
Please email to me the demo code produced by ChurchBells on your system
(if you have not already done so by paypal comments or email).
That way I can process it and send you the permanent code for your
machine.
You can find out about how to do that here:
http://InspiredCode.net/GotCode.htm
If you simply reply to this email and add your words to these, I should
know
which order you are writing to me about.
If you use my web form and submit your same email address you used to
place your order, I'll have a good chance of knowing which order.
But if you respond using a different email then I won't have any clue
what
you are talking about, unless you also tell me the product, the license
level,
order method (PayPal or NorthStar) and most importantly the email
address
you used to place your order, as well as the date of your order.
IMPORTANT:
Please note: Codes are machine dependent. Therefore, if you
have not
sent me the demo code for the machine you will use for ChurchBells, then
please do that now.
ALSO IMPORTANT:
If you ordered the home license level of ChurchBells (rather than the
full
organization level license) then certain features will be turned off,
and
consequently certain details below might not yet apply to you.
(You can
always upgrade to the full organization level for the difference in
price).
If you already sent me your demo code, please see that site anyway:
http://InspiredCode.net/GotCode.htm
because it also tells you how to use the permanent code I send to you.
Besides that, please expect from one to 3 business days for me to reply.
If you do not hear from me in what you think is too long, please send
me your
telephone number along with any questions.
And especially I urge you to read all the links and information I
provide here.
I have taken care to put things in a clear way (quite a trick for an
Engineer!).
After reading everything please feel free to ask me anything you want
to know.
One final note:
ChurchBells uses the American format for dates and time. If your
machine
is in another continent (such as Europe, for example), you may need to
set
the region of your computer to English (United States) in order for
certain
things to work right. I expect to address this minor need in a
future update
of ChurchBells, but in the mean time you can set the region by doing
this:
Start, Settings, Control Panel
Regional Options
(under "your locale")
English (United States)
Apply.
OK.
If you're in America then chances are your region is already set for
it, so
no worries.
Thanks again.
Robison Bryan
InspiredCode.net
PS Please also see:
http://InspiredCode.net/WelcomeCB.htm
http://InspiredCode.net/MoreHymns.htm
http://InspiredCode.net/deploy.htm
Please read the helps in the ChurchBells menu.
Of special interest, you will find a primer on how to create custom
schedules.
And even better, please see this:
http://InspiredCode.net/Schedule.htm
(If you tried to import the schedule.mdb file
instead of reading the
helps,
you can download http://InspiredCode.net/Schedule.mdb
and place it in
your
C:\Program Files\ChurchBells/boiler directory to replace what died.)
Even before creating your own custom schedule, you can get rid of that
"shave and a haircut" tune very easily. Just enter your permanent
code,
restart churchbells and then (from the program menu) reset the schedule
database to default (one last time!). This will get rid of the
"shave" tune.
And last but not least, you probably already know this, but there are a
few
adjustments you should make to windows on the bell tower computer.
1. Go into the control panel, into the screen saver part, into
the power
management part and tell it that "Always on" means Never turn off the
hard
drive and never hibernate.
2. Go into the control panel, into the sounds part, and set all
the system
sounds to "none". That way if power fails, when the computer
reboots it
won't flood the neighborhood with "the Microsoft sound" and cause
an HG
Wells riot, with people grabbing shotguns and looking for little green
men.
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IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING THE
SCHEDULE IMPORT AND EXPORT UTILITY
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Under the File menu are two commands:
Open (Import Schedule Database
File)
Save As (Export Schedule Database File)
These two menu commands are also repeated in the two buttons:
Open Schedule File
Save Schedule As
In the next program update I will make this less confusing, but...
These two commands are NOT how you program your schedule!!!
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To program your schedule, PLEASE see the primer in under
the help menu, entitled "How to Modify Events (a
primer).
And even better, please see this:
http://InspiredCode.net/Schedule.htm
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But getting back to the schedule files, what these two schedule
file commands do is allow you to save the schedule you made
and either load it back later or even load it on another machine.
That makes it so you can create a schedule on one machine,
save it to your USB pod and then load it on another machine.
Here are the steps in doing such a typical action:
Suppose you have a laptop, where you have programmed your
ChurchBells schedule, and you want to copy that whole schedule
to your dedicated belltower computer running at your church.
The way you do this is as follows:
1. Plug in your USB pod into your laptop (let us assume it
is drive F:)
2. Launch ChurchBells, get past the liocense, quit exploring
sounds
3. In ChurchBells menu, File, Save As(export schedule)
4. Under "Save In", explore to drive F:
5. Type in "New.mdb" or some other .mdb name for your file
6. Click on Save, then Quit from ChurchBells
7. Take your pod to the dedicated churchbells system and plug it
in
8. Launch ChurchBells, get past the license, quit exploring sounds
9. In ChurchBells menu, File, Open(import schedule)
10. Under "Look In", explore to your pod (drive F:?)
11. Find that "New.mdb" or whatever .mdb name you used
12. Click on Open, then Quit from ChurchBells
When you restart CB on the target machine it will have it.
But whatever you do, NEVER OPEN OR SAVE TO
C:\Program Files\ChurchBells\Boiler\Schedule.mdb
because that IS your RUNNING SCHEDULE!!!
(Avoid this one simple pitfall and you will have years of
reliable, hands free service.)
If you try to load from or save to your running schedule
it will start erasing itself before copying itself to itself
and end up with no schedule file there at all. In the
very next update I will fix this. If you have already fallen
into this problem, you can replace the schedule file by
downloading http://InspiredCode.net/Schedule.mdb
and copying it into the location I mentioned above:
C:\Program Files\ChurchBells\Boiler\Schedule.mdb
I will fix all of this in the next update, but if you follow these
instructions for now you will be OK.
Blessings,
Robison