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Re: CMS's really the best for a Church site? |
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Webmaster  
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It may, or may not, be relevant in your situation, but here is an article I wrote on this topic, too - An Effective Solution for Church Web Sites. I've also just found this - Determine Your Goal - the first in a series about church web planning and development. There's lots of good stuff out there and I plan on bringing as much of it together as possible. Peace!
Posted on: 2008/11/18 21:07
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Steve<br /><br /><i>"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 30:21</i>
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Re: CMS's really the best for a Church site? |
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Just popping in  Joined:
2008/11/16 17:56
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Thanks Steve!
I'll read over those links when I get time. To be honest, i'm not sure where our church is up to as far as doing the site, or who is on the team putting it together. I'm guessing there's a number of capable people involved, given the level of technology we have already (video screens,live video crosses to a mission trip to Fiji etc) so I suppose we will find out soon enough. I've put my hand up to be involved, but haven't heard back yet :)
Posted on: 2008/11/17 14:05
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Re: CMS's really the best for a Church site? |
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Webmaster Joined:
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First off - Welcome, Bassman! I have a thread at XOOPS bookmarked with your admission of having a XOOPS-based church web site. That thread has been very influential in the making of this site. Thank you! Now, to your question. My answer - "That depends." Honestly, not all churches are ready to enter the Internet mission field. There's an article by Tim Bednar at Godbit about chosing a web site for your church and it gives us something to think about. How are we serving our churches?If a church needs a 'static' web site, a CMS can serve that purpose. Just install the core and a basic content module, like News, SmartSection or Wiwimod. When they are ready for more, add another rmodule. Eventually, they'll be ready for a fully interactive site. If you just give them a static site at first, how will you add interactivity? Another interesting bit of research was done to identify what makes a ministry site successful? While I might challenge some of their conclusions, the 3 factors involved - technology, people and processes - are an excellent summary of what we must consider. In my experience, processes play the biggest part in the success of anything. Not to the point of some organizations that elevate processes above effectiveness and results, but if the processes have not been established, then the people can't follow them, using the technology available.
Posted on: 2008/11/16 20:27
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Steve<br /><br /><i>"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 30:21</i>
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CMS's really the best for a Church site? |
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Just popping in Joined:
2008/11/16 17:56
Group:
Registered Users
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Hi,
I've had a little experience using CMS's for Church sites - do you think they are really the best thing to use? If so, which CMS and why?
I sort of took on the job of getting a website up and running at our former church. It was then that I started taking an interest in CMS's, and eventually settled on Xoops. It seemed to be the best fit with what we wanted from a site, but it suffered from the problems that a lot of church sites (and sites in general) have: Nobody to regularly update the content. I didn't have the time or access to the information, and every time someone stepped up to volunteer to keep the site updated, they would last a short time and give up for one reason or other. Eventually the task of keeping the core and modules updated became a chore, modules stopped working because the host upgraded to PHP 5, and the whole thing fell in a heap. I ended up doing a basic html site with a PHP news script which was easy enough to update, and although I am no longer a member there, the site seems to be functioning OK. (Time will tell I guess).
Our new church is much larger and already has an existing (Joomla) website, which is OK but lacks some decent content. Our senior pastor is now talking about creating a new "interactive" site, but there doesn't seem to be any idea of what that actually means in practical terms. I think "interactive" could be his way of saying "flashy" (or Flash-y), but I think once people get over the wow factor of something, there needs to be a good reason to come back regularly... any suggestions?
Posted on: 2008/11/16 18:12
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Re: New Member: Steve McAtee - ChurchLedger.com |
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Webmaster Joined:
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Hi, Steve - welcome to the forums! Another voice is always appreciated. I have not run across anyone using DMS to manage their documents. I think HelpXOOPS did while it was around. Personally, I would favor a wiki instead. If I recall correctly, with DMS only 1 person can have a document checked out for revision and the others must wait their turn. With a wiki, the document is always available and the revisions are tracked. It depends on your situation and requirements, I guess.
Posted on: 2008/11/16 8:39
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_________________
Steve<br /><br /><i>"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 30:21</i>
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New Member: Steve McAtee - ChurchLedger.com |
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Just popping in Joined:
2008/1/27 14:12
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Registered Users
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Hello Steve, I like what you are doing here. I am the site owner for ChurchLedger.com. Our Sourceforge project is located here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osc/. ChurchLedger has been operating since 1999. In 2004 we switched to open source for our church membership program. In 2006 we switched to Xoops and integrated our church management program to Xoops. And last but not least we migrated to ImpressCMS in 2008. We are one of the few open source ChurchManagement and Church Website CMS packages that is open source based. I love what you are doing here. I think the link of resources and a forum to openly discuss open source is great. Have you had any churches using the Xoops DMS module to control document flow within a church? I have one church I know that is using it.
Posted on: 2008/11/16 6:44
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Re: Help with Xoops |
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Webmaster Joined:
2007/6/14 20:53
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I visited your site today and it looks like you have things sorted out - good luck with the rest. Let us know how things go.
Posted on: 2008/6/20 16:59
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Re: Help with Xoops |
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Webmaster Joined:
2007/6/14 20:53
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Hey, Liz, welcome to the forums! Sorry about your troubles - let's see what we can do to help. First - do you have access to the database on your temporary site through your host's control panel (cpanel, plesk, vdeck, or something similar)? You will need to gain access from your host provider, if you don't. Second - do you have FTP access to the temporary site? You'll need that, too. A few things you will want to be sure get done for your hosting account - disable anonymous FTP access and remove the anonymous user from MySQL, if it hasn't already been removed. Having additional modules show up that you didn't add is a sign someone with server access has been helping themselves to your site. Once you have access to the database, you can contact me with the information and I will see what I can do. By the way - what you have looks like a mix of XOOPS and ImpressCMS, a new fork of XOOPS.
Posted on: 2008/6/19 17:36
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Help with Xoops |
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Just popping in Joined:
2008/6/19 10:34
Group:
Registered Users
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First, I want to in advance thank anyone for their help. I am feeling very desperate and wont share my whole entire story. I have been working on this website since last year. When I was ready to give up, someone told me about xoops and offered to install for me. I got it installed and learned from watching Utube videos how to install modules and so on. I got the whole site up. I worked all day yesterday and everything was working perfect. The challenge was... I could not get the email in the system to work. I thought maybe it was because I had not changed over the DNS servers yet from the old site to the new one. So today I was going to put all content in the site and switch over the servers then work on the email issue. Because of the email issue, no one could register because no one is getting register emails, and myself as the webmaster was not getting emails either. So today I woke up, I took the day off work to get the content done. And logged onto the temporary site to work on it. And could not get in as webmaster. Then I realized there was a few other modules that I did not add showing up on the left block. Also all the blocks I had set up were now not there. So looks like someone was in my site? Not sure if that is possible but what else could I think? All my work was gone, and now I can not even log into my site? I have tried everything to get in as webmaster. But cant get in. I emailed the guy who installed for me, but he volunteered because of my situation, and now I think I am bugging him. Any idea how to get in as webmaster? I read the other post who had the same situation? How did they fix it? I know I should not put an email on a forum, but would love any help and desperate... please email me if you can help, and I would love to help promote you and give you future business, or partner on other projects if you can help with xoops. Thanks so much. The site is YourRealEstateClub.com and the temporary site is http://Yourreale.sc101.info. Thanks again in advance for anyone who can help. Liz Workwithliz@gmail.com
Posted on: 2008/6/19 10:53
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Re: Problems with my church's Xoops website |
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Webmaster Joined:
2007/6/14 20:53
Group:
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Francine - use the search tab to limit the list to 'system-admin' in the gperm_name, you'll get more of what you are looking for.
Better make a backup now - and get in the habit of doing it more frequently. Check with your host provider to see if they do any automatic backups of the database. If they do, get one from before you first noticed the problem, or as far back as you can go if that is not available.
Posted on: 2008/3/8 16:56
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