From Drupal Churches Group post on InnovatingTomorrow.net:
The Drupal Churches Group has grown stale with little activity in the last several months. This group, over on groups.drupal.org, was created on a whim but grew to be in the largest 10% of groups. Now, with a large base of members it sits virtually untapped with a large pool of potential. The question is, what will become of the group?
What does management want?
In an effort to see where the groups manager was interested in taking the group I contacted him. Unfortunately, he is no longer drupaling. Not because drupal doesn't rock. Life has taken him in a different direction and we should wish him the best. But, he did allow me to become the groups manager with an intent to tap into the potential for the good of the kingdom.
What do you want?
The question remains, what will become of the group? Before I make any changes I'd like to hear from the peanut gallery. What are your suggestions? Should the purpose of the group shift? What about the groups layout and design? Should there be a logo? How about a drupal for churches distribution? Is anyone interested in hosting a churches event?
No matter how crazy you think your idea is I'm interested. Even if it's just a desire for the group and not necessarily a change.
Comments
Thanks for being willing to
Thanks for being willing to take this over mfer. I guess I sometimes forget to check into groups.drupal.org in my daily web time. The other thing is that I focus my Drupal specific church posts over on www.geeksandgod.com. I need to figure out when to post there and when to post here.
Shrop
Similar Struggle
I'm struggling with the same thing. How would I separate G&G and this group? What would be best to happen where?
One of my thoughts is for this group to be purpose driven around resources, activities, and working efforts to make drupal better for churches and ministries in their specific case scenarios (which are a bit different from biz). Thoughts?
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
I Agree
mfer wrote:
I agree with that purpose.
I am less crazy about a customized distro of Drupal, however. I prefer to set Drupal and mods up myself.
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Drupal has so many modules available, I find it difficult to locate modules. The module locater at drupal.org is a mess in my opinion.
One example, we were considering having someone develop an auto-magic verse lookup module. We learned of Scripture Filter module through another Drupal developer... EXACTLY what we were looking for! "Cross that task off the to do list!"
Now the even bigger wrestle is "to develop an integration module for UBB.threads, or port the member-only forums to Drupal forums". No easy question to wrestle with. Currently I think we are tipping in the "port" direction. I did just locate the Forum Access module which is able to tweak the core Forum mod to be member-only. Woo hoo! One small step, one large step forward however!
--
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/
Michael Lueck
That sounds reasonable for
That sounds reasonable for sure...
Different jobs require different tools
Obviously, this group is about Drupal in the context of how churches use it. But, there is much more to applying technology to churches than just creating and managing a great Drupal site. That's where Geeks & God does a great job. It covers a broad range of topics that would not be completely targeted at Drupal users (although, the G&G material leans heavily toward Drupal--after all, it rocks hard!)
For example, church audio might be of interest to the types of users that frequent the churches group, but is it appropriate to cover a topic like that in depth on this group? Probably not.
By the way, I must add to the conversation the fact that I would never have known about the excellent Geeks & God podcast and website if it were not for this group. I discovered it "accidentally" (but it wasn't really an accident, now was it?) by browsing the groups on the Drupal site.
I think it's appropriate to continue promoting the material on G&G in this group as a resource (because it is a very valuable resource indeed), but encouraging ongoing discussion about Drupal topics to take place here. Maybe the G&G Drupal questions forum should begin to promote the Drupal churches group as a primary place for interaction. Or when there is a good question/topic on one site or the other, post a summary of the topic on the other site with a "request for comments" and then making some efforts to summarize the highlights of the discussion on the other site...just a thought.
Jeffrey A. Miller (xagronaut)
www.xag.org
www.jmill.net
Jeffrey A. Miller (xagronaut)
http://jmill.net
http://worldvax.org
One or more installation profiles for churches would be great
I think a good goal for this group would be to figure out a common set of modules our church sites need and to develop one or more installation profiles for easily creating new church sites.
Jan
my thoughts...
I have developed three church sites on Drupal, and I think that it's an amazing tool for churches and ministries. However, I've also come to realize that it takes some expertise and experience to create a church site with a unique look and powerful functionality. Hopefully this group can provide new users with practical advice.
Creating an installation profile for churches might seem like a good idea, but as I've thought about it a little more, I'm not certain that it would be very useful. For example, I've been building Drupal sites for over two years and I have no idea how to setup and/or use an installation profile. I'm completely familiar with the concept, but I've never had the need or desire to work with one. I think that many church volunteers who are interested in creating a church site will try the typical Drupal installation route before they ever hear about installation profiles. As such, they would already have their site set up, making the installation profile not useful.
So, I think that we might want to focus the group more on training, educating and helping fellow church-site Drupalers. Matt, you guys have done a good job of training on Geeks and God, with your podcast and forums. However, I think that your forums may be taking a lot of useful conversation away from this group. Perhaps, people should be encouraged to participate more here and on drupal.org, since these sites are specifically geared toward the Drupal community as a whole.
We as Christians tend to encourage a subculture where we have our own groups, friends, events, websites, music, etc. Personally, I don't think that this is a good trend. We need to be more involved with the world around us. I think that having much of the church-related Drupal discussion on another site such as Geeks and God is doing the same type of thing, making us seem like we want to be independent of the world.
I totally understand the unique interests and concerns that church site developers will have. However, I think that we should keep the conversation here whenever possible. We can answer questions and concerns just as easily here. Another added benefit would be that church site developers may become more involved with Drupal in general, joining other interest groups and other general Drupal discussions.
I hope that made sense. I would love to see this group flourish, and I would love for us to impact the Drupal community in a big way!
-Mike Goodwin
Red Leaf Media
http://www.redleafmedia.com
web admin vs developer
one way to get a group to flourish/grow is to reduce the skill level required to belong. an installation profile for all modules to handle pastor david's needs (below) would do that. as michael lueck says, even for developers it is tough to navigate the module options. being more admin in desire than having time to develop makes me pro-profiling :-).
Na, jack of all! ;-)
Quite frankly, I am afraid to try modules on a production site anymore. An install profile that comes with many modules already in the mix... eeekkk!!! So said profile might include Uberkart, but a ministry might need to use E-Commerce instead. etc...
One ministry's site we are having to start over from scratch as the previous installation of Drupal became too unstable from having countless modules on/off of the server.
This time we are greatly utilizing sub-domains as a way to make a test copy of the site... separate directory, separate database, separate EVERYTHING... though a copy from prod.
===========
As far as theming, for now I suggest getting a Drupal theme expert to custom roll themes. I consider my theming skills "hack" at best. I can take a stock/contrib theme and customize it. The same ministry as above, we arrived at customizing Blue Marine for them. We were trying one contrib theme, and found ourselves opening countless support tickets, comparing back to Blue Marine that "Blue Marine does not have this problem." Ended up being easier to customize Blue Marine. As a bonus, the theme now validates as correct XHTML / CSS with validator.w3.org - Woo hoo!
Michael Lueck
Based on suggestions from
Based on suggestions from the list our Web host agreed to set up a second area for us to use to prototype. He is really helpful and his prices are really reasonable: http://bdarby.com/
I got shy about trying too many new modules on our production site, especially as most were in transition to Drupal 6 and many seemed really immature and unstable and often incomplete.
Our home/front page is mostly hand-coded HTML, the rest are Story pages.
Perhaps the first and best tool for new Drupal users would be an out-of-the-box minimalist generic church package that sets up "turnkey". I mean really minimalist - perhaps a way that a list member Drupal consultant could build a business base by giving such a tool away
From there the new user could choose either to contract with one of the several Drupal consultants or select from a repository of apps and code and modules that are clearly labeled as well-tested and under which mixes of Drupal version, PhP version, and MySql version - to avoid troubles from a mismatch - and build their own.
I am guessing that most churches would contract a reasonably priced consultant when they get "hooked" on the minimalist site then see what can be done on a sophisticated one.
Our church does not have much of a technology budget for computers as we are populating a new multipurpose building with sound and visual technology. I have tried to keep us technologically relevant by filling the gap (as time & talent permits. Next year we need to upgrade our office computers and I hope to figure out a way to make some major upgrades to our Drupal - both in features (Calendar, Paypal & other online giving, Blogs, Fourms, etc.) and in the delegation of pieces of maintenance to individual ministries.
WDYT?
http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David
http://thebridgechristianlifecenter.com
Pastor David
Drupal will make an admin into a developer ;-)
Most of my mad PHP h4X0r skillz (please detect sarcasm here) were learned trying to get patches applied to contributed Drupal modules. We could start another thread just to rant about it, I suppose. I think that's maybe where companies like Acquia fit in the long run - making a cereal box full of Drupal plus commonly used modules that work together from day one.
I don't think I've done a site yet that I didn't have to either pick and choose between a release or dev module, scour issue queues and CVS messages, and/or apply a patch somewhere to make things work. That's not necessarily a complaint. "The drop is always moving," and there are some great modules out there that are (almost) ready for use despite their rough edges. But honestly the bar is still a little high to enter into the world of Drupal.
Now this is where my comment earlier about doing case studies comes into play. I haven't seen
a lot ofany posts where someone said "I wanted this functionality, so I picked these modules" and gave a specific breakdown of how the site worked. Wait, I think mfer did a post like that for superaveragepodcast.com, but he didn't go into detail. He just listed a bunch of modules.Also, I've built every site I've done so far using contributed modules, so I'm more of an admin than a developer at this point. However, I'm finding that building custom tweaks for each site using things like hook_form_alter is what can really make a site usable to the end users who will hopefully take over when I'm done. This also requires a little more developer skill, although it's still not exactly hardcore.
Ok, I've said a bunch of semi-random conflicting stuff. Let me try to summarize it so I can leave for the day:
Drupal itself still has a higher entry level than desirable. Profiles would probably reduce that level somewhat, but sites will still require a little bit of programming skill to make them both excellent and uniquely suited for their purpose. Because sites need a little hacking done on them, maybe some well-written recipes would work better, because readers can pick which one works for them without all the overhead of setting up install profiles.
Please note I'm not arguing with anybody here. Just sharing some of what I've experienced that's been triggered by what everyone has been saying so far.
Micah
This group should definitely continue
I agree that the group should continue to flourish. The Drupal site is a great platform from which to reach people that would otherwise not be viewing the community's activity if it were hosted somewhere else.
It's also a good thing to be active in things like the larger Drupal community.
I just wonder if there's really direct value to be had operating explicitly as Christians in the larger Drupal community. Do you think it is appropriate to somehow convey the Christian part of one's identity, or is it enough just to be a participant without indicating your faith? When does it make sense to identify yourself as a Christian in life in general? Don't get me wrong--I'm not promoting the digital equivalent of the fish bumper stickers--those are turn-offs most of the time.
I wonder sometimes if it is possible to be so "incognito" with our Christianity that people don't even realize that we are different in some way.
Jeffrey A. Miller (xagronaut)
www.xag.org
www.jmill.net
Jeffrey A. Miller (xagronaut)
http://jmill.net
http://worldvax.org
My Two Cents
I am glad to see that there is interest to pick up this group. I originally began working with Drupal as a volunteer project for my church and immediately joined this group when I found it existed. It was very discouraging to see that this group was not as active as I would have expected. I've been to the G&G site and have benefited greatly from the site but still look to drupal.org for more specific information on the applications of drupal and the trial and error of its use along with fixes.
I too would like to see this group become more active and will do what I can to help that process along as I'm realizing that by getting involved, I learn so much more.
Tanisha
My thoughts...
Hi everyone,
My name is Cyrus and I'm relatively new to this forum.
Thanks for bringing up the point that the forum hasn't been very active recently. I too would love to see more activity and am willing to help contribute to discussions. I've seen G&G and that site has been wonderful. It would be nice to see more specific drupal information here.
I'm about to build my first drupal site for my church. Our current website is 10 years old, lacks a cohesive look, and breaks tons of UI rules! So I'm looking forward to giving it an update.
I don't know much about installation profiles, but a list of useful modules along with current church websites that are using them would be very helpful. Plus, if users can comment on the modules and provide the extra bits of insight needed to really get everything out of the module, that would be great.
Another thing that I have no idea how to do really (and will need to learn) is how to completely customize the look and feel of a drupal website (i.e. custom themes). The standard themes are nice and all, but they aren't really suited for a church website, IMO. So that could be another helpful area of the forum.
I feel like new drupal users may have to reinvent the wheel when they create their first sites. So, a guide to doing this, with respect to the needs of a church, would be wonderful.
-Cyrus
Cut & Paste Church-centric apps would be great!
I would like to see code with instructions posted for church-centric applications that include paint-by-numbers
instructions.
A common repository (with apps flagged for Drupal and PhP versions) for list members would be awesome!
I have been trying to delegate some of the management of our site but no-one will take it on because the complexity of Drupal scares them.
Things like a whole-church calendar that works with the several most recent versions of Drupal which includes
linked sub-calendars for various ministries.
Blog and Forum setup and management. (I had trouble with user access and had to shelve the project.)
Multi-image upload and automatic re-sizing of images that works. (Am using a one-at-a-time upload and had trouble with the auto-resizing.)
Linking to videos of sermons and other events we post to GodTube. (We are doing this already but would value any newer ideas.)
Paypal and other online giving. (BTW: Are churches using "business" or "personal" accounts of does Paypal offer something special to non-profits?)
Push-mail (E-mail and text messaging) of Event notification (to members and leaders) and Web site changes to the whichever ministry leaders are impacted by those changes (e.g. changes to the Youth area trigger an E-mail or text message to key Youth leaders).
I simply don't have the consistent time inside of Drupal to stay sharp and current - most of my time is in people
ministry - so it would be a real blessing to share what others have accomplished rather than the poor stewardship of reinventing the wheel.
Thanks for picking up the Drupal-forum for Christians slack!
http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David
http://thebridgechristianlifecenter.com
Pastor David
great list
nice list.
i've run into the same issue of a web designer just wants to code from scratch in dreamweaver since he knows how to design look and feel there, but not in drupal. church is more interested in the home page look than functions.
i seemed to have jumped the gun with v6 also. was hoping for TAC module sooner.
www.lakesidecommunity.org
I almost forgot about this
I almost forgot about this group sorry to say. Even though I may or may not use a specific drupal distribution for churches I do think some will find it favorable. WIll try to check in here more often and contribute.
Off the Cuff
Here are some thoughts, for what they're worth.
Separation of G&G and g.d.o.:
Maybe G&G would be the better place to discuss philosophy, generalities, etc. without going into implementation specifics. Maybe steer the actual step-by-step implementation of Drupal stuff here instead. I guess I'm looking at the lines of separation as something like these, with G&G being the former and g.d.o being the latter:
Those are just rough ideas and concepts, but hopefully you see the gist of what I'm trying to suggest.
Installation Profiles
The more we talk about this, the less I like it. I've never built two sites the same, and usually dislike something about the way I did things once a new site goes live.
I think a better approach here would be to do case studies and examples. I have one in mind - the proof-of-concept site I did for my own church this spring. I'll post something about that here as soon as I can. It's probably a good example from the standpoint of a site that's not in production, and as a first step moving away from a static site for an outward-facing church website.
This is an area where I expect that Rob and Matt wouldn't necessarily be primary contributors. You'd be cutting your own throats if you did, since you basically do this for a living, and giving out this kind of detail would take away from potential income. It's probably more suitable for some of us who are doing sites for our own churches to post, and then you as the Grand Poobah, er, group manager, and Rob (as the Pied Piper of Church Podcasting?) can offer your comments, suggestions and guidance along the way.
Contribution to Drupal as a Whole
This group should probably strive to contribute to the Drupal community as a whole. By sharing some ideas here, rather than sequestered on G&G where others might not see it, we can help a lot of others along the way. I can tell you from experience that the needs and issues of a church aren't really that different from needs in Higher Ed, and probably a lot of other non-profits.
This group can also be a place where we hammer out ideas for contributed modules that may be more church specific. There's one that I'll need to write as we work to migrate our own church sites to Drupal, and I won't be able to do it alone. (More about that module in another post.) As Christians, we are supposed to see the world from a different perspective, and that perspective can also bring innovation in the form of creative code that will help advance Drupal in the long run.
I could rattle on longer, but I'm already over 50 words on my "quick thoughts". Sheesh. Hope it was useful input.
Micah
Two More Thoughts
Two more thoughts have popped up in my head...
First, I think this group has a great opportunity to serve and give back to the drupal community. Drupal is great in what it provides for churches to use in their websites. But, God calls us to be servants. Not just servants of churches and other Christians but people out in the world (as we all to often call it). How can we as a group serve the drupal community? How can we give back rather than mooch?
Second, be a beacon of light for Gods word and message. At the heart of the church is the message to go out and make disciples. To do this not by force or cheap sales but by sharing love, search for truth, and honesty in both words and action. In a world where many have never even herd the message and on the tech side of things where people tend to be statistically less likely to be Christian how can we carry out the mission?
I think these things go hand in hand and should be part of our eventual direction.
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
Introduction and Thoughts
First, thank you Matt for stepping up to lead this group!
Quick intro...my company is Christian.com Media group. To see a little about us visit www.Christian.com www.ChristianWebNetwork.com and my blog at www.LinkedinJesus.com. We actually looking for a Sr. Drupal Web Developer right now if anyone is interested (I'll post a job description here later this week). We've got some very, very exciting things in development right now using drupal!!!
I also co-lead the Dallas Drupal Group - http://groups.drupal.org/north-texas
I have been "watching" this group for awhile as well as G&G and great to see a growing group of Christian drupal developers!
Great posts so far on this topic. My thoughts on future of the group...
Mini-conferences tied in with Drupal events, like the day before or after DrupalCon, South by Southwest (annual media conf in Austin with a lot of drupalers), or Lullabot events like the upcoming "Do it with Drupal" training in New Orleans in December. I agree with Micah and others about contributing and being a part of the drupal community as a whole, so maybe future meetings of this group could be in tandem with drupal events.
Keep group open for multiple leaders, sponsors, etc. Again agreeing with Micah and also MikeGoodin's comments. For example I lead the Dallas drupal group but keep separate from my company, and as a result other people and companies are involved in hosting meetings, etc. Matt- you'll have to figure out how to make this group separate from G&G, but I agree with the others that it should be. Also the drupal community is adverse to taking things "offsite" away from drupal.org and g.d.o.
Focus on being part of the drupal community. This should be a group within the community, not a separate community, as Christians often tend to do. Related to #1 but also need to look for ways to help with the Drupal Association, etc.
Larger mission- drupal for church websites is good, and most members of the group will be church webmasters and that will be their primary interest, but I am interested in a larger scope of world-wide evangelism and discipleship of the Body of Christ. So "Drupal for Internet Ministry" would be a broader scope in my opinion, but if you want to keep the focus on drupal for church websites, that is a needful focus and good, too. Myself and Christian.com Media Group would like to stay involved either way.
My 2 cents...
Thank you!
Lee
Obi-Wan (Lee Raney)
Dallas Drupal Group
www.DrupalJedi.com
Christian.com Media Group
www.Christian.com
www.SermonCast.com
My blog: www.LinkedInJesus.com
Lee Raney
Dallas Drupal Group
www.ChurchFinder.com
Just chiming in
Just gotta chime in and say "Yeah!". Good work getting this back on track mfer. I'm here to participate more whatever direction it goes. I have no additional ideas, great discussion here so far.
The amount of discussion that's happened here in the span of a couple hours tells me there's a HUGE hunger for this group to become more. Rock on!
What are other "philosophical" groups doing?
MF, first off, thanks for taking this on!
When I consider the Drupal groups I’m a member of, three distinct categories emerge; Module-specific (Internationalization), geographic (Chicago), and philosophical (Churches). The first two types have clear missions but the latter is a bit more difficult to identify. Can we look at other cause-driven Drupal groups for inspiration?
You and Bob have worked hard to build a great community at Geeks & God and I would not want this to diminish what is happening there. However, the average church site (and far too many commercial solutions who target churches) leave so very much to be desired. Because of the sheer magnitude of the task before us, I see room for both groups to flourish! Micah and Obi-Wan, in particular, identified what might become helpful distinctions between the two.
I love God and I
lovereally, really, really like Drupal. Whenever the two get mixed together I'm in Christian Geek Nirvana. I’m excited to see where this goes.Blessings! -NP
A Little Meetup sorta thing
Glad to see so much interest in this. That's exciting.
I'd be interested in hosting a little meet up sort of thing. I have access to a 12 seat board room w/ wifi and projector to chat and show off things. This is Allentown,PA.
I think it would be really helpful to discuss the pros and cons of multiple solutions to problems that are likely to crop up for churches and ministries with Drupal 6 (5 is well covered and retiring). I'll go ahead and list some topics.
I can probably come up with more. :-)
Hosting Drupal Gatherings
We are about to move into our new multipurpose building. We could host a gathering for west central Florida. We are located in Spring Hill, FL a little north of Tampa.
It has a large platform with excellent modern LED stage lighting, projectors, a quality sound system, and high speed Internet access.
What about video-conferencing? (Either not having a physical meeting at all or sharing the physical conference with distant attendees - considering the cost and time of travel it may be better stewardship.)
We would need to use a platform independent videoconferencing tool since participants may use Apple, Linux, or one of the MS versions of windows.
http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David
http://thebridgechristianlifecenter.com
Pastor David
Via Mogulus?
There are services like Mogulus or skype we could video conference from.
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
less involved developers
i would like to speak up on behalf of the not so involved.
My company has developed over 20 drupal sites including 5 separate church sites - 3 still running successfully.
However while we are very committed to drupal, I dont have a lot of time in here. I do watch this groups RSS feed anmd also am involved in the drupal org site also. However my participation is very limited at this time.
On that note, I would have to say how much I ma thankful for those who take the time to post solutions to problems etc. That has helped in endless configuration, PHP and hosting issues and where possible I do either blog about it on my blog or post comments where relevant in the drupal site.
So thanks to all who are part of a community like this, and just like an iceberg, if there are 20 people here who have made comments and are enthusiastic there are probably 200 or more who are silent but still enthusiastic.
Cheers
Tim
www.spyjournal.biz