Okay, I say lets do it. There seems to be need and interest, and a reasonably well defined list of basic requirements to get started. I'm gonna start with this post as a basic list of requirements, and go from there. My basic list of modules is there as well. I've started a basic profile and gotten the following modules to use:
audio*
bloginfo
calendar*
cck
coder
contact_list
dblclick
event*
focus
forward
front
image*
logintoboggan
og
paging
panels
pathauto*
simplenews*
upload_preview
views*
views_bonus
volunteer_timeslots*
That's my list based on the post referenced above. Let's figure out which of those are must have, and which are cruft that I'm including and shouldn't. What else that isn't above, is a must have? The ones with asterik are the ones that I consider "must haves" to fill the basic needs.
I've got a subversion site setup that I started a basic version in, if you'd like to take a look, it's at http://svn.mikeyp.net/public/trunk/. (EDIT: I forgot to mention that I called it ccms for Church CMS, but Drupal for Churches would probably be better for release.) I'd like to start discussing requirements and modules here. I've set this up as a post with comments, but do you think we should do a wiki page to hammer out the requirements and features? I think that's the first thing we need to do, and then start looking at what configuration options we want to include in the install profile.
-Mike
P.S. Although I'm not too into themeing...this would seem to be the perfect place to develop the theme for churches!
Comments
Organic Groups, or Taxonomy Access?
I'm just in the process of doing a church website, and needed to make a choice between taxonomy_access and OG. I decided on Taxonomy Access. This might have been ill informed, because I'm pretty much a newb. I also think it might have to do with the type of church we're talking about. The one I'm building for is an old (180+ years) congregation, and part of a large, national denomination. As a result, there are lots of well established committees and the like, lots of archives with a somewhat pre-defined taxonomy.
From my extremely limited knowledge of OG, it seems like OG might be suited more to "recently planted" churches, that are a bit more grassroots in structure. I can see the need for something like OG in this congregation, but because of the incompatibility with Taxonomy Access, I thought TA seemed like the better choice here.
A decision like this (on incompatible strategies to manage the access control scheme) could be troublesome, or be managed by a fair bit of documentation around the choices.
setup options
How about we make that an option in setup? With this type of site, I almost forsee the need for a setup wizzard type of module, that the install profile module would redirect to after the installation is complete, and present the user with choices like the one above, or even a step by step setup through all the pages of Site configuration (under admin/settings). This could be rolled into a distro specific module, or perhaps there's even a market for a general setup wizzard module for Drupal. Even if there was, perhaps it could be hooked to make changes specific to each distro, such as Drupal for Churches?
TA vs. OG
To me TA is a very complex module for the admin and would be a tough choice to give to uninformed admins.
OG is less complex as an admin, but slightly more complex as a user (compared to a forum). I just tell people that OG is a super forum and that seems to work alright, but it's more complex for sure.
In general I think Drupal for churches would be great - churches are one of the oldest forms of "community" and giving them an online community seems only natural.
--
Knaddison Family | mmm Beta Burritos
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
leaning towards OG as a default
While my experience with TA is limited, I tend to lean towards OG as the default, but I can certainly think of church organizations that I've worked with, that would freak out at the concept that OG is really designed for. For now I'm gonna go with OG, and possibly make TA an alternative if I can.
Seems like a sensible approach
From what I can tell, the majority of churches who might implement Drupal would probably be more comfortable with the OG approach than the TA approach. I'm not sure where the concept of documentation fits into these distros, but it might be worthwhile just writing a bit of documentation about the implications of using OG vs. TA, and how one or the other might fit the organizational style of the church. That's something I would be comfortable doing (assuming I learn a bit more about OG in the near future).
I am running OG on a
I am running OG on a church's website. I allow all users to join a group during registration. I also make one group a mandatory group so that it catches everyone. I have created groups as I see fit for the church like:
Men's group
Women's group
Event volunteer's group
Everyone group
Staff group
etc.
The group pages look like this: http://sojournhuntsville.org/groups/sojourn
I thought about using TA and I do use TA on other sites. However, TA (for me) seems harder to manage as an admin. But, as some else pointed out, TA is probably easy to use for the end user. Since OG is "groups-based" then it seemed like the right fit.
--
Sojourn Church
@ericatkins
Also needed, mapping/location features
We also need to be able to plug in address and get maps and possibly add directions using a popular Map API such as google (w/ GMap) or Yahoo (with it's corresponding module).
I just realized this after digging through a large number of church websites, and noticing that all the good ones have a map/directions link somewhere near the top on the front page that is always visible without scrolling.
-Mike
mulitple install profiles for churches
Looking over this for a minute we may need 3 difference install profiles for churches. One for small, one for medium, and one for large churches.
Add to the list of modules tinymce.
I've got some thoughts on that...we'll see what happens
I've got some ideas on what we could do to help with the config issues for different churches...but I'll save that for another whole thread and maybe group...
As to tinymce...what fields and forms would you want to see it added on? I prefer to use it on blog input forms and also, story and news type node creation and editing pages, but leave comments, with a basic text input form with maybe a few BBCode buttons over it for simplicity. Any thoughts on this?
If you have experience with TinyMCE, maybe you could volunteer your default button configs for various roles for consideration into Drupal for Churches?
Also, looking through the Filter/editors category, I forgot about the Scripture Filter. Might be a good one to include too huh?
-Mike
A good WYSIWYG editor is
A good WYSIWYG editor is essential in a basic list of modules for a CMS to be practical. Most staff and leadership involved in editing and posting from the church are going to be either incapable or too busy to post in HTML. Drag and drop would be nice. I've been working with Fckeditor but it doesn't seem to drag and drop all that well. Someone has suggested TinyMCE, perhaps that may work better.
FCKeditor and TinyMCE, bleh
I've used both and current use FCKeditor most, but I don't care for either. (And I've used another I like a little better recently called Wyzz, but not with Drupal.) Both FCK and MCE massively slow down the page and have numerous odd issues.
In my experience most of these editors can be better than nothing, but just don't work very well if you're really expecting it to work as nicely as a word processor. So, I'd say these are helpful, but don't expect too much from them. None that I've tried have been very well integrated with Drupal. I'd love it if someone knew of one that is really working well and fully integrated with Drupal.
Best to Install in Root Directory?
Post has been relocated.
http://thebridgechristianlifecenter.com
Pastor David
RE: Drupal for Churches
So is anything happening in this regard? The last post was in 2007, and I'm still keen on creating a Drupal for Churches installation profile or three.
It has begun....
I'm spear heading this effort! I'm currently talking with a few churches and parachurch organizations regarding using Drupal for their websites. They are very interested and we are starting to discuss the project scope and the budget for each site.
My approach is to start with the church plants which don't have a bunch of feature requirements for their site and to work my way up to larger churches who want all the bells and whistles.
I will be working on a Drupal for Churches distribution along the way.
See the project here:
http://drupal.org/project/drupal4churches
See also this pre-existing
See also this pre-existing project:
http://drupal.org/project/wwwizard
Drupal.org user profile
Drupal Micro-blogging: http://twitter.com/matt2000
Thanks for the tip. I never
Thanks for the tip. I never would have found that project.
How do I get it?
I am new to this Drupal thing.
I was able to download the Welcoming Websites (wwwizard) project, but there was no download link on the drupal4churches page. I tried the CVS download, but I got a message:
cvs checkout: warning: new-born `drupal4churches-HEAD/profiles/drupal4churches' has disappeared
I clicked on view all releases and didn't find it there.
I am probably overlooking something obvious.
Please help.
Thanks.
ps. I plan to replace static site www.zioncc.org with a Drupal site. Thanks for your help.