Church Taxonomy Examples

Just waiting for my hosting provider to install the Taxonomy Import/Export module, and I'll be able to post it here. I went around to a bunch of church websites and looked at the layout of their menu system. I'm guessing that you'd want one taxonomy to reflect your menu structure, and maybe others to reflect other things.

This would be different, I presume if you're using Organic Groups. My site is using Taxonomy Access, so I have to base at least one vocabulary on the anticipated access control plan.

I've been using Drupal for some time--installed and administered for two HS reunions and two simple nonprofits--so I'm slowly learning how to use taxonomy, but I'm not totally clear on on the good and bad ways to use it. I know it can serve fulfill some of the needs for site navigation, as well as access control, but haven't done much with taxonomy yet, so I'm still somewhat confused and would love insights from others. I'm planning to port my Frontpage-powered church website over to Drupal in the future.

For the sake of the original post, I'd be happy to share the site map for my church. I'm thinking there might be several vocabularies for a church site like this.

1. Ministries -- for different ministries the church offers. This would include the top-level menu structures from my site map for Worship, Music & Education, as well as outreach (under Get Involved).

2. Get Involved -- for ways that people can volunteer their time & talents

3. Forums -- Also used for posting newsletters and announcements

4. Events -- for events

5. About or Other -- for all the other content, including contact info, direction, resources, etc.

6. Access Control -- for controlling access to page content. Terms would include:

   • Public -- default option
   • Registered -- for registered userd
   • Staff -- for church staff only
   • etc...

Does this help? Can anyone offer suggestions?

Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@britt-webb.net

On a new church plant's site that I recently developed...

my main menu is:

ABOUT
EVENTS
PODCASTS
BLOGS
GROUPS
DIRECTIONS
CONTACT

The church is so small and new that there isn't a need yet for a "staff" directory or a "ministries" directory. We don't have a dozen Sunday school classes or a choir director. ;)

Registered users can create FORUM topics. I have given some users the role of "blogger" which lets them publish BLOG posts to the site. And then only a couple of people can create new PAGES, STORIES, AUDIO, EVENTS, or OGroups.

I have FREE TAGGING working on the BLOGS. To see a listing of the tags that have been used so far, see:

http://sojournhuntsville.org/tagadelic

In time the site will expand as there's more small groups and leadership. I'm sure then the taxonomy will change slightly.

I'm Currently lining out our church taxonomy.
We're a small church so I really haven't got a use for OG which helps to explain my choices.
I have two main taxonomies

"Groups and Services"
Special Events
Family Night
Missionaries
Missions
Prayer
-- Answered Prayer
Sunday Morning
Sunday Night
Sermons
-- Sermon Series
Sunday School
-- 4:12 (based on 1 timothy 4:12 this is our teen class)
-- Class 6 (this is our mature adults class)
-- Kids
-- Nursery
-- Pre-teens
-- S.O.L.D.I.E.R.S (young adults)
Tech Team
Vacation Bible School
Youth Group

Topics
Free tagging

Both taxonomies have the "required" checkbox turned on.

The sight isn't live yet as of 5/2/07 but I hope to have it up within a week or two. I'll post an announcement and invite some feedback then.

--
tcblack
Truth is Still Truth Even if You Don't Believe It

I decided on the site restructure I just finished that I needed something a bit more than taxonomy to categorize things. I toyed with the idea of using the Category module, but, as much as I've liked that module in the past, I've decided that it introduces almost too much power for this site.

What I ended up was these taxonomies:

• Messages Series - A list of the message series for the sermons delivered during the main service.
• Ministries - A hierarchical list of our major programs (it doesn't include individual classes and groups).
• Topics - Free tagging for Bible verses and study topics.
• Help Topics - Free tagging of topics that I use on the help section of the web site.

Then, I added additional structural pieces as node types that can be associated with various nodes via CCK references. Here are the node reference fields I have:

• Event details - This links an announcement with zero or more event nodes that are on the calendar.
• See also - On our message and study resource nodes, this allows you to link to other study resources or messages that are related to the current resource.
• Venue - This links to Venue nodes, which hold locations where we normally meet for various things and will be mapped using one of the mapping modules in the near future.

Thus, I used a combination of categories and CCK node references to create structure with a bit more flexibility.