We've just launched our new website using Drupal 7 and CiviCRM at http://www.woodlandschurch.net/. We'll shortly be rolling out a similar design to our other congregations: http://www.the-community-church.net/ and http://www.highgrove.org.uk/ (These are currently running our older Joomla site)
We're using Views, Media, Domain, Context, Organic Groups and CiviCRM to power the site.
There's still bits to do with making the site more interactive for members of our congregation (such as providing content based upon group memberships in Civi/OG) and bugs in Drupal 7 modules to iron out (D7 is still very much an evolving beast when it comes to contrib modules!).
BTW does anyone have a workable solution for generating itunes feeds from views?, otherwise I'll have to port http://drupal.org/project/itunes to D7.
Comments
Really nice looking site and
Really nice looking site and theme. Just wondering, how do you use the domain module? Is it in place for the future sites? Do you have multiple congregations? etc?
What kind of work have you done with civicrm? Are you using it pretty much OOB or have you done anything to make it easier to use? (Do people find it difficult to use?)
Yes, we have three
Yes, we have three congregations; each congregation will have its own site were there will be some common content between all three (videos, evening service podcasts etc...). We've got a different colour scheme based upon the same theme for each of the congregations. They'll probably go live within the month.
With civicrm we've done a custom migration from a commercial CRM offering called churchworks. We're pretty much using it OOB but we've certainly found some bugs and issues around the workflows that churches typically use CRMs for. We're talking with Circle Interactive in Bristol around how civi can be made easier for the church use case. The feedback so far is that its easier to use than our previous solution and its definitely a better fit for the growth we're expecting from the church over the next 5 years.
Really nice!
Good work James, looks great.
I've been thinking about using blip for video streaming - how do you find the service?
Oh and I noticed that your menu's get hidden behind the flash video content... you should be able to sort that by adding wmode=transparent to the embed code.
Dreamleaf Media
We've been quite happy with
We've been quite happy with Blip, although the recent URL changes makes adding stuff via the Drupal modules a little tedious. Hopefully they'll update the api soon.
Thanks for the tip on the menus; it seems fine in Safari and Firefox only chrome has the issue for me.
blip tv
The blip tv integration is very nice. Would you mind giving quick overview of how to get something like this on a drupal site?
D7 Performance
The site looks great and fast too. I've have been looking at using D7 for our church. However, I've been very disappointed with the performance of D7. After just a plain on install, the performance between clicks on the site and admin screens are pretty slow. I am using a shared web hosting from host gator.
So my question is, what kind of hosting are you using? Have you noticed any performance problems and how did you deal with them.
We used to use 1and1 however
We used to use 1and1 however the php memory limits on their servers make it impossible to run CiviCRM. We're now running on a VPS hosted by cloudsigma.com running Apache 2.2.3. I wanted to go with nginx but ran into issues with CiviCRM running under fastcgi.
D7 Not Ready for Shared Web Hosting
From all the conversations on the web and what I'm seeing, D7 is not ready to be ran on shared web hosting. The performance is just too slow. Hostgator has been a great hosting company with excellent customer service. I haven't had a bad experience with them yet. Unfortunately, I am looking at Wordpress now instead of Drupal. D6 is not the easiest platform to use and I'm expecting to have others down the road that will need to support this site that won't be too technical. Thanks again.
Drupal has a significant advantage over Wordpress
I looked at Wordpress for a client, and discovered that it is exceedingly difficult to do something that is easy in Drupal, and essential for any significant production website. You can't easily create production, staging, and development copies of a web site. Before you move to Wordpress, try to create these necessary environments, and you will be back to Drupal.
Performance still an issue
I agree, the support for various environments (prod, qa, dev, etc) are important, which is the reason why I was going down the path of drupal. However, the performance is the very important as well. Since I know we can't go to a VPS solution due to the extra cost and D7 just isn't performing well in a shared hosting environment....I'm going to start with Wordpress. Then once D7 or D8 is able to perform well in a shared hosting environment (whether its the code itself that is improved or the shared hosting plans allow more than 64M of memory), I'll look at converting to drupal at that time. I need to get something done here soon. Although, I do like the management console in WP 3.2.
As of now, I am trying WP 3.2 and will see if I change my mind because of things you can't do in WP compared to Drupal.
NOTE: The site isn't going to be an e-commerce and/or a high traffic site.
Boost module
You should look into trying out the boost module http://drupal.org/project/boost as this may be enough to make D7 usable on shared hosting?
D7 is good to go
what are your issues performance wise with D7? I use it on several sites and it works fantastic. I can't imagine going back to D6 unless there was a vital module that I needed.
Use Drupal 7!
Works great on 1and1.com's shared hosts (they recently increased their systems and memory limits)
Again, use D7.
Need a hand? Let me know.
-Dan
dan@rethinkwebdesign.com
VPS details?
James, I'm interested in some elements of your VPS config, and for about how many contact records in CiviCRM? I'm about to start a a couple of projects that are similar in scope to yours, and I've had to upgrade to VPS for my staging site in order to allow CiviCRM to operate (need MySQL 5.1.x, whereas many shared hosts are still with 5.0.x). I've started out with a 1GB account, but want to make sure my client's live site has enough resources. They're looking at about 2000 records to start with. So, in short:
Cheers - and great-looking site: clean and ... gentle (I'd say 'clean and mean', but that doesn't fly so well with St Paul...;)
- Craig
VPS Details
D7 is perfectly ready....
...and in many cases faster than D6.
Here are some sites I have on D7 hosted on 1and1 (they recently increased their php memory to 80mb and in some cases 128mb, making it work great for Drupal7)...
gordonsteindesign.com
empireprotectioninc.com
tribedrummers.com
I don't think I will go back to 6 unless I absolutely need a certain module that is not available in 7.
A clean install of drupal6 is faster than a clean install of drupal7, but in order to use D6 you have to install CCK and other mods that are already included in D7. Once to add those modules to drupal 6 it becomes much slower than 7.
Try using some of the features in the admin/config/development/performance page. Also, if you are developing on a subdomain.yourdomain.com you will see some performance issues, I think this is because your settings.php. I have dev on subdomains and it feels really slow, then when I cut over to a prime domain it kicks much faster.
Hope this helps,
-Dan
Slideshows
Those sites are beautiful, especially the projects of the http://gordonsteindesign.com/ site. How much custom code, if any did you do for the projects to look so nice?
The site looks really
The site looks really good.
Did you manage to find a way of doing iTunes feeds on drupal 7? Also do you know of a lightweight alternative to CiviEvents for drupal?
Andrew
Signup and Ubercart
I use Signup and Ubercart where the event is paid. Although Ubercart isn't real lightweight, it is a lot lighter than CiviCRM, and much easier to manage, IMHO.
Thanks. I'll have a look at
Thanks. I'll have a look at Signup, but unfortunatly there is a drupal 7 version of Signup Integration for Ubercart.
MoneyScripts
You could try MoneyScripts pay to publish and then just use a node creation form as your sign up. I've done this in a few instances.
PROs:
-Lighter weight than CiviCRM and Ubercart
-Works Well
-Good Support
CONs:
-Not free - $50 but you will get all the updates. I paid for mine 2 years ago and still get all the updates free.
http://www.moneyscripts.net/drupal-pay-to-publish
They have some other products too. I don't work for them or know them other than having used their product.
I'm now using a hacked up
I'm now using a hacked up version of ffpc. It kinda works but still has some warts that need ironing out but its not in a state that it'd work for other sites.
I guess you don't know of any
I guess you don't know of any alternatives to do event registrations in the same was as civicrm then?
Nope, we use civievent. I
Nope, we use civievent.
I guess the best you could do is a combination of fields/cck and web form to record the results?
I'll have a look at that,
I'll have a look at that, although I think I can only do have the things I need to do. CiviCrm looks like it does exactly what I need, but we don't have the appropriate hosting
Ubercart
This isn't really lighter weight, but you could use Ubercart.