First Parish Congregational church

[fpccsvb]

Hi,

This is my first joomla website. I'd be interested in people's opinions. I tried to keep it simple, and the content is still a little light, as I'm struggling to get people to provide more items.

I will be adding the prayer center, newsletters and blogging in the near future. We will be switching to the thyme calendar product as well.

Update: Added more content:

Uses: Colormatic, Easybook, Docman, verse of the day, and proverb of the day.


TIA...

http://www.fpccwakefield.com

[npohostusa]

Hi there,

I tried to look at your site and received the following error

Error: No language file could be loaded.

Shoot a message when it's back on and I'm sure you'll get some comments and suggestions

David

[fpccsvb]

Thanks. It went live, so the url changed - http://www.fpccwakefield.com

[jcherian39]

great site.. can you tell me where i can get some good templates for churches

[fpccsvb]

Thanks. I use templates from rockettheme. They aren't church specific, but can be modified to fit your needs. There's also companies that specialize in creating templates for churches. There's a million good ones out there...

[jcherian39]

If i wanted to start modifying my own where do i start.

Also, can you give me examples of other church and church youth sites that use Joomla

Joe

[fpccsvb]

I don't have any sites off the top of my head. I'd suggest you just do a search on church in the non-profit board. You need to pick a template - either a free one, or purchase one, and go from there. There's definitely a learning curve, but I think it's worth it.

I'd suggest you start with the help joomla section - http://help.joomla.com, and check out the user manual and visual tutorials.

[hoferchr]

What does your church use for an online calendar?  This is something that I have been trying to find for our church site for a long time...something that is easily maintainable by our staff...with the ability to import event dates from another program, such as Outlook.  In addition, I believe our staff uses MS Publisher to print off the monthly calendar to include in our newsletters that get sent out every month via US mail.  Is there an easy way to print off the calendar for use in a hard copy newsletter?  How do you enter data?  Is there an admin access back-end site?  Is it compatible with Joomla at all?

[fpccsvb]

We use a service from http://www.mychurchevents.com right now. Personally, I don't like it - not a lot of flexiblity, especially for many people who want to add things. I'm trying to get them to switch to a product from extrosoft (http://www.extrosoft.com/), which I think is very good, but I'm having problems getting them on-board with that. Our office is managed by some older people who are very resistant to change.

We also use MSPublisher for our monthly calendar. The newest version of calendar has the ability to export to pdf, which I plan on using as an in-house subscription newsletter. Once it's in PDF, you can pretty much do anything with it - there are lots of tools out there.

Entering data... Boy, what a pain. I'm having real problems getting people on-board with keeping content updated. I think they see that as the webmasters duty, and I've had to educate them that this is not the case. We are on a push to get more content in there on a regular basis now, so check back with me in 3 months.

[hoferchr]

I'm trying to get them to switch to a product from extrosoft (http://www.extrosoft.com/), which I think is very good, but I'm having problems getting them on-board with that. Our office is managed by some older people who are very resistant to change.

Ah....Thyme!  Yes, I actuallyl have this installed on our website...it's just not being used.  I've been in contact with the people at eXtrovert software, and they don't offer their product at a discounted price or even free for non-profits.  I've asked.  I think it's still $50.  I do like Thyme, though, because it integrates with Joomla, and we can use the same login/password information.  The printing of the calendar in hard copy form doesn't print as nice as what I was seeing on your calendar...so maybe they could improve it some time.

We also use MSPublisher for our monthly calendar. The newest version of calendar has the ability to export to pdf, which I plan on using as an in-house subscription newsletter. Once it's in PDF, you can pretty much do anything with it - there are lots of tools out there.

What kinds of tools are you referring to?  Distributions of your newsletter?  Or tools that can be used with PDFs?

Entering data... Boy, what a pain. I'm having real problems getting people on-board with keeping content updated. I think they see that as the webmasters duty, and I've had to educate them that this is not the case. We are on a push to get more content in there on a regular basis now, so check back with me in 3 months.

We are sort of in the same boat.  We also have recently added the FireBoard forum to our website (it's been ready to use for a couple months now), but sadly, no one has posted anything.  This is a bit frustrating, so I'm trying to think of new ideas I can do at church to advertise this more.

[fpccsvb]

Hi,

For PDF's, I was referring to a newsletter. We purchased Acajaoom pro, and I'm going to take the MSPublisher newsletter, convert it to pdf and then send that out as an in-house newsletter. My point with pdfs was simply that there are many tools out there than can read/write/convert them, and you aren't closed in, like you are with Publisher.

Yeah, getting content is tough. I told our council that I will do it for another year, but if it's in the same state, then the church simply doesn't need (or want) a website. I think that woke them up a little. I am planning on adding mp3 sermons and a video of the sermon soon, hopefully, and I'm going to take a section of the in-house newsletter and turn it into a blog from the pastors.

I think many churches are in the same boat - they want to advertise, but people are used to doing things the traditional way,  and change is tough.