Sandbox

The Joomla-based website of the Adams Street Shul is at http://www.AdamsStreet.org.  This historic synagogue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the site includes an on-line historical tour. 

This is my first Joomla site.  I developed the site long, long ago in html/css/javascript.  A couple of years ago, I migrated it to php, and wrote scripts to enable volunteers to maintain some of the content.  Just a few months ago, I migrated it to Joomla to enable volunteers to maintain just about all the content without me, and to free me of most development work.  Now I just write simple modules or tweak other people's modules to get what I need.  It's heaven.  My hearty thanks to all the unsung heros who have built the Joomla system and the wide world of extensions.

Much of the Adams Street Shul's site --- including Fireboard-based Forums with iddeIM private messaging and CB integration, DocMan for document distribution (such as meeting minutes), easyFAQ help system, fun stuff on Community Builder tabs, SMS text messaging (with subscriptions to various classes of SMS notices controlled by the users via CB fields), etc. ---  is in the members-only portion of the site.  But there's still plenty of public stuff to browse.

I have recently added the CMS Open Realty module to enable local landlords to post rentals on the Membership Page of the site, and SOBI2 in the guise of a web-site sponsors directory.  Both features are still hidden because we don't want to roll them out publicly until our volunteers have got a core group of listings signed up to start with.  (We don't want to begin publishing with them empty.)

Not sure what's next, but with Joomla it's so easy to add components/modules as you find them if one sparks an idea. 

--- J.

You have the nice basis of a site but I would look at integrating the calendar rather than use an external one.

For your shabbat times and sedra are you just manual entering them each week? If you are would you be interested in some automatic joomla modules thhat do it for you? I've started working on some plus a yarhtzeit calculator.

Hi.  I do not touch the website.  All that stuff on the calendar and throughout the other pages of the site updates automatically.

Including:

The Jewish calendar dates,
the upcoming holidays (and omer counts) associated with each date,
the Shabbat Torah & Haftarah portions,
the candle-lighting times and Shabbat ending times,
the Friday nite service times, etc.

These are all calculated in Javascript that I wrote from scratch the summer before last.  Was a big summer project. 

You're right about needing to integrate the calendar. 

I'm in process of porting the Javascript system into a php Hdate class. 

(The weekly eruv status is also automatic, via a custom Joomla module that reads the html of the Eruv Corporation's website and decides from that what to display on our site, and also sends an SMS text message to users who subscribe via fields in their CB profile.)

The only Jewish Joomla stuff I have seen so far has been minimalist; a bot that displays a Hebrew date.  That's only the tip of the iceberg of what's needed for a Jewish Joomla site.  I want to have content items that repeat each year based on Hebrew date ranges.  Also a yahrzeits display module that uses yahrzeits in CB profile fields.

The reason that the calendar isn't integrated yet is that I don't yet have a way to automate the Jewish stuff in any available Joomla calendar component.  The calendar on our site is actually completely calculated.  I just copy the file and change the filename to YYYY-MM.php and the entire calendar builds itself from that.  [ I then add events by adding statements of the form calendar_event(time,title,subtitle,color);.  The regularly scheduled sponsorship links, layner links, drash links, etc. all have corresponding function calls of a similar form, with their defaults (like PayPal buttons) built in.]

The advantage is that I don't have to layout each new month's new calendar.  The disadvantage is that nobody but me can post to it.  That's what's driving my php port.  I need to get out of the loop.  (I suppose I could pull the events out of the calendar file into a separate data table...)

Anyway, enough rambling.  I certainly don't want to reinvent the wheel, so if you've got some stuff along these lines, I'd love to hear more about it. 

--- Jordan

P.S. -- Because I'm a school teacher, I probably won't have the new php class and calendar stuff finished until sometime in the summer.

If you have a look at http://www.tichnut.de/jewish/index.php?os=web

Youcan find several joomla modules and components that are deisgned for a jewish" web site