New church site looking for suggestions

[ccflapaz]

I am new to developing with joomla/mambo and have volunteered to develop the site fro my small local church in Lapaz, IN.  The domain is http://www.ccflapaz.com and I am hosting on dreamhost  using a oneclick install of joomla.  I would really appreciate some advice from others who have dealt with church based site design.  What are features that you have found useful.  Also if anyone has any experience in getting a gallery component to work well, I could use some advice.  I currently have Zoom gallery installed but it gives me tons of errors and I can only get it to work by uploading one image at a time.  I am wanting to be able to have members of individual committees and teams upload photos of events and activities on their own easily.  I would also like to figure out a way to have a verse of the day come up one section of the site and able to have that published through an rss feed.  Thanks for your input and advice.

[brettl]

Gallery is an easy install for Joomla, and I have found a component which allows for a random verse to appear on the site (although not RSS).  Have you been able to install Gallery2 and/or the Gallery2 component?

[ccflapaz]

I have not tried to install the gallery2 yet.  I was nclear whether it was necessary to do a full install of gallery or to just installl the component.  Dreamhost has a "OneClick" install section, and in that they have Gallery2 as a oneclick install.  I found that verse of the day component and I believe it uses biblegateway.com however when I installed the component I got errors.  I have not however explored the source of the errors extensively.

[JonD]

You are probably well along with the development by now since your message was dated in November.
However, I have installed Gallery2 for our site with the bridge
http://developer.joomla.org/sf/frs/do/v ... bridge/frs
and it seems to work quite well for us.

You might want to look at our site to see if it gives you any ideas:
http://www.allsaintskingsway.ca/

JonD

[justinw]

Check out my church site: http://www.empangenibaptist.org.za.

Good components would be a gallery, guestbook and a community builder.

For a list of components check this out: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,25317.0.html

For some awesome church designs check this company that I found: http://www.mychurchwebsite.com/clients.html (Yep they're all Joomla!)

[JonD]

What component do you use for the scrolling news?

JonD

[justinw]

It's a newsflash scroller module. You can set it to scroll sections or categories, etc. I have attached it for you.

[JonD]

Thanks Justin,

I'll give it a try on our site.

JonD

[mperkel]

I'm using Joomla on my Church of Reality site.

http://www.churchofreality.org

Just switched from Mambo.

[magyver]

Hi JonD,

I have been a Mambo user for some time and considering moving to Joomla.

What did you use for your menu?

I would like to use on our church site.

[humvee]

fao magyver

The latest version of this menu is available here: http://www.swonline.biz/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=34

hth

humvee

[mikeh00]

Hey, the http://www.mychurchwebsite.com site is mine! That's cool that it was mentioned. Thanks justin for the compliments on the designs I've made! :-) Joomla is ALMOST perfect for church sites. And where I haven't found what I need, I've just hired freelance programmers to create for me what I'm looking for. However, you will probably need to edit some of the code for certain components/modules to make sure it matches your site.

Mike

[wp1]

Hello All!

Is the "Sermon Manager" proprietory or is it OpenSource?

If it is OpenSource where can I get a copy?

Thanks in advance.

WP1

[mikeh00]

The sermon manager is proprietary. There are quite a few things I try to offer that are propriety so that my clients are getting something they cant get anywhere else.

Thanks, mike

[ragsman]

Mike, what about the calendar component you are using for the sites from http://www.mychurchwebsite.com/ ? I would love to find a good calendar component for the church site that I'm working on. is that proprietary as well?

Thanks,

Rags

[mikeh00]

Hey rags,

Yes the calendar component is proprietary as well :-) I cant stand the calendar apps that are out right now for joomla. Both of them have alot of limitations. The one I have been using is from a site called http://www.mambocalendar.com I THINK... but I am actually having a completely new calendar system built for my church business that will be better than anything out there and better than what I'm even using now. Im still not happy with mambocalendar, thats why. Its okay... its better than the popular free ones out there IMO, but still limited in certan aspects. The new one im having built I dont think will be released to the public but if it is, it will probably cost money. It will be done by february if you want to come back to my site then and take a look at it.

Thanks! Mike

[ragsman]

Excellent, Mike, and thanks for the quick response!
Fantastic job on your sites, by the way. What a huge repository of inspirational ideas!

Rags

[mikeh00]

Thanks rags! My client page is actually the most popular page on the site I've found... I think alot of people are like you and using it for ideas, which is flattering. It took me like 7 months though to really figure out the in and outs of mambo and how to create the site *I* want and then make it work with mambo. The problem with most mambo sites are they look like template sites and very cookie cutter so thats one area im trying to differentiate my stuff from. Plus you'll have to do alot of customizations to the code of modules and components to make it fit your church. If you can do that, you'll probably be able to pull it off well.

Mike :-)

[sabrinawise1]

Yeah, the problem is no one from the church goes to see the websites!  I like the church website designs thoguh, because they are getting better.

[standrew]

Not sure if anyone will see this since it has been awhile since anyone has posted, but this is for mikeh00 or justinw... I like how on your sites you have an additional menu on the side that shows all the pages of whatever the section the user is on. How would I go about setting something like that up?

[justinw]

Hi standrew,

I setup a new menu via the menu manager in Joomla. I then added all the items that I wanted in that menu and displayed in the module as you would the main menu.

I'm not sure how mike does his but that's how I set mine up

[standrew]

Thanks, so the menu isn't being dynamical created from the main menu. In otherwords if you add a new button to the main menu you also have to add it manually to the side menu as well?

[justinw]

Yes that's what I did. Hopefully there's any easier way but I haven't found one yet.

[mikeh00]

Hey standrew

I actually dont use the menu manager thing at all. All my top menus are created dynamically using swmenupro. I really don't like the built in menu system that joomla uses. For the side menu, I just use the contentnav module. I forget where I got it though. Ive been using it for like 2 years. Hope that helps! :-)

Mike

[standrew]

Hi Mike,

Is this the contentnav module you use?

http://mamboxchange.com/frs/shownotes.p ... se_id=2380

I also use swmenu and my menu is showing me double items. For example; I have a button on the main menu called "Who We Are" when you move your mouse over this button a sub menu appears under it named "Who We Are" and then when you move your mouse over that one it shows you all the other sub menus of the "Who We Are" section.

The only thing I can think of is that it is showing me the category of the "Who We Are" section which is also called "Who We Are". I don't want it to show the category just the items in the section.

Is there anyway to avoid the duplicate menu item?

Thanks,

Greg

[standrew]

Mike,

Are you using CSS for the module heading graphics?

[Geoff]

Yeah, the problem is no one from the church goes to see the websites!  I like the church website designs thoguh, because they are getting better.

You need to promote it more.
Every week, mention the church website after the sermon. Make sure that the website has something that will make people want to come back (news, prayer requests, special articles, cartoons, etc.)

Mike,

Are you using CSS for the module heading graphics?

looking at the source code really quick, it looks like a bunch of tables
not 100% sure though

[johnnyrover]

Mike,

Very nice work indeed...

email sent directly.

John

[knight17]

Change the theme to something that is more intersting.Add some bible verses, I think you can do this by adding an RSS module and title i like "Today's Verses" etc.

I am new to developing with joomla/mambo and have volunteered to develop the site fro my small local church in Lapaz, IN.  The domain is http://www.ccflapaz.com and I am hosting on dreamhost  using a oneclick install of joomla.  I would really appreciate some advice from others who have dealt with church based site design.  What are features that you have found useful.  Also if anyone has any experience in getting a gallery component to work well, I could use some advice.  I currently have Zoom gallery installed but it gives me tons of errors and I can only get it to work by uploading one image at a time.  I am wanting to be able to have members of individual committees and teams upload photos of events and activities on their own easily.  I would also like to figure out a way to have a verse of the day come up one section of the site and able to have that published through an rss feed.  Thanks for your input and advice.

[tgelvin]

Hi everyone,

Lots of great sites with great suggestions to make a better site... I too, wanted to add my church's site www.svchurchofchrist.org  Our IT Committee decided to go the route of make our site more of a homepage for our members.