Church CMS/MODx CMS - Advice

I’m kind of at a wall here and was hoping to get some advice from some of you with really big brains.

I dabble a bit in developing and know enough to mess things up, but really I’m a designer. I have another designer and developer who are working on this project with me.

We are at the place now where we are planning (from the ground up) the redesign and restructuring of our churches database and website and how they interact with each other. I’ve been following MODx for almost a year now and have to say, hands down nothing competes when it comes to flexibility. So my team is convinced MODx is the way to go for the website portion of our project. Only problem is we need something that will manage our ministry partners and members, etc... Everything from attendance, giving/donation, calendar/events, and so on. We’ve looked around at many chruch cms’s out there and the only one we feel may be able to suit our needs is Web-empowered Church. Problem here is that it’s built around TYPO3 CMS, which is not what I want to use.

I guess my question would be is there a way to smoothly port something like Web-empowered Church over to work with MODx or is that something that would only be achievable by building from the ground up specifically to work with MODx? I really want to stay with MODx, but the CMS allowing the database integration we need is what will probably make our ultimate decision.

I hope this made sense. Any ideas or thoughts/advice will be appreciated. Thanks.

Small brain here but I will give it a go

I guess my question would be is there a way to smoothly port something like Web-empowered Church over to work with MODx or is that something that would only be achievable by building from the ground up specifically to work with MODx?

I think that you would need to rebuild it rather than port it over. Most of what I saw in the presentation can be reproduced in MODx with ease, however there are a few items like discussion forum and all the specialized ministry related features (Prayer Connector etc...) that you would need to custom build in MODx.

I think it would depend on your specific specifications and the amount of time you have for custom development. As you already know MODx is flexible enough to get it to do what you need, and depending on the skill level it can be easy to work. I can definitely recommend MODx for the job, but you will need to put some work into it.

Ray,

What specific items from webempoweredchurch are you looking for? I feel if you break the site into smaller pieces, you can get to where you need to be. Then you can follow the wiki instructions for each snippets you need.

Is the site currently in Typo?

Thanks for your responses...

ProWeb - we have a site on phpNUKE (not our choice), but we are taking over and building it from the ground up. Since we ( 2 designers/novice devs and 1 senior dev) are doing this we want to do it right. I knew of MODx and the rest we have to research. I’m just trying to gather some info about how we can do this efficiently since I’m not a very knowledgeable dev.

I’ll probably have our dev jump on here soon to start asking some questions himself. He’s new to MODx, but he knows php and javascript, etc... he’s just trying to get his head around MODx I guess. Only played with it for a couple days.

This is our main issue... we have a database of about 50,000 people that we have contained in a program called People Driven Software. We’ve had this for years and now that company is releasing an updated LIVE version that runs off of SQLsrv. The transition to their new platform would be easy but I guess there could be some problems with php and SQLsrv talking. So we’re trying to find another CMS type software to manage all the people in our database. It would be best if it was a seasoned software so there were modules, etc.. already built that we could use.

First we thought MODx could be used for all our website admin stuff and have a second CMS specifically to handle our database and just somehow integrate the two CMS’s to communicate with each other. This is why we were looking at Web-Empowered Church, since it is opensource. We don’t really know too much about it yet. But our dev seems unsure of how we can accomplish this with ease. He’s just not entirely sure how to do it with MODx and another CMS.

The main feature that we are looking for is the interaction between the end-user and the database.. allowing them to log into our website and change their address/personal info, etc... and obviously to run reports/queries. This is why MODx (managing our website) would need to communicate so well with another CMS (managing our database) without many, if any problems.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to know how to put this all together. I’m trying to find out the best way to accomplish this goal. I think our dev was unsure how to do this because of his lack of knowledge about MODx so he was thinking of finding one CMS to run them both.

I’m sure this is a bit more info than you were asking but I figured the more clear I was the better the answers would be. Thanks alot.

No reason why MODx couldn’t manage your database. You’d have to write your own wrappers for the database, but if you build off the /manager/includes/extenders/dbapi.mysql.class.inc.php it should be pretty easy.

I’ve written a decent database access snippet that allows certain clients to login and view their own data; I’m currently in the process of updating it to using the extjs library for AJAX (the next generation of MODx will be using that library, so I figured I’d better get a grip on it). You can see much the same thing on my sottwell.com site in the three articles about creating modules, only that’s on the back end and this is on the front end. In fact, that’s based on the manager module for the same snippet.

It’s not really all that difficult. The user logs in and gets sent to the data view page and the grid automatically loads up with his data. He logs out and goes back to the home page in his language (this site is in four langauges; it uses cookies). The manager module allows the uploading of csv files for adding to an existing client’s data or inserting data for a new client. It also uses an editable grid. I’ll be updating it as well to use extjs once I get the snippet part all fixed up.

Quote from: RAYF3 at Jan 15, 2008, 03:54 AM

We are at the place now where we are planning (from the ground up) the redesign and restructuring of our churches database and website and how they interact with each other. I’ve been following MODx for almost a year now and have to say, hands down nothing competes when it comes to flexibility. So my team is convinced MODx is the way to go for the website portion of our project. Only problem is we need something that will manage our ministry partners and members, etc... Everything from attendance, giving/donation, calendar/events, and so on. We’ve looked around at many chruch cms’s out there and the only one we feel may be able to suit our needs is Web-empowered Church. Problem here is that it’s built around TYPO3 CMS, which is not what I want to use.

I suggest using the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) software. They have a team of full time developers working on powerful ministry features that you could never catch up to. And there is a community of hundreds of churches around the world using this software. It is too difficult to do this solo even if MODx is perfect. In addition, TYPO3 has a large Association that is investing substantially in taking TYPO3 to new levels. TYPO3 version 5 will be a complete rewrite that is completely PHP version 5 and object oriented. Web-Empowered Church will upgrade to that immediately when it is ready. So there is a bright future for churches who want powerful ministry websites if they go with WEC. For churches, there is no other effort that is even close to what WEC is doing and many more powerful features are planned. Exciting times are ahead for online church ministry.

Blasphemous! Go away heretic!

And how many church web sites have you built with MODx for comparison? Thanks for advertising your product (apparently marketing isn’t your strong point) in our community. Now, get ready for me to come over to yours and sing the praises of MODx to you...

Quote from: ChurchCyberGuy at Feb 05, 2008, 09:28 AM

I suggest using the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) software. They have a team of full time developers working on powerful ministry features that you could never catch up to. And there is a community of hundreds of churches around the world using this software. It is too difficult to do this solo even if MODx is perfect. In addition, TYPO3 has a large Association that is investing substantially in taking TYPO3 to new levels. TYPO3 version 5 will be a complete rewrite that is completely PHP version 5 and object oriented. Web-Empowered Church will upgrade to that immediately when it is ready. So there is a bright future for churches who want powerful ministry websites if they go with WEC. For churches, there is no other effort that is even close to what WEC is doing and many more powerful features are planned. Exciting times are ahead for online church ministry.

Hmmm ... Objective advice from the Director of the Web-Empowered Church.

http://churchcyberguy.com/

Quote from: ChurchCyberGuy at Feb 05, 2008, 09:28 AM

I suggest using the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) software. They have a team of full time developers working on powerful ministry features that you could never catch up to. And there is a community of hundreds of churches around the world using this software. It is too difficult to do this solo even if MODx is perfect. In addition, TYPO3 has a large Association that is investing substantially in taking TYPO3 to new levels. TYPO3 version 5 will be a complete rewrite that is completely PHP version 5 and object oriented. Web-Empowered Church will upgrade to that immediately when it is ready. So there is a bright future for churches who want powerful ministry websites if they go with WEC. For churches, there is no other effort that is even close to what WEC is doing and many more powerful features are planned. Exciting times are ahead for online church ministry.

Hey dude, I know that it’s great that things are coming up for church ministry and such, and I’m sure that your product has a ton to offer...

...but don’t you think it characteristically un-Christian to go onto another product’s forum and promote your product? The story in Luke 14 about not sitting at the honored seat of a table seems applicable here.

Shaun
blessings

Quote from: splittingred at Feb 05, 2008, 09:45 AM

Quote from: ChurchCyberGuy at Feb 05, 2008, 09:28 AM

I suggest using the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) software. They have a team of full time developers working on powerful ministry features that you could never catch up to. And there is a community of hundreds of churches around the world using this software. It is too difficult to do this solo even if MODx is perfect. In addition, TYPO3 has a large Association that is investing substantially in taking TYPO3 to new levels. TYPO3 version 5 will be a complete rewrite that is completely PHP version 5 and object oriented. Web-Empowered Church will upgrade to that immediately when it is ready. So there is a bright future for churches who want powerful ministry websites if they go with WEC. For churches, there is no other effort that is even close to what WEC is doing and many more powerful features are planned. Exciting times are ahead for online church ministry.

Hey dude, I know that it’s great that things are coming up for church ministry and such, and I’m sure that your product has a ton to offer...

...but don’t you think it characteristically un-Christian to go onto another product’s forum and promote your product? The story in Luke 14 about not sitting at the honored seat of a table seems applicable here.

Shaun
blessings

I’ve seen Christians who are all "I’m gonna spread the word, even if you don’t care!", and ramble on and on. So I dunno about that.