Comments on: Get Your Church Online: Launching Into Cyberspace – Part 1

By: Get Your Church Online: Launching Into Cyberspace – Part 2 - ChurchCrunch

Get Your Church Online: Launching Into Cyberspace – Part 2 - ChurchCrunch — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:09:17 +0000

[...] Blogging platforms and content management systems are great, but they aren’t going to meet everyone’s needs. Some people will find them overkill and would rather roll their own system. [...]

By: human3rror

human3rror — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:12:05 +0000

wow, thx for this!

By: Rob Lombardi

Rob Lombardi — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:04:36 +0000

I've been a big fan of Expression Engine. It's an awesome CMS that rocks dynamic content. Expression Engine does not fit the static definition of CMS that you explained. In general, CMS is supposed to be a "content management system". The whole reason for having content management is because you want to be able to dynamically change the content. So I don't quite understand where you got the idea that a CMS is for static content.

Expression Engine can easily support Blog creation and more. I just launched a new version of a church plant website on Expression Engine (http://www.veritascc.org). It's still in a growing stage, so there's still some work to do in polishing it up. But here's the basics of what I created in a few weeks on Expression Engine.

- Blog
- Information Pages (can dynamically add more)
- Sermon
- Forums
- Facebook Share buttons everywhere, including in the forums.
- Vimeo integration for Video
- Fonts served from Typekit
- Extra Audio storage hosted by Amazon S3
- Disqus Commenting System
- Automatic Twitter updates from the EE Control Panel Publishing.
- Front page can grab content from anywhere on the site and display it up front.
- Member accounts that are fully configurable to allow various levels of access to the site.

I still need to implement things like search, RSS and a few other items.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:05:09 +0000

I've used WordPress in the past to run my personal websites, purely for the ease with creating content, the number of layouts available is huge, and it is upgradable quickly and easily.

I'm thinking of going with WordPress for my church website, and I'm definitely interested in everyone's views on what they prefer.

Like I said, I'm tempted to go with something that I am comfortable with, but open to other suggestions.

By: Chad

Chad — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:29:53 +0000

I use Joomla to manage my Web site and will probably use it to manage an updated version of our church Web site. I found Joomla easy to use and the user community provides a lot of additional features. Like some others, I use Joomla for both static pages and blog pages. I think the power to quickly render a page and quickly update the information is important to me.

By: Yohan Perera

Yohan Perera — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:47:35 +0000

I use WordPress. However rethinking about Drupal for any other web sites that I might design. Joomla is better, but I felt quite inconvenient with it.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:58:45 +0000

Props to you for rolling your own system. If you've got the resources for doing that, I'm all for it. Sure, most of the other systems out there allow for plug-ins but nothing will beat the customization from building that thing form the ground up.

By: Vicne

Vicne — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:02:16 +0000

We moved to Wordpress this last summer with the intention of moving again next year to something more robust. We have quickly out grown it. We'll begin developing on Expression Engine when 2.0 hits next month.

I will say that I love Joomla and I think it gets hated on a bit too much

By: dannyjbixby

dannyjbixby — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:47:56 +0000

He can be bartered for goods or services.

By: Stefan Tribble

Stefan Tribble — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:11:19 +0000

ditto @newlutheran

WordPress is the best