Which first, ChMS or Website CMS?

20 07 2011

Christ Church Nashville is in need of replacing both our ChMS (Church Management Software Solution) and our website CMS (Content Management Solution). We only have the time energy and resources to move forward with one solution currently. So which do we chose? Or do we wait until we can do them both at the same time?
The current thought amoung those who ultimately will make the decision is that our website is what lets people know who we are and what we are about so it should be focused on first as a simple and informational site. But can we really place a site up that has little or no functionality, even temporarily? Should we plug in all the tools we are currently using, and then back track add the functionality we will gain by going with a different ChMS?

Our goal is to implement a solution that is as holistic as possible. We don’t want every department to have a different software solution if we can avoid it. Realizing that a single solution cannot do all things well, we would like to see a solution that does as many things as possible well.

For starters, lets look at what we currently have and why it isn’t working for us.

ChMS

Shelby v5
We moved from ACS to Shelby in August of 2001. Overall, Shelby has been a stable and reliable system. The biggest compaints have been that the software is not user friendly and support is not as helpful as we would like to see it be. Also, Shelby lacks tools that are really needed to allow general church staff and volunteers to communicate with the congregation, potential attendees and the world effectively.
Shelby v5 also lacks the inherent ability to utilize it remotely. We have decided that a browser / web based solution is top priority.
Another thing to note about Shelby is that I have been the full time IT person here at Christ Church for almost 7 years now (was a consultant for their IT for 3 or more years prior to that), and still do not know a single person at Shelby personally or by name.

Website

Dreamhost
My belief is that Christ Church Nashville’s website is a ministry for members and non-members, churched and unchurched people. It must be able to clearly and effectively communicate with all people and social media is currently the best vehicle to spread the good news.
Our website is currently hosted by DreamHost at a very low cost to us (a little more than $20 per month). The site was created and maintained by a person who is no longer employed here at Christ Church and the maintenance and upkeep of the site was passed on to me a couple of years ago. Graphic design has been mostly handled by interns who were skilled in that area.
Our hosting plan is unlimited in storage and data transfer and has many tools and plugins available to us. Among other things, we utilize an option provided by Dreamhost to serve our online bookstore sales. I have played around with the CMS options available at no extra cost thru Dreamhost. Those being Joomla and Drupal. Also, WordPress type websites are an option thru Dreamhost. It is my belief that these solutions would be a fit for us but would require more of a time investment than I have to give. Still, this may be the best route to take if we had a reliable volunteer that is knowledgeable in those areas that could implement them.

My opinion is that the web site should be designed around the framework that the ChMS provides, and not the other way around. (Online giving and contributions, small group finder, prayer requests, registrations, volunteer opportunities, calendars, newsletters, etc.) The parable that comes to mind is buying a bunch of watermelons to sell and not having a truck to carry them. Yes, they look great but you can’t get them where they need to go. They are going to ruin.

Build a new site that has no functionality and you will lose peoples interest. Once you build in the new improved functionality, they may tend to already be bored with our site and not come back.

This post is getting long, so I will create another post to continue the journey.

Let’s look at what solutions we need and what we would like them to do. Specifically, how do they fit our mission and goals.


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Categories : ChMS, CMS and web hosting

Choosing a church web host

1 07 2010

We are currently using http://www.dreamhost.com, which was the previous webmasters choice.
I believe the decision to switch was largley based on the fact that with the service we had previously could not handle the load on the attempt to send people to our site as the landing page for the Anthony Burger funeral we attempted to live stream. Also, the plan includes unlimited storage. I am sure there were other factors.
We began using them on 7/6/2006 and to get a better rate we went with 2 year contracts.
Currenlty we pay $1534.80 every two years ($63.95 per month). It appears that can be changed to monthly or yearly for $79.95 per month, which must be decided before 7/5/2010. (Update: set to monthly on 7/1/2010)

UPDATE: I changed our hosting plan to the “Happy Hosting” plan which is only $10.95 per month. Dreamhost has assured me this will not effect our hosting plans functionality.
If your church or non-profit organization has a 501(c)3, you can apply to get free hosting.
http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-nonprofit.html

The service has been fair but has also gone down several times.

We are in search of a web site host that can be easily updated by our staff while still maintaining the look and feel of the website.
Also, the web site should have the ability to tie back to our church database somehow and not be independant.
I see the ability to easily create and manage Campains would be key. The ability to tie back to our database and specifically engage volunteers is paramount.
The choice we make should be as complete of a solution as possible. The idea is to not have each ministry seeking services to do functions because what we currently have is not able to do what they want or is not intuitive. I do not believe we want more than 1 database for anything, if this is possible.

Our online bookstore is hosted on Dreamhost also, using ZenCart for the software.

In my opinion, the ideal solution would be Shelby Arena software. Cost is prohibitive currently.
http://www.arenachms.com/compare.aspx

Here are some web hosts to check out.

http://www.elexio.com/

http://www.peopledrivensoftware.com/

http://info.celect.org

https://www.faithconnector.com

Wayne Dismuke is interested in this Spiritual Formation service
http://monvee.com/
Questions:
1: Is this service attempting to do something that could be done by a holistic service?
2: does it tie into our existing database?

I will create a seperate blog for analyzing our ChMS (Church Management Software) and link it here.
Update:
https://egbertsitblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/choosing-changing-or-analyzing-your-chms/
The reason is that, like with Shelby + Arena, the current thought is that CMS and the website should be tied together.


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Categories : CMS and web hosting