Web Empowered Church…revisited
Posted on October 9, 2005
Awhile back, I did quite a bit of research on church management systems for my church and determined that FellowshipOne was the best solution for us. F1 is an excellent package and very thorough in all that it does. One of the conclusions I made is that you get what you pay for. F1 comes with a price and considering the value that it adds, the price can be justified. However F1 is also a fully functional, tested and proven solution. I am pretty excited about what lies ahead for my church as we are in the process of converting to F1.
At the same time, I know there are churches out there that either don’t have the budget for F1 (or some other CMS) or have the desire to put the money they do have into this type of solution. In walks Web Empowered Church, a new open source church-management solution.
This looks to have great potential and they appear to be focused on the right things. Just the other day, Mark Stephenson posted a comment on my original post and in his comment, he summarizes their effort thoroughly, in a nutshell. By the way, Mark is the technical leader of this project and here is his comment, in it’s entirety:
The Web Empowered Church is based on an open-source enterprise-class Content Management System called TYPO3. TYPO3 has been around for several years and is most popular in Europe where it was developed. Sites such as Volkswagen of Germany, DaimlerChrysler, EDS, and many others use TYPO3. So TYPO3 is not new software. And it is written using a standard MySQL database, and standard PHP scripting. TYPO3 is very powerful, but its power can make it harder to use, and we are attempting to address that. The “bleeding edge” part of Web-Empowered Church may be the modules that we are creating. Our mission is to take the Church to whole new levels of Internet ministry. And we may not always get that right because we are all learning how best to do Internet ministry. Right now we are new. That is why we called this a “Pre-Release” but this is a serious effort from the Foundation for Evangelism with plans to support over 10,000 churches by the year 2010. So, I encourage you to keep an eye on us. If you have any questions, please let me know.
I didn’t want this comment to not be overlooked. I have been interested in finding a quality open source solution that a church could jump into with very little financial commitment, however, I didn’t find anything that seemed worthwhile. Not to say that there’s not something out there, it’s just that nothing caught my attention.
Their developer resource site is here and they encourage involvement. From their site, here are some areas they are asking for involvement:
- Assisting churches and ministries in moving to WEC (we call these people "WEC Circuit Riders")
- Establishing WEC user groups
- Testing new WEC software
- Writing and reviewing documents
- Creating and evaluating online training
- Developing new templates
- Developing, and enhancing ministry extensions
- Integrating other open source software into TYPO3
- Helping advertise WEC
- Praying for WEC on a regular basis
Can you help in one of these ways? This is a great ministry, focused on the right things. I’m going to get involved somehow, I haven’t quite decided how yet, but I will. I have an idea what I can do, but I need to sort thru all of their information on their sites and pray about my involvement.
They have a goal of reaching 10,000 churches by 2010, which is ambitious, but it sounds like it’s in God’s hands and He will take their efforts where they need to go. That’s an exciting goal!
Web Empowered Church is worth looking into, especially if your budget is limited, yet you want to have a flexible solution.
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7 Responses to “Web Empowered Church…revisited”
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Jim Walton is the leader of the Tech Arts Ministry of Fairview Christian Church. This blog is produced independently by Jim and it is his thoughts, his interests, his observations and his ideas. Anything expressed here is not necessarily representative of Fairview Christian Church, but it's likely pretty close! ;)
Thanks for making the comments on web-empowered church. It does look like an ambitious project, and their online video is pretty impressive mostly because it demonstrates what the founders are already doing with their technology. However, I have to say that getting it set up is darn near impossible. I’ve set up Wordpress, drupal, mambo, and even egroupware, not to mention host of other web applications, including typo3, but I wasn’t able to set up web empowered church’s extensions to typo3.
They really need some developers to do a couple things:
1. Make the installation and configuration of typo3 + web empowered church’s “common configuration” *much* simpler. Churches that don’t have enough money to buy F1 also don’t have enough money to buy dedicated web admins.
2. Change the administration layout of typo3. I haven’t ever seen a CMS with as much power (read: complexity) as typo3, but it is pretty impossible to get into for a beginner.
3. DOCUMENTATION. Many evils can be solved with good documentation! (Even a video/webcast of someone installing and configuring everything would be good.)
NOTE: I haven’t posted these comments over at the WEC site because I didn’t see any opportunity for public feedback. The churches that use WEC / TYPO3 have great sites, but the WEC main site itself is in need of serious help!
[...] Jim Walton over at Church Tech Matters has posted this article about Web Empowered Church which is an open source effort to help churches have truly dynamic websites. I’ve tried it, and it’s a powerful program, but it also has some significant problems so far. I’ve posted my comments over there, but I’ll also put them here in case you are interested in helping develop web software for churches. [...]
Here are some thoughts about Jeff Mikels comments,
However, I have to say that getting it set up is darn near impossible. I’ve set up Wordpress, drupal, mambo, and even egroupware, not to mention host of other web applications, including typo3, but I wasn’t able to set up web empowered church’s extensions to typo3.
Please note that this is called a “Pre-Release.” See the website. We reluctantly released what we have because the demand was so great. Here is what the front page says:
Please pray for us and work with us to help web-empower the worldwide Church. The task before us is God-sized and is happening only by God’s power and the efforts of Christians following Him.
Please bear with us when we don’t provide you what you need when you need it. There are lots of challenges ahead. We are doing our best to serve you so you can better serve others.
Also, please note that TYPO3 is an enterprise class content management system that offers many more capabilities than the systems you mentioned. We agree totally that it is too hard to install and use. This is something we are working on. But the capabilities beat the others and are required for the advanced features we are planning to provide.
They really need some developers to do a couple things:
Amen! We are seeking servants who are willing to jump in and help with this God dream to equip thousands of churches around the world with powerful web-based ministry tools.
Make the installation and configuration of typo3 + web empowered church’s “common configuration” much simpler. Churches that don’t have enough money to buy F1 also don’t have enough money to buy dedicated web admins.
We agree that is it too hard to install. The WEC Common Configuration it a step forward. The issue is that the software is so configurable and has many options. But we are working on this and it will get lots better. For now, the easy solution is WEC turn-key hosting. We are partnering with companies like Vine Hosting that provide ready-to-go WEC hosting. That is what we recommend for most churches. Just sign up and it is installed for you.
Change the administration layout of typo3. I haven’t ever seen a CMS with as much power (read: complexity) as typo3, but it is pretty impossible to get into for a beginner.
We agree here too and so does the TYPO3 developer community. We are working on simplifying the interface. The main issue is that all the options are on the main admin page, but most options are seldom used. Actually, this sounds surprising but I can teach an administrative person how to update the content on our entire website in about 45 minutes. In fact, we now have several staff and unpaid servants that update portions of our website. These are people who could not even spell HTML. So, once you get past the intimidation factor, the actual updating is pretty straight forward, even easy.
DOCUMENTATION. Many evils can be solved with good documentation! (Even a video/webcast of someone installing and configuring everything would be good.)
We have a video of the installation in various formats as well as documents for everything. See the Installing Page. We agree totally!
I haven’t posted these comments over at the WEC site because I didn’t see any opportunity for public feedback. The churches that use WEC / TYPO3 have great sites, but the WEC main site itself is in need of serious help!
Please see the online community for an opportunity to comment and to receive technical support.
Thanks for your comments and interest. We are blessed to serve.
In Christ,
Mark
Thank you Mark, again, for clarifying things. The observations that were made are true, people needed for dev, documentation needed etc. and that’s exactly what you make clear on your site. As I have said, I want to get involved somehow and also want to encourage others to get involved. I just need to take the time to figure out what will work best for me.
Keep up the good work!
I’ve been interested in Typo3 for a while because it can be as easy for the different ministries of a church to maintain their own content while providing much more flexibility than, say E-Zekiel. I think it’s great to build a website, but I still like to keep the CMS (Church Management System) and the CMS (Church Marketing System) separate. I’m keeping close tabs on WEC, because it looks like it could demystify the whole setup of Typo3.
Um, hey Jim. Whussup?
I’ve just taken the time to reevaluate the WEC website and installation tools. I’ve posted some more specific comments on my blog and on the WEC Developer’s site.
http://webempoweredchurch.org/no_cache/community-dev/forum/single_thread/general/webempoweredchurch-org-and-com/making-our-websites/?page=1&flag=watch_thread
I’m really passionate about this because I am truly hoping for a completely open source “Church Management System” although I am fully aware of the differences between Content Management and Church Management.
My understanding of the situation is that typo3 is a Content Management System and that WEC aims to be a Content Management System tailored for churches. Am I wrong in that? I would love it if someone would come up with a Church management system similar to Fellowship One or one of the other tools out there, but that’s probably a pipe dream!
I also agree with Stuart that I was originally interested in WEC as a tool to make typo3 setup more easy.
I guess the truth is that I was so excited by the sample church sites linked to from the WEC site, and I was so excited by the WEC video presentation of how Mark’s church uses WEC, that I thought I could install the stuff and have a site of my own that would do those same things. On that note, I was disappointed. It took a long time to figure out which download to grab and whether I needed to install typo3 on my own or not, and then once I got all that right, got the files extracted and followed all the instructions, I got server configuration errors (500) and had to give up.
The installation of typo3, however, was a breeze.
It frustrated me.
I’d like to announce that the new WEC Starter Package is ready to download. This installation package for Linux/Unix and for Windows replaces the previous WEC Common Configuration installation package. The WEC Starter Package includes TYPO3 3.8.1, the WEC Templates, the WEC extensions, and several installed and configured extensions. A new initial page tree includes examples of a pastor’s blog, forums, a prayer request board, a daily devotional, a class with MP3 audio and charts, a calendar, news, user login, and website search. If you are new to WEC, this is a good place to get started on empowering your church for ministry.
If you have any questions during or after the installation, please go to:
http://webempoweredchurch.com/community/
Note: Web-Empowered Church is still in development and in the the pre-release stage. That means that we do not have the full tech support in place. So, WEC should really be used by early adopters who are willing to work a little harder. By the way, the error you saw is usually caused by not setting the domain for the site. There are a series of constants that need to be set to setup your website. Please see the documentation for the steps on how to set these.
In Christ,
Mark