Hello Brother Steve. I really appreciate what you have done here. I need it! I have been given the task of rebuilding/ re-establishing our church web site and honestly I know very little about it. I can't even get basic html right.

Our church is small and in a small country town so having something to offer for content in a site for us is a little thin. I have spent the past several weeks looking at/ trying out various CMS packages, so far I am not too thrilled at what I have discovered. All offer all this great ease of use for the novice but are not really much better than free css templates. i.e. concrete 5.

I use a free unlimited Christian host you should ad to your site, Witnesstoday.org unlimited band width etc. Paul Hester does a great service for no charge. That alone makes me WANT to donate!

Your articles are every insightful. Perhaps the Lord led me here? hmmm...

God Bless, we will be praying por your ministry.

BroKen1

Thanks for the tip.

Actually, it's not an issue with the core, it is with the module(s) that filter HTML on output, too - CBB is one of them. It was discussed in the ImpressCMS forums - http://community.impressc ... mp;forum=1

BTW - any makeTareaData4... or makeTboxData... method is outdated. Replace with the proper method as indicated in class/module.textsanitizer.php

Thanks for the notice - the feed is working again. There was an invalid character in one of the articles causing the problem. I should learn not to copy/paste text from other sources.

(I also need to work on the HTML in the forum signatures)

It may, or may not, be relevant in your situation, but here is an article I wrote on this topic, too - An Effective Solution for Church Web Sites.

I've also just found this - Determine Your Goal - the first in a series about church web planning and development. There's lots of good stuff out there and I plan on bringing as much of it together as possible.

Peace!

First off - Welcome, Bassman! I have a thread at XOOPS bookmarked with your admission of having a XOOPS-based church web site. That thread has been very influential in the making of this site. Thank you!

Now, to your question. My answer - "That depends."

Honestly, not all churches are ready to enter the Internet mission field. There's an article by Tim Bednar at Godbit about chosing a web site for your church and it gives us something to think about. How are we serving our churches?If a church needs a 'static' web site, a CMS can serve that purpose. Just install the core and a basic content module, like News, SmartSection or Wiwimod. When they are ready for more, add another rmodule. Eventually, they'll be ready for a fully interactive site. If you just give them a static site at first, how will you add interactivity?

Another interesting bit of research was done to identify what makes a ministry site successful? While I might challenge some of their conclusions, the 3 factors involved - technology, people and processes - are an excellent summary of what we must consider. In my experience, processes play the biggest part in the success of anything. Not to the point of some organizations that elevate processes above effectiveness and results, but if the processes have not been established, then the people can't follow them, using the technology available.