Geeks and God Podcast

Hi, I just launched our new website, heritagepresaz.org and I wanted to share what I have learned in the past year since getting started by listening to the Drupal series podcasts (twice).

I decided to go with fixed-taxonomy content and a menu system that displays content according to the taxonomy terms. In fact, the vocabulary is called, Menu. I did not use any kind of auto-generated menu, but hand-entered the entire structure after spend a LOT of time considering the best way to present the information. My goal was to make it as easy as possible for our church members to add content (mostly events and stories) and to pick which pages (views) the content will appear on by way of the taxonomy term(s)s/menu item(s). Our chosen theme is 3-column Garland, until I can spruce it up a bit or talk our church in to sending some work to Mustardseed Media.

Taxonomies, Menus and Views really provide the structure for the entire site. All of the content is found in one of three trees: Welcome, Ministries, or Organizational. Additionally, there is a Home Page and a Content & Settings Page. The standard Admin Page is available for Administrators.

Visitors (Anonymous Users) do not log in. For the most part, only content creators, gatekeepers and administrators are users.

Each of the main pages is laid out using panels and minor css tweaks. I struggled to be practical and ended up using two content types, Intro picture left and Intro picture right. They are identical, except the css puts the picture and the content side-by-side with the image on one side or the other. By alternating them, I get sort of a checkerboard effect with very little effort. See here: Ministries Main Page. The main pages are modified by editing the original nodes directly as accessed from an embedded help page for those with permission. The home page also presents upcoming events and recent posts, in addition to two editable regions as previously described. I placed a calendar below the content area of the four main pages.

The Welcome page includes the full calendar, pdf newsletters, Pastor's blog, and a book, Church History. I created the most basic of all guestbooks: I created a content type called, Guestbook and only created only node. Then I enabled comments for just this one content type and placed a Guestbook Manager role in charge of approving the greetings (comments) left by Visitors (Anonymous users).

I especially like what I did with the Ministries and Organizational pages. First, I created a Biography content type so that church leaders, staff and others can upload a picture and type a brief profile. They tie themselves to certain taxonomy terms, e.g. Children's Education or Adult Education.

I crafted the (content) views for the Ministries section and included an Intro content type to float to the top of each view (that singles out a taxonomy term/menu item). Next, I created views (that drive blocks) to show a list view of biographies that only shows the title (name with link) and picture. This way, the content (stories and events) is listed in the content pane and the associated leader pictures are listed in the right column to add context and personality. See here: Profile Examples and here: Integrated Views Example.

I'm really trying to get people to rely on the website, so I included a way for each Elder to own a page. You see, in the Presbyterian Church, each Elder is essentially a chairperson who is responsible for committee leadership. Therefore, each elder can post meeting notes, announcements, calendar events and share them with the committee or anybody else who is interested. See here: Organizational Notes

I recognize that we interact with people who are not members of our church, for example missionaries or charity leaders. Therefore, I added a profile taxonomy term for them as well, Friends of Heritage and their pictures show up on their pages in the same way.

Another feature that I really value is dropping the case tracker into the Content & Settings menu for anybody who is logged in. This way, anybody who thinks up a great idea or finds a bug (argh!) can create a case that is automatically emailed to me. But that ISN'T the reason that I put in the case tracker (big smile)... You see, I'm in my 40's and I simply can't remember how I solved recent issues or how to step through a certain procedure. Now, I enter a HowTo and refer back to it whenever needed!

One thing I learned is that churches are built by volunteers and I needed to adjust the pace accordingly. As you might see in early June 2008, the structure for the website is all in place, but much of the Intro text isn't finished, many pictures are covered by placeholders, and the content is thin. The site has been essentially ready for the past 5 months, but I'm happy that we have trained the first group of content creators and I've coaxed a few photos from that first group.

Now I'm really focusing on how to use the website to drive attendance, involvement, membership, outreach, ministries, and more. I've installed Google Analytics and I'm eager to see results. I sure hope this overview is helpful. I'm able to offer it after many dry runs, lots of exploring, and learning from the Geeks! Churches do have unique needs and I hope that somebody might be able to progress a bit more quickly after seeing how yet another church rolled out Drupal.

Walt Wright
Heritage Presbyterian Church
http://heritagepresaz.org