Just noticed this today... http://drupal.org/project/churches

Didn't know that existed, but it may be good to join forces. Of course, I'm developing everything specifically for Catholic parishes, while generalizing certain features enough to be reusable by others. I'm also developing everything without many dependencies; instead of using something like Features (which is a whole bag of API bloat, IMHO), I'm just using Drupal's built-in APIs for everything...

Comments

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

Churches now has been abandoned in favor of Openchurch which is the distribution I maintain. I would hope maybe we could collaborate instead of having 2 similar projects. Also I will be launching an app store in the near future and so that could be a place for collaboration as well.

geerlingguy’s picture

geerlingguy commented

@drupalninja99 - So far, I've avoided using Features much, and it seems to me that the Appstore idea is centered around using Features. I will be heading over to the Churches BoF today, so hope to see you there! Even if we keep both projects going on d.o, I think there may be some areas where collaboration or shared resources are really helpful.

One of the goals I have for Open Parish is to make it really easy for Catholic parishes especially to have 90% of the features they need ready-built for them (automated bulletin importing, parish data sharing, etc.). But other areas like member management, forums, pastor's blogs, homilies, podcasts, etc. would definitely have a lot of opportunities for cross-breeding...

Just for reference here, the link to Open Church is http://drupal.org/project/openchurch

geerlingguy’s picture

geerlingguy commented
Title: See if collaboration with 'Drupal for Churches' is possible? » See if collaboration with 'OpenChurch' is possible?

Title update. Also, after some discussion at the Drupal for Churches BoF (see: http://groups.drupal.org/node/219214), I think it might be good to try to build out OpenChurch features/apps or something in such a way as to allow it to be customized easily for a Catholic parish.

The trouble is, there are a few features that I'd want to make really easy for Catholic Parishes upon installation, like getting specific parish data used for sharing with other parishes, dioceses, and a central repository, or easy bulletin integration, and these kinds of things wouldn't be able to be set specifically in OpenChurch unless OpenChurch modified its install profile install process to allow for something like a selection of which faith the site was going to be used for. Not out of the question, but I'm sure they wouldn't want module bloat of parish_* modules in their install profile if they only benefitted a small percentage of the distro users.

Some things to think about, for sure.

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

Ya that is interesting. I know phase 2 has figured out how to do "child" profiles which is one option. But the first step I think is to identify specifically what features are very catholic parish specific (bc I am somewhat unaware) and then go from there as far as figuring out potential solutions.

geerlingguy’s picture

geerlingguy commented

Definitely; some of the things, like Parish Bulletin and Parish Info can already be dropped in to any Drupal site (including OpenChurch) and be configured accordingly.

I made Parish Theme specifically for Open Parish, but could maybe tweak it to make it work as an alternate theme for OpenChurch.

Parish Calendar provides a FullCalendar view, an event content type, and a block that shows upcoming events. Maybe this feature (or something like it) could be brought into OpenChurch's core, or it could live separately. Or, if you already have a calendar solution in OpenChurch, maybe we could just deprecate Parish Calendar...

I'm definitely thinking that merging efforts with OpenChurch is the way to go, as I'd much rather focus on making certain extensions (modules/features) specific for Catholic parishes, and not having to maintain the entire install profile (duplication of efforts, reduced visibility, etc.).

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

Hi Jeff, very interesting. Let's look at each one:

So I do have bulletins on OpenChurch that is similar to what you are describing other than the automated import functionality. The OC bulletin has a couple of components
1. You see the latest bulletin in the right sidebar: http://demo.openchurchsite.com/.
2. You have a bulletin listing page that gives you the direct download link: http://demo.openchurchsite.com/multimedia/bulletins

Looking at Parish info, in the OC distro we load a few 'example' blocks that Churches usually edit, things like weekly meeting times, 'contact us', etc. as well as a 'starter' contact us webform out of the box: http://demo.openchurchsite.com/contact. The Parish directory thing is very interesting. Looking at that module it seems like maybe the directory thing should be it's own module since that is a very specific piece of functionality, like parish_directory or something like that.

The Parish Theme ya can just live as a separate theme of course or a sub-theme of OC if you start moving towards integrating more with OpenChurch.

Regarding calendar we do have events and a calendar in OC. You can see the main events page here: http://demo.openchurchsite.com/events and the calendar page here: http://demo.openchurchsite.com/events/calendar. I am guessing you might be satisfied with the calendar we already have for OC.

To summarize the things that appear to me to be the most (functionally) different are the following:
1. Bulletin import - (this could live separately or could be a submodule of the OC bulletin feature)
2. Parish Directory
3. Parish Theme

I know one option that could be cool would be to use a sub-profile to install parish-specific modules, unfortunately this is a new concept and I don't know if it would work with the Drupal.org packager, altho maybe it would. Basically in the .make you would have to include the openchurch project and a patch that Phase 2 made that allows for 'sub-profiles' and then in your profile you would have a smaller .install/.profile and references to your Parish projects which would be installed by default on top of the OC platform. It would be pretty cool if that could be pulled off.

At the very least it might be cool to start a parish-related 'app store' for some parish-related apps like the parish directory. So some things to think about, we don't have to make any decisions immediately, just start thinking about some options. I am going to launch an App store (store is a bit of a misnomer since they are all free and part of OC core) for OC in the next month or so and after I get that squared away I will be able to better assist others on setting up some of their own modules as apps so that OC (and potentially other distros or any drupal site) could pull in their App store apps.

geerlingguy’s picture

geerlingguy commented

Sounds great; I'll dl OpenChurch and get a feel for everything, and start thinking about what to do next.

geerlingguy’s picture

geerlingguy commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I've updated the Open Parish initiative page on Open Source Catholic: http://www.opensourcecatholic.com/project/open-parish, as well as the Open Parish project page. I'm marking this install profile as obsolete/unsupported, and moving my full support to OpenChurch. I'm going to do a little more work on decoupling some of the features in the install profile into the individual modules I've built.

I'll look into whatever other things I need to do in the coming weeks, but for now, I'll start spreading the word about OpenChurch in Catholic circles :)

Marking this issue as fixed; not everything that needs to be done/changed is done/changed, but we're on our way...

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

This is exciting news! I am looking forward to working with you. We can start communicating in coming weeks and I can help assist in putting together a plan where your Parish-specific functionality can mesh well with the OpenChurch platform.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.