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Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

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Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#11

Post by humanrebar »

timmorgan wrote: post #2

Hard to believe, but I've been working on this Rails app for over 7 years now! It started as a Rails 1.0 app waaayyy back when, and I've managed to bring it along through almost every major Rails version (still working on updating to Rails 4.1), which I'm pretty proud of. You can see screenshots at http://church.io . Being specifically church software, it might not find much of an audience here on HN, but still, I'm…

I've been talking to leaders in my church about the need for better organization and communication. I'll definitely check this out for our purposes. Thanks for posting it!

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#12

Post by timmorgan »

toni wrote: post #6
timmorgan wrote: post #2

Hard to believe, but I've been working on this Rails app for over 7 years now! It started as a Rails 1.0 app waaayyy back when, and I've managed to bring it along through almost every major Rails version (still working on updating to Rails 4.1), which I'm pretty proud of. You can see screenshots at http://church.io . Being specifically church software, it might not find much of an audience here on HN, but still, I'm…

The screenshots look extremely polished. Good work! Is there anything specific that makes this a social network specially for churches? Maybe you should emphasize those points a little bit more? From 3 features listed in main page ("Directory", "Profiles" and "Groups"), only the screenshot for "Groups" contains something that makes me believe this is tailored at churches ("Prayer Request"). As I said you did a good j…

Groups is the main one, sure (it has "prayer requests"), but also attendance tracking, sync without outside church management systems, etc.

I probably should highlight more of that stuff on the site... thanks!

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#13

Post by makmanalp »

Beautiful UI! Let me bring attention to one thing that's a bit tangential - I see that you have a "church directory" function. Please make sure that proper privacy settings are in place and people are prompted to opt in rather than are opted in by default. Especially in this case, registers for places of worship have been historically used to target minorities for their associations, nationalities and beliefs. Not saying this would happen in the US anytime soon, but better safe than sorry in my humble opinion.

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#14

Post by timmorgan »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #7
timmorgan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have no clue!! I'm struggling to find good places to announce this or generally make it known. CITRT (Church IT Roundtable) is a huge community of IT folks which seem to also include some devs, but I really don't know any other good places. Most of the commercial church software do heavy adword buys and sponsor church magazines and blogs and such. I have no means to do that :(

You should think of trying to setup at some denominational conventions if you're around a metro area with conference space. Having a simple table with some literature (even if it's just a single black and white sheet) would get it in front of people.

Great advice. I just have to get over my introvert hacker tendencies haha.

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#15

Post by JunkDNA »

This is really nice, I've often wondered about the dearth of such things every time I look at a church website.

In the Catholic churches in my area, the company that prints the paper bulletin appears to also have something to do with the web hosting as well. I think many of them just go with that and slap something up there.

Have you thought about actually using it to build a full-blown SaaS offering that churches can subscribe to? Similar to the WordPress model? There are a ton of Churches who probably would have someone who can set up a website, but not necessarily do the whole Digital Ocean VPS thing. I haven't explored this space, but I'd bet this is one of the nicest looking things like this out there.

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#16

Post by timmorgan »

JunkDNA wrote: post #15

This is really nice, I've often wondered about the dearth of such things every time I look at a church website. In the Catholic churches in my area, the company that prints the paper bulletin appears to also have something to do with the web hosting as well. I think many of them just go with that and slap something up there. Have you thought about actually using it to build a full-blown SaaS offering that churches ca…

Yeah I understand 80%+ of churches probably won't bother to try to install something like this. I'll just be happy if anyone can get some use out of it, as it makes me happy to share.

I would LOVE for someone to offer hosted OneBody -- I just can't do it because I have a day job and really dislike typical customer support. (Love helping other tech people and hackers, but am really bad at being patient with "customers".)

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#17

Post by nastysquar3d »

timmorgan wrote: post #8
cheald wrote: post #5

I haven't dug into it yet, but that UI is really lovely. Really nice work.

Thanks mostly to the MIT licensed (and awesome!) AdminLTE template. http://almsaeedstudio.com/AdminLTE/ I really can't thank that guy enough!

This is a really nice looking UI. Thanks, I'll look into using it on some upcoming projects.

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#19

Post by wspeirs »

timmorgan wrote: post #16
JunkDNA wrote: post #15

This is really nice, I've often wondered about the dearth of such things every time I look at a church website. In the Catholic churches in my area, the company that prints the paper bulletin appears to also have something to do with the web hosting as well. I think many of them just go with that and slap something up there. Have you thought about actually using it to build a full-blown SaaS offering that churches ca…

Yeah I understand 80%+ of churches probably won't bother to try to install something like this. I'll just be happy if anyone can get some use out of it, as it makes me happy to share. I would LOVE for someone to offer hosted OneBody -- I just can't do it because I have a day job and really dislike typical customer support. (Love helping other tech people and hackers, but am really bad at being patient with "customers…

Maybe you could find someone to integrate it into Sandstorm: https://sandstorm.io/

Re: Show HN: OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

#20

Post by jackpirate »

timmorgan wrote: post #4
SEJeff wrote: post #3

This is great stuff, how do you "market" it? There are generally not a ton of tech people at smaller churches and then at the larger/mega churches, they have entire teams, which IME, love vendor software vs roll your own.

Yeah I have no clue!! I'm struggling to find good places to announce this or generally make it known. CITRT (Church IT Roundtable) is a huge community of IT folks which seem to also include some devs, but I really don't know any other good places. Most of the commercial church software do heavy adword buys and sponsor church magazines and blogs and such. I have no means to do that :(

I just posted it to /r/Christianity for you: http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/2bp1k8/onebody...

You could probably talk to the mods and get it as a permalink on the sidebar. Quite a few pastors/bishops/other church leaders hang out there.

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