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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

#61

Post by timmorgan »

jasonkester wrote: post #48
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…

Why are you not charging money for this? At the very least, you should offer a hosted version of this (borrowing the wordpress.com/wordpress.org model would seem the best plan) so that non-technical churches could click a button and just have it magically spin up a website and start billing their card every month. Seems a bit silly looking in from the outside that you'd spend seven years building something that's cle…

Glory to God! :-) It's just my passion. I really hope someone does build this as a slick hosted service. I don't do well dealing with customers :-)

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

#62

Post by maga »

incision wrote: post #37
maga wrote: post #18

What if my church is called a mosque?

Fork and run sed - such is the beauty of OSS. I just sent this a non-technical friend whose 'church is called a mosque'. I'm sure he'd be able to figure this out and I'm sure you could too. No need to be disingenuous.

It's a hypothetical question. Don't be hasty.

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

#63

Post by enraged_camel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
enraged_camel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"Church" is just the generic English word for "place of worship". It definitely is not. I have no idea where you even came up with this. Heck, there are even groups of Christians who object to the use of the word "church" to mean place of worship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_of_worship#Christianity

"Church" definitely is the generic English word for place of (particularly, Christian) worship (or, similarly, for the actual worship services), largely as the result of it being the word used by the religious groups that were dominant throughout the entire evolution of modern English for their places of worship. Yes, there are certain groups that object to that for etymological reasons because "church" also is the E…

>>"Church" definitely is the generic English word for place of (particularly, Christian) worship

Not particularly. Only. As in, the word "church" only refers to Christian places of worship.

Honestly it is pretty bizarre that you and tptacek are claiming otherwise. Maybe we're talking past each other. I just don't know any Muslims who say "I'm going to the church tomorrow," or any Buddhists say "I was at the church yesterday". I also don't know of any Christians who refer to synagogues as "churches."

Now, if you are saying that "church" means any Christian place of worship - as in, people don't differentiate between church and cathedral, which are different things - then yes, I can agree with that. But that's not how I read your comments.

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

#64

Post by CoachRufus87 »

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…

Very well done. Kudos!

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

#65

Post by timmorgan »

bencollier49 wrote: post #49
timmorgan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Attendance tracking is a thing? That sounds nightmarish!

It's used primarily by small groups that meet in homes or whatever - that way the church as a whole can engage with anyone who stops attending (sometimes sign of personal/life issues that the church should be there to help with).

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

#66

Post by swasheck »

bencollier49 wrote: post #49
timmorgan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Attendance tracking is a thing? That sounds nightmarish!

it is difficult. there are a few legitimate reasons and at least one questionable reason i can think of off the top of my head.

attendance tracking would be good for "care" ("hey - it's been a while, is everything ok?"), for decision-making ("we average 35 people at 8am but 400 at 10:30am, what should we do?").

unfortunately, i can also see it used to target "marketing" messages for donations.

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

#67

Post by timmorgan »

breckenedge wrote: post #60

Great work! I've got a RoR church scheduling system I've been hacking on for 4 years off and on (mostly off). In a weird twist of fate, we've used the exact same bootstrap template, although I colored mine purple. Going to have to look into integrating my system into your software, since you've got some abstractions and models that I need but have not yet implemented (families, for one).

That would be awesome!!! I've been thinking about adding some scheduling stuff, so that could be a great pairing!

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

#68

Post by cicero »

mountaineer wrote: post #38
cicero wrote: post #34

This looks very nice. I'm the technology director for a Catholic college prep school and we have been wanting to put up an online alumni directory, but the commercial packages we've seen are too expensive for our small school. I'm thinking your software could be adapted for that purpose, so I will show it to the lady who runs our web site and see if we can use it. Thanks for sharing your work with the world!

Check out http://www.alum.ni/ if you haven't already, built for alumni groups.

Thanks!

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

#69

Post by tptacek »

enraged_camel wrote: post #63
dragonwriter wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Church" definitely is the generic English word for place of (particularly, Christian) worship (or, similarly, for the actual worship services), largely as the result of it being the word used by the religious groups that were dominant throughout the entire evolution of modern English for their places of worship. Yes, there are certain groups that object to that for etymological reasons because "church" also is the E…

>>"Church" definitely is the generic English word for place of (particularly, Christian) worship Not particularly. Only . As in, the word "church" only refers to Christian places of worship. Honestly it is pretty bizarre that you and tptacek are claiming otherwise. Maybe we're talking past each other. I just don't know any Muslims who say "I'm going to the church tomorrow," or any Buddhists say "I was at the church y…

If both sides of this debate are in some way correct, it's clear that the "church is a Christian term" side of the debate is more correct, so if just getting that on the table and stipulating it to be true ends an unproductive discussion: it is so stipulated.

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

#70

Post by breckenedge »

timmorgan wrote: post #67
breckenedge wrote: post #60

Great work! I've got a RoR church scheduling system I've been hacking on for 4 years off and on (mostly off). In a weird twist of fate, we've used the exact same bootstrap template, although I colored mine purple. Going to have to look into integrating my system into your software, since you've got some abstractions and models that I need but have not yet implemented (families, for one).

That would be awesome!!! I've been thinking about adding some scheduling stuff, so that could be a great pairing!

Excellent, inspiration for me to finish it. I've been working on abstracting/gemifying most of it lately, specifically for integrating it into other projects, so this is perfect. Not yet on Github. Thanks again for making your stuff public.
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