Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 323 posts

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

#231

Post by timmorgan »

boyaka wrote: post #218

I'm a complete Rails noob, can anybody help me understand why after installing this my app shows up without any formatting? http://imgur.com/pQ8wOdG I did notice that there was a Warning regarding different versions of libxml used for Nekogiri: $ RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate WARNING: Nokogiri was built against LibXML version 2.8.0, but has dynamically loaded 2.7.8

Depends on how you installed it... if you're running on your local computer, then it sounds like you're running in "production" mode without first compiling assets with `rake assets:precompile`. (See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html for some more info.)

Or just run it in development mode with `rails server`.

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

#232

Post by timmorgan »

steve918 wrote: post #229
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…

Awesome tim. I remember seeing this for the first time when I attended the Tulsa Ruby group. The one and only time I went to that particular meetup group ;-P

Steve! Yeah that seems like a long time ago...

Hope you are well!

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

#233

Post by tbrooks »

jashmenn wrote: post #169
callmeed wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great job, Tim. Looks really solid. I really think you should team up with someone to offer hosted versions of this to churches (take the WordPress model). My church uses The City [0] which charges anywhere from $20 to hundreds of dollars a month. It works well but I definitely think there's room for others. Also, Zondervan acquired The City from the developer/Mars Hill (he was an Amazon engineer too IIRC). I also th…

Our church also uses The City and I'd say it's fine but not great. There's a lot of room for another startup in this space - I've considered it more than once. The problem for me, on a personal level, is that it's very hard to mix business and the church. On the one hand, the technology used in the church generally lags far behind what is available and there are real benefits to the church body by having tailored tec…

As someone who owns a business that sells exclusively to churches (https://simpledonation.com), I know what that uneasiness can feel like -- the seemingly diametrical goals of building a business to return shareholder capital and serving a market need. And also the denominational thing...

I have by no means figured it all out, but it's been an area in which I've sought counseling and grown considerably. A constant fear I have is being seen as a moneychanger or profiteer.

Ultimately, I've chosen to run Simple Donation as a business. There are so many bad examples of software that churches use and I think having a profitable business gives me the best shot at serving those churches well with great software.

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

#235

Post by timmorgan »

tesmar2 wrote: post #146

Any chance to change the license to MIT?

No, sorry. AGPL still allows a company to provide a hosted commercial service (which I encourage), while also ensuring said company doesn't keep improvements to themselves.

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

#236

Post by timmorgan »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #93

What exactly makes it specific to churches and not organizations in general?

It has a handful of Christian church-specific features, such as personal "Testimony", bible verse sharing, attendance tracking, etc. If one were to take those features away, it would work for any close-knit community.

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

#237

Post by timmorgan »

zellyn wrote: post #92

Quick question: have you thought about porting this to sandstorm.io? Having a one-click "app-like" install would help out many less-technical church folks.

I looked at Sandstorm, but it seems it's in "closed alpha" - how do you recommend I use it?

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

lotharbot wrote: post #211
tptacek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and further would be concerned that a comment like this says more about you professionally than it does about the software we're discussing, somewhere in the vein of "Stack Overflow? Weekend Project".

It's important to note that what to put into a project like this (ie, requirements) is at least as important as the technical aspects. Part of the reason for the massive upvotes is the software has most of the right features for the job, which is actually quite rare in this arena.

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by timmorgan »

joeclark77 wrote: post #107

Have you got a demo site where somebody who's interested can log in and play around with its features? Two feature questions I can't answer by looking at the screenshots: (1) Does it have a way to highlight "Mass times" (or whatever), or is that just thrown into a general calendar with all the other events? (2) Does it have any way for the pastor to post messages to the front page in a prominent way, or is his user a…

I put up a demo several hours after this comment. If you're still interested, you can find this on the http://church.io website.

1. As for service times, the software doesn't really have any calendaring feature at the moment. Besides, that seems like maybe something that would go on the main church website (this is meant more as a private "members only" area).

2. Anyone can post news on the site (or you can restrict to only admins).

Post reply on HN