Church Deploy

A robust Symphony CMS ensemble (template) for churches.

Quick install

1. Download the Church Deploy core
2. Download the example Anchor theme, rename the folder to active, and move it into workspace/themes
3. Start a server using something like MAMP
4. Connect to MAMP MySQL using something like Sequel Pro and create a database with any name.
5. Visit your new server homepage and follow the on-screen installation instructions.

Getting started

Think of Content > Tags as Pages. A tag is a meeting place for content of all kinds. When the content comes together (has the same tag) then it gets displayed according to Structure > Layouts, which can be specified in the tag.

If a field says (internal) then it won't show on the page, it's for your internal reference only.

All text areas support Markdown .. its awesome :)

Go to http://your-host/toolkit/images/ to add images for use in text fields while utilizing responsimage.

Cron jobs need to be added to use twitter, vimeo, and ustream .. see component documentation below for details. The cron job will push the data into the backend CMS automatically.

Get your auth token by going to System > Authors > Your-name, then check the box next to ie. Allow remote login via http://atheycreek.com/symphony/login/725e2ffa/ 725e2ffa is your auth token to use in the cron jobs below.

Grunt

Grunt is already installed and configured to compile coffee and less files and to combine js files.

To monitor coffee and less files for changes and compile on-save

# for development (uncompressed)
grunt watch:jsdev & grunt watch:cssdev

# for production (compressed)
grunt watch:jsprod & grunt watch:cssprod

To compile manually and not watch files

# for development (uncompressed)
grunt jsdev & grunt cssdev

# for production (compressed)
grunt jsprod & grunt cssprod

Any of the commands can be run without the &. For example

grunt cssdev

Bug tracker

Have a bug? Please create an issue here on GitHub that conforms with necolas's guidelines.

Components

Downloads

Images

Locations

Tags

Text

Twitter

Cron job

curl http://your-server.com/symphony/extension/xmlimporter/importers/run/twitter/?auth-token=725e2ffa

Blueprints > XML Importers > Twitter and check the radio button "Is unique" in the ID row under Destination

This will update Content > Twitter

Verses

Videos

Cron job

curl http://your-server.com/symphony/extension/xmlimporter/importers/run/vimeo/?auth-token=725e2ffa

Blueprints > XML Importers > Vimeo and check the radio button "Is unique" in the ID row under Destination

This will update Content > Videos

Featured

Events

Events: Recurring

Events: Types

Teachings

Teachings: Series

Teachings: Tags

Members

Members: Roles

Members: Roles: Types

UStream

Cron job

curl http://your-server.com/symphony/extension/xmlimporter/importers/run/ustream/?auth-token=725e2ffa

Blueprints > XML Importers > UStream and check the radio button "Is unique" in the Name row under Destination

This will update Structure > Status > ustream-status

Alerts

Core

Layouts

Sections

Misc

Status

Walkthrough

We make no assumptions about how you will use Church Deploy. It is up to you to craft whatever solution is best for your use-case. We are doing our best to keep the core robust and controllable, so you can enable or disable different components.

Features

• Tag-based associations create content "meeting points," there aren't really any "pages" per se.
  • All content is associated with a tag.
  • Tags claim parents, so a second-tier tag is really just claiming a first-tier tag as its parent, but it is organized to communicate content relationships to the user.
    • Tags can claim multiple parents, so you can position content in different sections, even groups of contant (if tag A claims B as a parent, then wherever A is shown, B is shown as a sub-page)
  • Supports infinite nav levels, whether 3 or 300.
• ID-anchored URLs let you change the readable text and not worry about migration issues.
  • Nice URL slugs let you inform the user about the content
  • ie. site/4234/our-big-meeting/ could change to site/4234/fun-times-ahead/ without any users lost or confused, as both URLs still function.
• Internal templating, in the Symphony control panel, lets you reorganize content based on your needs. Content can be designed to react to its placement in the templates.
  • ie. If an event is in full-width then it will have a more detailed and imformative view than the same event listed in column-right, the sidebar.
• Component-based architecture lets you pick and choose your functionality and implementation. It also helps organize code to spot issues more easily.
• Uses Bootstrap for baseline styles and HTML.
  • Out of the box template is built with many responsive considerations.
• Retina-ready icon font, and responsimage image baked-in.
• Front-end membership is already in-place, and we hope to enable registration soon.

Advanced installation

Use the example organization anchorchurch, which consists of two projects ..

1. anchor theme — a custom theme bundle (similar to a WordPress theme) for a church we made up for example purposes only.
2. churchdeploy fork — a fork of churchdeploy with the above anchor project added as a submodule to the path workspace/themes/active. Forking the project and adding your theme will enable you to push updates by installing git via SSH on your server and using git pull to update your live site.

You can update your local churchdeploy fork using the following commands ..

git remote add upstream https://github.com/churchdeploy/churchdeploy.git
git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/master
git push

Server requirements

• PHP 5.3
• PHP's LibXML module, with the XSLT extension enabled (--with-xsl)
• MySQL 5.0 or later
• Apache webserver with mod_rewrite

Software recommendations

• Mac OS X
  • Local server: MAMP Pro - MAMP is free, pro is $59.00 (we recommend pro)
  • MySQL: Sequel Pro - Donationware
  • Code editor: Sublime 2 - Free demo, $59.00 to buy
  • FTP: Transmit

More

We use the term component for a Church Deploy object (in Symphony, objects are called sections). All Church Deploy components have a template XSL file, which lives in the workspace/themes/yourtheme directory, with its component name.

We made an out of the box template for you to work from called anchor in which we use the name "Anchor Church." Church Deloy will use whatever theme that you title active. So if you want to switch templates, simply go to the templates directory and change the folder name. Church Deploy is designed to have all of the core functionalty in the parent project and let your theme template files only make the changes that are unique to your installation, but it isn't limiting in the least.

All of the components we used are free for you to use with Church Deploy as it is a combination of open-source projects. Thank you open source community!

Please write kirk@strobeck.com, IM kirkstrobeck on AIM/Skype, or call (503) 427-8050 if you have any questions.

We can't wait to see how you use Church Deploy