Wednesday, October 17th, 2007...10:45 am
New CMS solution for LifeChurch.tv
The Digerati team is in the middle of re-designing and architecting our www.lifechurch.tv site. For the past few years we have been using a tool called Content Fusion, built by Element Fusion. I think Content Fusion is a nice CMS for a single site, but when you get 12 campuses on it, you quickly see it is not designed to be used how we are using it. So, after a few months of research, phone calls (thanks David), etc, etc, we have decided to move our development efforts towards Expression Engine.
Here are some things that were very important to us, and why we chose Expression Engine.
1) Scaleability. Currently we have 12 campuses, that are truly sites and have many more on the way. We needed a CMS that could scale to 20, 50, 200 with no problem. We think that with Expression Engine’s Multiple Site Manager that we can facilitate this growth with ease.
2) Flexibility. Software can never be all things to all people. There are limits, and actually there need to be limits! However, when looking for a CMS we needed our solution to be flexible enough for us to customize it to meet our specific needs. This could be open source but did not NEED to be. Expression Engine has thousands of Add-Ons, and lets you develop plug-ins and build modules on top of their core. It also lets you integrate your own PHP code anywhere you need, so the sky is really the limit.
3) Give-away-ability. A core passion here at LifeChurch.tv is the ability to give things away. You see that modeled with Open, and in the near future you will see another big round of “giving” away. We are contacted all the time about giving away our code, and our site. We really want to be able to do that, so with Expression Engine we plan on making all our templates, plug-ins and modules available for free. Anything that we build we want to give it away. (more on this later!)
4) Standards based. A key for anything we are doing now following web standards. Expression Engine follows all the “rules” that are important to us.
5) Simple Integration. It was very important for us that our new CMS would play well with others. LifeChurch.tv is moving to FellowshipOne and our website will be highly integrated with it. So, our website needs to tightly integrate with our backend systems. Expression Engine and F1 will work well together via the F1 data exchange tool.
6) Design-ability. Many times I have found that a CMS limits the “design” capabilities to your website. This was not an option for our selection. Expression Engine is based on very flexible templates, and will allow us to design anything that we desire and use EE to manage the content.
7) Active user base. An active user base, developers group and forum was important to us. Typically when you find an active user base you find tons of people that offer support and ideas! We realize that we are not on an island, and really nothing is very original anymore. An active user base makes us better.
8 ) LAMP. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This was mission critical for us. The digerati team operates in this environment, and we needed our CMS to follow.
9) Multi Language support. Yep, this was important to us for the future.
10) Price. This might be a shock to some, but the digerati does have budget limits. Expression Engine core for non-profits is oly $99. After we added mulit-site manager, additional licenses for our campuses the total price was just over $400.
Currently we are in planning and design phase. We plan on rolling out the new site around the first of the year. As we get closer I am sure we will give some sneak peaks of new functionality and a peak at the new look.
For those who are wondering we also looked at: Drupal, Wordpress, TextPattern, Typo3, and many others.
I lead the digerati team at
18 Comments
October 17th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Now, CMS is different than ChMS, right?
October 17th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
That’s awesome news. Keep us updated.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
haven’t been to your site in a while (rss)…forgot it was blue! $400?! do you know how many starving children you could save wtih that? haha…just kidding…that is seriously an amazing deal!!!
October 17th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Terry, Hey man. Good stuff. Actually, that might be a resouce that we could even use. We’re a high-end web design and development group based out of Houston, Texas. While Expression Engine is more of a resource for programmers and developers, we provide custom website and CMS solutions that are tailored for the end-user… the client. So easy, anyone can do it.
We’re a LAMP based development company, although I see us moving to Rails at some point in the near future. Also, not only do we do LAMP based development, but all of our stuff works seamlessly with Flash too, not just HTML environments… although we’ve do both.
All of the following links are CMS driven and custom developed for our clients. Anyway, ExpressionEngine will likely be a good source for modules.
PS You mentioned that CMS solutions typically limit creativity. Interesting you should say that. You guys are the exception to the rule, in that you have some real thoroughbread talent onboard that you can rely upon for solid design and branding standards. On the other hand… most businesses and churches out there don’t. We’re advocates of highly opinionated CMS software. Our CMS is what we call restrictive. We’ve just seen too many CMS solutions out there that allow the end-user to really depreciate the visual appeal and commercial value of their website presence. 1 month after these people are up and running… ther website looks as though cousin Joey designed it after reading a book on HTML, and taking a Lynda.com course in Photoshop. I know you understand.
Anyway, I think you’ll have fun checking out the following links. Everyone of them, very eclectic as they are, are LAMP/CMS driven. Have fun!
LOUD! Creative
Dave Barnes
Michael Neale
Hamilton Church
Houston Photo Imaging
Fish Construction
Visible Applause
October 17th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
jeff told me you were going to start using EE. props. i hated it at first, but it’s grown on me a lot (and they’ve improved TONS just within the past year) and now i’m a fanboy.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
That is great news, I am sure it will be a terrific resource! May God continue to bless all of you in your work.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
great stuff!
I’ve always wanted to build our websites on EE, however we don’t have the budget to afford it.
So instead I’m slowly building our websites/apps in CI (Code Igniter).
October 18th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Terry: I’m stoked about this. I can’t wait to see what you guys do with EE. I’m certain it will be a terrific relationship! Keep me posted.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I like your excellent list of criteria. Before you go too far, I strongly encourage you to check out the Web-Empowered Church software based on the enterprise-class TYPO3 CMS before you get too far along. It does all of the above and more, and has a worldwide Christian community already in place and growing. Also, the Web-Empowered Church ministry is putting huge investments to develop ministry-driven applications to take churches to new levels in the use of the Internet in ministry. All the software, documentation and training is free to everyone because it is all open source. Please consider this exciting ministry!
In Christ,
Mark Stephenson
October 19th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Terry,
You may have met my Lead Pastor, Dave Ferguson, at Catalyst. I know he hung out with Bobby Gruenewald. Kudos to you and your team for your open stance on giving your CMS away. We are just now looking to replace our site with a CMS, and since we are also a multi-site church with 9 locations, scalability is important. We’ve built a ChMS in .NET that we host for other churches called 3cms. We have been considering using DotNetNuke for our CMS. We are still thinking through our development roadmap which might move the entire 3cms system to a Java / Linux / Postgres platform.
Who would be the best person on your team to begin discussing how we could get hands on your implementation of Expression Engine?
Steve Brewer, Communication & Technology Catalyst
Community Christian Church
http://www.communitychristian.org
October 19th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Terry- you won’t be disapointed with EE. I’ve been using and have tried them all. It’s very nice and holds up to the stress. Not that I think you need it, but if you need any help just ask, I’d be glad to help.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Great comments and feedback for sure! Don’t know where to start.
Bevo…your funny.
Bill and duster…glad you chimed in.
Brian, great to see what LoudCreative is doing. I recommend you checking EE out…I think it could help you guys out.
Victor, CodeIgnitor is great. Did you know that the non profit price of EE is only $99 bucks…
Mark, good to hear from you. Long time no talk. We looked at TYPO3 and just thought EE would be a better solution for where we are going. I do like that you are leading so many other churches in a good direction. I pray that you keep leading in that area.
Steve, yes… I know Dave…a great guy and a wonderful Church. Wow, ChMS developement…brings back a lot of memories getting FellowshipOne off the ground…originally know as Switch when I lead that effort. Crazy you are thinking Java/Linux Postgres. The original Switch was J2EE/Linux/Oracle. Been there done that! All I say…good luck!
Thanks Brandon…we might be calling you!
Keep the great comments coming guys/gals.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Hey Terry – I’ve been a huge Joomla/Mambo supporter for years but EE looks like the real deal. We are planning to demo some new CMS options this year and EE is the early front runner. Good to see others in ministry are going for it. I’ll be watching your progress closely. Show me the way!
October 24th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Terry,
What do you think of Dot Net Nuke? We are evaluating it right now, with many similar criteria that you are working with.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Justin, I’ll let Terry chime in if he gets a chance, but I would strongly recommend that you guys take a look at ExpressionEngine. We’ve used it for over a year now and it has never failed to perform for us. It is one amazing CMS. Unless you are locked in on ASP/MS, EE would be well worth your evaluation.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
[...] as Terry Storch posted a few days ago, we are pulling down the LifeChurch.tv site and pulling her back up from the ground [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 7:33 am
[...] Back in September and October we spent a lot of time looking for a CMS that would be the end all be all solution for LifeChurch.tv. We did not find the end all be all, because it does not exist, but we did land on Expression Engine. You can learn more about that here. [...]
June 27th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Beautiful review, I must read this really slow. People should never forget the importance of a intelligent life. And from time to time a eating plan cannot do such harm, just try it.
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