<p>Nathan-</p><p>While the technical requirements to run Rock, especially for a smaller organization, are not that extreme, I would caution you trying to run Rock on an old PC or similar. The issue isn't <i>if</i>&nbsp;Rock can run like that, but <i>should</i>&nbsp;it, and I would say "no." If you're just wanting to kick the tires, sure, go for it, but if you actually end up using Rock as your production church database you will now be putting "all your eggs" in a very fragile basket, so to speak. It's unlikely that you would have it running in a RAID configuration (so that a simple hard drive failure doesn't take your server offline) and would likely not be backed up properly, either. </p><p>If you don't have in-house IT expertise I would highly recommend letting an expert "in the cloud" handle all of that for you. If you're a 501c3, you're entitled to $5000/yr free Azure credit from Microsoft, which is plenty to run a typical Rock server. The licensing can also get somewhat complicated, especially if you're going to run SQL Server standard and not Express.... oh, and if you plan on taking credit cards for online giving and/or event registrations, you need TWO servers as you can't run web and SQL on the same server for PCI compliance reasons. See why the cloud is such an attractive option? ;-) That's my .02, take it for what it's worth.</p><p><br></p><p>As for your second question... if I understand it correctly... yes, you can add new people to the database while entering donations into the system.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p>

<p>Thank You Jim for responding to me.&nbsp; I understand the cloud configuration benefits, but we're going to have a hard time selling them to at least part of the congregation.&nbsp; Do you know of any security benefits we could point out in this age of everything being potentially hackable?&nbsp; For what we want - again for now - which does not require people access the server offsite, it seems most secure to set it up in house on our ethernet and hide behind our firewall.</p><p>For the second question, can I add people from the same screen that I put transactions into - or do I have to go back to the directory and add the new person, then re-open the batch and put the transaction in?</p><p>Thank you again,</p><p>Nathan</p>

<p>Yes, of course putting the database behind your own network and not exposing it to the public is "safer" than not doing that, but you're really limiting your access to the product and what it can do for you. Part of Rock's magic is instant access for Pastoral or other staff to data, and you do that by making it accessible on the public side (yes, you could use a VPN but ain't nobody got time fo dat!)... and I would say if you can't trust the product to be publicly accessible, but secured via SSL and good logins, you probably shouldn't trust the product at all. Which means you couldn't use any third party ChMS that's hosted or sold as a service, either.&nbsp;</p><p>As I said in the first reply, I would be more concerned about the <i>integrity</i>&nbsp;of your database, which is directly related to the hardware you run it on, how you back it up, etc. Your first question implied you were not wanting to run it on server-grade hardware, and I would say that's a red flag. While Rock can run perfectly fine on just about any Windows machine with enough CPU and RAM, that doesn't mean it will be safe doing so. Again, that's all just my opinion.</p><p>For the second question... yes, when you're matching transactions from check/envelope scans or manually, you can add a new person to the db right there. If you haven't read the docs yet, you can find that info here&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rockrms.com/Rock/BookContent/15/104#onsitecollection">https://www.rockrms.com/Rock/BookContent/15/104#onsitecollection</a></p><p><br></p>

<p>Sorry to get back to this so late.&nbsp; I'm trying to bring myself up to speed on the remote server idea.&nbsp; I am checking into the Ultimate Windows Hosting plans on the site.&nbsp; &nbsp;This appears to include the server and any licensing we may need.&nbsp; Is my impression accurate?&nbsp; Do I need to look into MS Azure as well?&nbsp; We have less than 400 attending weekly.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>What host are you looking at, specifically? I'm not familiar with "Ultimate windows hosting" and haven't heard of anyone using it. I would be leery of anything that is really cheap (like under $20/mo)... something like that has almost zero chance of having the necessary resources to run Rock well, especially in shared environments like that. Rock is an enterprise-level app that -- while not crazy -- does demand a certain level of performance. If you're a 501c3, I would definitely look at Azure as that is proving to be a good platform on which to run Rock.&nbsp;</p>