Question

Photo of David Hamilton

1

Website Embedding

3

I posted yesterday about hosting through FaithConnector. I have learned that it is not possible, so I am looking at other hosting options. Now, I need to know if anyone has looked at the embedding code yet. I need to see if I will be able to get all of the stuff I need (small groups) onto our website.

Update: I was hoping to have a map function and an active list of available groups.

  • Photo of Chris Funk

    1

    Programming against the API would be the best solution to integrate/embed functionality and data from Rock RMS into an external site or application.  Currently, there are not any widgets, modules, etc for external CMS solutions that are a part of the core Rock RMS offering, and I personally do not see it being a core offering (my personal opinion, I could be wrong). With that being said, it could be possible that a dev in the community or a software provider would build such.

    • Jeremy Hoff

      Jeremy Hoff

      Chris,
      Given Rock's CMS options, I'm confident saying that core won't contain widgets for other CMS platforms. I suspect with enough interest, this gap will be filled by others needing similar functionality and made available within the Rock ecosystem. :-)

    • Photo of Jim Michael

      3

      By "embedding code" do you mean the ability to easily embed functionality of Rock into an existing web site? I could be completely wrong since I'm not one of the developers, but I'm not aware of a way to use "embed codes" to expose (in your example) small groups that exist in Rock into your existing non-Rock web site. As a full-blown CMS, Rock is really intended to BE the web site (there are huge advantages to having your Church Management Platform host the web site itself, as exposing data is then super-simple. And don't let the "web guys" tell you a CMS-driven site can't be "as good as we need, thus we have to code by hand." Your site's effectiveness/attractiveness is only limited by your developers' skills.)

      That said, I guess with the REST API in Rock you could write external code to grab data from Rock and do whatever you want with it on an existing site... or even (shudder) iFrame the components of Rock that you want to expose on a different web site.

      If I'm completely out of the loop and Rock DOES have the functionality you're asking about, I'm sure one of the devs will correct me ;-)

    • Photo of Trey Hendon III

      2

      Another option could be to create a matching look for your Rock public site and pass the user between the two sites via page menus. We do this method for a different church management tool since our main website is WordPress. Users don't visually know any difference unless they look in the address bar - they'dthe sub-domain my for the ChMS pages and www for WP.

      • Jeremy Hoff

        Jeremy Hoff

        Indeed, Trey's suggestion can be a great strategy for any organization who does not want to power their primary website with Rock. It's a matter of weighing the pros and the cons.


        For anyone considering this strategy, I would very much love to understand what you need in a CMS that Rock doesn't offer. :-)