Question

Photo of Gilbert Hatfield

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WordPress

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People like myself use WordPress because we cannot code or can code very little.  The answers to questions regarding using WP as a website but taping into RockRMS seem to forget that for the most part.  

The biggest failure for small to medium churches is when the webmaster/programmer move and now they are left without a person to update their website.  I'm the third and least talented webmaster at our church.  I got the job because most of what we had was sharepoint 2003 and I had build websites using that.  But it also has a lot of HTML code in it also.   At 70 years old I'm not likely to learn programming.  I choose WP for the simple reason is it is easy and even easier if you use Thrive Content Builder.  Which lets anyone build a WP site without knowing any code or understanding widgets. 

Everything I'm reading about RockRMS sounds wonderful but there are things It does not do that we want so coding would be required if we changed over.  There are a couple of things that I really like.  They are event registration and management of our members.    We currently use Servant Keeper for member management.  So I'm back to the same question that has been asked before.  How or can you mix and match Rockrms with WP build site without having someone do some coding for you. The new site I'm playing with but not the official site is www.cclg.us.

  • Photo of Jim Michael

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    One strategy I've seen used successully is to not choose "either/or" but "both/and." If you're really into WP and don't have the CSS/HTML chops to do a "full" Rock web site, a hybrid might be your best bet. In this type of setup, your main web site stays WP but you create a Rock web site THEMED to look like your WP site (and if you don't have the chops to do THAT, there are consultants that can certainly do it for you), containing only the "Rock parts" necessary for things like Giving, Groups, Connections, etc. In this way your main site stays 100% WP and your Rock parts stay small and feature-specific. It pretty much looks just like your main site and most users don't even notice when they change URLs.

     

    That said, Rock's CMS is pretty darn good and comes with built-in layouts that should cover the vast majority of site layout needs... be sure to check out the Building Websites doc here before writing it off. Finally, even if you didn't change a THING on your web site side, switching to Rock for your backend database from your current solution would still probably be worthwhile just for people and contribution management reasons.

  • Photo of Marcus Flores

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    Hello,  my question elaborates on this thread.  I currently have a WP frontend (external) site but am interested in using Rock for their backend as well as a church members portal.  For example the www.parkvillepresby.org would be for people browsing or looking to join to getting information, but then members would get an account on members.parkvillepresby.org and have access to the full rock suite.  Is that a model you have seen in place?  Would I simply install (start.aspx) into members.parkvillepresby.org and then link to that subdomain as needed?  And perhaps have the giving/calendar 'modules' or 'buttons' available from both members. as well as www.?


    Thank you