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Ministry Child Theme

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Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › Showcase and Feedback › Ministry Child Theme

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • February 8, 2013 at 11:13 am #18953
    media317
    Participant

    I have released a child theme for the Genesis Framework.  I'd love your thoughts and feedback on the design/look.

    http://media317.net/themes/ministry-child-theme/

    Thanks!

    Alan Smith
    Media317

    February 8, 2013 at 12:27 pm #18970
    nickthegeek
    Member

    Looks good. I'd like to see a min-height in the home middle section so those items are all the same height in a typical setup.

    I'm also curious, are you using any CPTs or Custom Fields to improve the usability for ministries for events or sermons or is it intentionally compatible with specific plugins that add that functionality?

    February 8, 2013 at 1:00 pm #18990
    media317
    Participant

    Good suggestion Nick.  Thanks.

    This version does not have any CPT's for specific ministry functions.  I am working on a simple events CPT and a Podcast type CPT.  I will introduce those in other versions.  I wanted to get one released and "in the wild" and make changes based on feedback.

    I intend to make it a self contained system for ministries to be able to use.  I want to introduce those functions that are going to be most valuable and hopefully it will become a theme that helps churches or ministry organizations meet their needs.

    Any suggestions from your experience as a Youth Pastor?  I've been working with my brother, who is an Associate Pastor, getting some ideas too.  Which is what has put the events and podcast/sermon CPT at the top of my list.

    I have some plugins that I recommend for use with the theme for different functions.

    Thanks!

    Alan Smith
    Media317

    February 8, 2013 at 1:19 pm #19005
    nickthegeek
    Member

    Just a couple of things.

    First, I'd recommend making the CPTs and Custom Fields a plugin, even if it is a premium plugin included for free with the theme. This is ideal as a plugin because if you did a "Ministry 2.0" or even another ministry based theme users can upgrade/switch themes without affecting the CPT/Custom fields. Also, users might chose to use some other theme and if you make functionality that is central to the site usage part of the theme you kinda make that a big mess.

    Second, in my experience the person updating the church website isn't necessarily tech savvy. They will need an easy way to add details about ministries such as service times and leader details. Same for events, and sermons. These are all things that custom fields would be very helpful for. My church website is a very basic version of Outreach 2.0 but under the hood is a pretty good system for adding events, ministries, and sermons (which I still need to add). I stripped out the actual page content and put in a small handful of custom fields, some of which are date selectors, WYSIWYG editors, or file upload fields. The goal was to put as little on each post type as I could. Too many fields and it just gets confusing for people.

    Here are a couple screen shots to show how little is actually there
    http://awesomescreenshot.com/06fwn3hca

    There is even less in the "ministries" post type
    http://awesomescreenshot.com/0fawn3ob4

    That lets me have a lot of power controlling how it gets put on the site though so it is useful for visitors. From everything I researched most people want to know when the church meets, where it means, and who will be there in that order, so I've tried to make getting that information easily available and easy to share for each ministry and for each event. Everything is also tied together so users can follow various links and get to the info they want in more than one direction.

    In other words, it needs to be extremely easy to use, but it needs to make the basic information people are searching for on a church site easy to find.

    February 8, 2013 at 1:32 pm #19012
    media317
    Participant

    I do like the idea of making the CPT a plugin.  I've thought about that before, but I've never made a plugin (good suggestions for reading on where to start?).  I do like the idea of creating a nice premium plugin that provides these ministry functions that are not theme dependent.

    Thanks for sharing the screen shots.  I agree that simple is critical.  Especially when talking about ministry organizations, the system has to just work and be very intuitive.  I like the challenge of making things simple.

    Thanks for the feedback!

    Alan Smith
    Media317

    February 20, 2013 at 10:57 pm #21875
    TravisPri
    Member

    I really like the look of this theme! The demo is taking me to a 404 page though. Is it still available?

    February 20, 2013 at 11:09 pm #21878
    media317
    Participant

    TravisPri - Thanks for the heads up.  I've been making changes to the demo and support area and missed a link.  It should be working now.

     

    Alan

    Alan Smith
    Media317

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