RocketTheme

Decided to drop Catalyst into my church site and I like it a lot.  Used to be Vortex, and we needed a refresh.

Still have a few quirks to work out, but I've only been at this for a few short hours.  Check it out and pass on the comments:

www.wesley-umc.com

OK, it's pretty well finished now.  The staff and members really like the white-space when compared to the boxy look of the typical CMS template.  We lived with Vortex for over a year, and it was time for a change.

Nice Job!!

What are you using for the slid show in the inset?

That's Monoslideshow, which was introduced with Bentobox Dark, I believe.

Nice job. I really like it.

nice! migration

 I also am using this however am having trouble with J1.5.3 and allvideos revisited plugin. Are u using Joomla 1.0.1x of 1.5.x? and did you have any troubles with allvideos plugin??

thanks in advance for anytips!!

keep up the Good Work!

Steve

I'm using Allvideos on Joomla 1.0x.  Don't have the guts to jump to 1.5 because of Community Builder among other things we're using.

Great site!  Very inspirational, both in design and content.  I've come back to it several times while designing my church site.

I have a question about your audio.  I am totally ignorant on audio files and would prefer to remain that way  ;)  Tell me, how do you get the entire service in 13mb?  My is running about 80mb and too cumbersome.  Are you using LeBlanc's podcast?  I would like to use sermonSpeaker but I think my files are just too big.

We're using an MP3 ripper that takes the audio off the DVD.  I forget the name but I'll find out (a volunteer posts the audio and video).  I encode the MP4 podcast file into flash for the front page using Adobe Flash Encoder.

The podcast program we're using is called Loudblog, and it's in a wrapper.  It's simple, and I've customized the template quite a bit.  Works great.

Hello,

Fantastic Job!

I am attempting to design my church's site as well, and we want to incorporate some audio/video.  Question: For your general video editing are you using a Mac or PC and what software are you using? (imovie, Final Cust, Premiere, Vegas, etc)  Also are you using Adobe Flash Encoder to encode the audio as well as the video?  Does LoudBlog encode the video?  Your assistance will be greatly appreciated.  Would you mind sharing the template that you customized? 
Thanks in advance!

What are you using for the church calendar feature?

We don't have the best method for getting video web ready.  The best way would be to use the AVIs from the hard drive to our volunteer, but those are huge files.  Instead, we have the ones who produce the DVD for TV produce another for our web volunteer.  He uses MPEG Streamclip (free program) to rip the video off the DVD and convert it to MP4 for podcasting.

Here's the link:  http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html

We also rip the audio off the DVD using BitRipper (another free program) that converts to MP3 nicely.

For the front page flash video, I download the MP4 that the volunteer uploads to Loudblog (he sends me an email to notify me) and then I convert it to flash using Adobe Flash CS3 Video Encoder.  That program ISN'T free... it's quite expensive when I bought the entire CS3 suite.  We display it on the front page using the AllVideos plugin for Joomla.

Loudblog (our podcasting program) is found at www.loudblog.de, I believe.  It's quite good, and I modified one of the simple templates for my use within a wrapper (mostly removing borders and such).

Hope that's enough info for all of you who asked.

The calendar is great.  It's a small cost program called EasyPHPCalendar, found at www.easyphpcalendar.com, and someone created a nice mod in the forums there for Mambo/Joomla.

What bitrate are you using for the encoding? 
Thanks again.

For the MP4 conversions, I think this is the instruction I left for the volunteer that is working fine.  I don't think we messed with a bitrate setting, just "quality."

Frame Size: Other (320x240)
Quality: drag down to 20%
Sound: Change the last setting to 96kbps

We used to also use Windows Movie Maker to create windows video versions, but it just got to be too much work and too much space required.

Good Job Cubfan !

I would like to create lefts menus as yours ?
it's a custom module for each one ?
could you explain how to do it ?
thanks

Ok solved. Just create news menus.
Thanks

Can you say me wich SEO component you are using ?
Becausse I saw that your read more.. links are well formed.

On my site I'm using Artio Joomsef, but the readmore links are not SEO.

Greetings,

Deef

Davey, I don't believe I'm using one.  I've checked the box in Joomla config for Dynamic Page Titles, but have SEO set to "no."  We did have an SEO component once, but I think it was causing problems so I uninstalled it.  There's a chance it's still doing its thing, but I doubt it.

I have a Flash Video Encoder that I got with CS2.  Do you know if it works the same as the one you got with CS3 as my encoder is pretty slow.  Would you recommend Sorenson Squeeze for Flash?  Also is it your player that makes it that your video starts playing before it fully loads?  (I hope that made sense)

------------

Thanks!!

I'm preparing to work on our church's site and your has certainly been an inspiration!  Can I ask what you used to setup your podcasts on your audio/video ministry page?  Are they separate articles within a category?  If there's a component/module you used that you might have found helpful, please advise. Currently, we simply have a table linked to downloadable files.

It is appreciated greatly!! All the best,

--BP

www.p-films.com (http://www.p-films.com)
(video site using hyperion. Also, i might add that the allvideos reloaded module/plugin worked phenomenally for our site!)

I think that this thread confirms that churches have adopted Joomla. In fact, I spoke with a friend from Switzerland last week, who is revising his church college's site in Switzerland. I told him how great Joomla is, and he said that he was already planning to use Joomla to redesign their site.