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PrayerCenter (using Drupal)

Submitted by oscatholic on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 6:00am
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The Archdiocese of Saint Louis' website has always had a very widely-used and useful prayer request functionality. Anyone in the world can submit a prayer request, and every prayer request is moderated and prayed for by contemplative sisters in the Archdiocese.

Old Prayer Center Form
The old prayer request form

The website first had an online contact form, and all prayer requests were submitted by email. However, after some time, this got to be quite a burden (hundreds of requests were coming in every day!). The Archdiocese used a Joomla! component, PrayerCenter, to handle the prayer requests for some time, with some custom modifications to speed up the workflow of moderating hundreds (some days, many hundreds!) of prayer requests. PrayerCenter is pretty good, but is not as modular and able to be customized as I would like.

Create Prayer Request Form
The new prayer request form

The new prayer request form (visible to end users) is highly optimized, and much more user-friendly. It limits the amount of characters in a prayer request, and using jQuery, shows the user how many characters he has remaining. Going completely custom allowed us to also tweak every last detail to our liking, meaning we didn't have confusing PrayerCenter branding here and there. Continue Reading »

FOLCS: Free Or Low Cost Solutions

Submitted by auger on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 12:47pm
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This blog will be a forum to introduce and share information about free or low-cost (software, web applications and occasional hardware) solutions for libraries, non-profits, small businesses and others who want functionality and ease-of-use but at no cost or a very low cost. Our primary audience is people with low to average computer and Web skills, who would appreciate an easy-to-understand resource, a go-to place for free or low-cost solutions, and a place to exchange their success stories.

Go to:  http://www.folcs.blogspot.com

A Call to Software Developers

Submitted by oscatholic on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 8:37am
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There have been a few people asking over the past few months about making an iPhone or Palm OS app, and getting it onto the App Store. I personally have only rudimentary programming knowledge, and not enough to make a quality app that would effectively fulfill the needs of the organizations/people who have asked about an app.

Are there any OSC readers out there who might be interested in some paid work? Writing apps might be a lucrative way to help out the Church, you know...

The kind of apps would be relatively simple; probably able to pull in a couple RSS feeds, submit a comment to a site or something, and play podcasts. I know there are some companies that make apps after you give them a spec sheet, but it'd be much better (imho) for a Catholic in need of some work to help a Catholic group (and vice-versa!).

[Edit: Here's a good resource for those wanting to develop an iPhone App: How to Create Your First iPhone Application]

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