Low Budget IT
November 8, 2007
I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting about where Crossroads is headed with IT and Web infrastructure. I’d like to get back to it. Here’s a start.
The economic situation in Michigan has really hurt Crossroads’ finances. We used to be able to throw money at stuff to solve problems. Not so anymore. We’re on a budget. A couple of years ago I had visions of a full-time IT staff (we’re still volunteer run), a server room, and all the usual things a guy like myself would have visions of. None of that came to pass.
I have fretted about disaster recovery, dependence on our internet connection, collaboration, maintenance, support, and numerous other problems, but most of those problems seem to have been solved by our webification strategy (except our dependence on our internet connection). What that boils down to is that if we can use an online application to solve a problem, we do. The ball started rolling with Fellowship One and hasn’t stopped.
Here’s a list of the online applications we use so far.
- Fellowship One – church management, check-in (not really low-budget)
- Google Apps for Domains - document storage and collaboration, calendaring, chat, email
- ScrubIt – content filtration (I’m currently evaluating OpenDNS since it has more fine-grained control).
- Google Groups – Project management. We were using Basecamp, but realized we weren’t using the milestone and to-do list features and found that Google Groups fit our need for less money (i.e. free). To-do lists and such were being managed mostly by staff and they found that the next item on this list fit the need better.
- Vitalist – “Getting Things Done” style list management
- Planning Center – Worship service planning software
- Celtx – pre-production planning. This is a hybrid, not 100% online. There are clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- GoDaddy – file sharing and domain hosting
- Jott – personal secretary. Jott in conjunction with Vitalist is pretty darn cool.
We do use a number of other applications that simply can’t be online – primarily media oriented applications. Pete Bishop will know more about those applications (e.g. Final Cut, Photoshop, MediaShout, Audacity, Gimp, etc.).
One other dirt cheap package we do use is F-Prot anti-virus. It’s not necessarily the most polished package, but it does the job for peanuts.
November 8, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Glad you’re evaluating OpenDNS… I’m biased, but I think it’s a great choice. Let us know your questions and feedback.
John Roberts
OpenDNS
November 8, 2007 at 2:40 pm
OpenDNS is by far the best hosted DNS service out there. ScrubIT is good, but they don’t offer the stats and reliability of openDNS. I’m unsure about the godaddy recommendation, I host my primary and a few client sites with them, and they were good but they seem to be slipping as of late. I’m trying out a small orange, so far they have given me great support, and the prices are reasonable.
November 8, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I don’t actually host any sites with GoDaddy. Just the domain. Their file sharing mechanism seems to be decent as well.
November 8, 2007 at 4:23 pm
We use OpenDNS at our church offices and seem to have had success. The IT guy seems to like it. I recommended the service to him a few months ago after I started using it at home.
November 9, 2007 at 6:03 am
Thanks for the tips! As for project management we use Wrike http://www.wrike.com/, not Basecamp. It’s got everything: to-do lists, planning features and Gantt charts. It’s also great that Wrike’s email integrated, we can work even being off line.
November 9, 2007 at 8:46 am
Brian Rocks!, Hey Beavor while Wrike really looks cool it seems a lil pricey ( actually for how we would use it it would be $25.00 a month more than what we had in basecamp) I like that it is user based instead of project though. With Googleapps( including groups,calendar etc) and vitalist and email we have found that we can do “most” of what we did in basecamp for free.
November 9, 2007 at 10:20 am
Thanks for the list. What do you get from Planning Center that makes it better than sharing a couple of Google Docs to plan your worship service? For our small church, I would like to move to a shared spreadsheet for our list of available resources, and a shared doc or spreadsheet for the order of worship each week. Is there a killer feature that makes Planning Center worth paying for? What is the size church at which that killer feature increases the value?
John
john-simons.com
November 9, 2007 at 11:28 am
Hi John, We used to do shared documents for planning ( prior to google docs so it was all email) The biggest benefits that we have found in planning center are
• Everything is in one place. We can look at what’s coming and what’s in the past all in one place and administrated by multiple people or teams or environment.
• As you make changes through the week (s) it becomes a more automated process, you don’t continually have to send things out and make sure everyone has the most current thing.
• You can attach files directly to elements in the list for the day. So for instance we can attach the arrangements of what we are doing both musically and chords and lyrics ( video etc) right to the name of the song or element, A drop list appears and the musicians and techs can download it right from there.
• You can control all of your scheduling for every environment right from within the planning center AND your volunteers can communicate back with you. If they can’t do something or become unavailable its all in one place.
• We can keep track of our CCLI stuff right there.
Probably the biggest bang for buck for us is integration and ease of use for volunteers. Everything including files, schedule of rooms and volunteers whats coming etc is all in one place and is easily accessible for everyone. While we could go back and do it with a google group and docs at this point the total integration and ease of Volunteer use makes it a worthwhile expenditure.
The value would be totally dependent on your circumstances and what resources you have and where you are putting them. We try to do as much free and open source stuff we can and at this point the money spent on planning center has been a good return on that investment.
November 9, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Have you considered dnsredirector.com for web filtering? It’s not free, but it’s much more affordable than other big-name filtering appliances. …and you can keep your DNS running internally.
November 13, 2007 at 5:43 pm
All: I am not sure if this will accomplish what your other software does but I find it extremely easy to use and FREE!!! it is found at http://www.tadalist.com/ and it is a to do list for anyone that sings up. Like I said I am not sure if it will help but it is a tool that I use everyday to track the many IT issues that I have to do and stay up on. By the way great info on your blog.
August 18, 2008 at 7:48 am
Good info all around. Thanks for posting.
As the lead Tech volunteer at our small church, we’re always trying to do what we do on a “slim to none” budget. I agree with several posters, Google Apps is getting it done for us…especially Google Groups. I’m using it to manage documentation, scheduling (through the calendar), group interaction and planning, etc.
On the media side, we use a number of apps, most of which have already been listed:
1. GIMP – graphics manipulation
2. Audacity – Podcast and other audio recording/editing
3. Ustream – free, for streaming sermon video live. We’ll be using this for “online” bible studies in the fall. Recording/archiving is also an option
4. Sermon.net – VERY flexible podcast hosting site. Free for audio only account.
5. Open Office Impress – for machines in classrooms where we don’t have presentation software (supports PowerPoint very well)
6. Open Office all around (docs, spreadsheets, publishing, presentation)
7. EasyWorship – affordable package with one very compelling feature..sitewide licensing. Once you own it, you can use it on multiple PC’s throughout your campus.
8. Graphics websites – there are a number of these we use that are free or low cost. Used for Backgrounds, stills, loops, countdowns, etc.
Thanks again.