Journal
CrossConnector
30 April 2006 › 17 comments
Take a humble heart for God, add the flexibility of Ruby on Rails, multiply that by countless hours of work, and what do you get? Answer: CrossConnector. If you have not yet heard about it, let me say this is a great new way to manage ministry events and coordinate missions trips around the world. In my opinion, it is the epitome of what churches could and perhaps should be doing on the web. This screenshot is from my personalized dashboard area, where I can manage the many features available in this fantastic web application.
As you can see, the interface is incredibly user-friendly, with chunky clickable areas, and easily distinguishable tasks. I could just describe this as “ministry meets Basecamp,” but that would not really be doing it justice. Allow me to expand upon why I like so much it. First and foremost is the intuitive way things work. One thing that bothers me about many web interfaces is the lack of clarity as to what is going on. Typically, this is a result of geeks building products for geeks. For instance, check out the following CMS screenshots.
ExpressionEngine:
Textpattern:
WordPress:
While all of the above systems are quite good, they are all designed with technically web savvy people in mind. Upon initial login, ExpressionEngine gives you a rundown of raw data statistics about your site, such as total entries, trackbacks and page hits. Textpattern is the opposite, starting you off with a blank slate for writing new content, but a new user might need a bit more guidance. By stark contrast, WordPress bombards you with information from around the web about the CMS itself, presupposing that you even care.
That’s what I love about CrossConnector, the fact that it makes things so easy to understand. Clearly, there was a lot of planning involved to keep the application streamlined and concise. It does a great job of just getting out of the way, and letting you get things done. It gives you four obvious choices:
- Plan Projects
- Blog Messages
- Share Files
- Manage Teams
The interface provides you with a balanced amount of coaching to help you figure things out, while still keeping the more advanced options readily accessible. You can browse the members of your ministry team, and can collaborate with other team leaders online. There is also a prominent Help link on every page, should you forget how to use a particular feature. This takes you to an area with answerers to frequently asked questions, as well as a link to the community forum in case you cannot find what you are looking for.
Another thing I love is that when you upload an image, you can click Get HTML and it will open an Ajax textarea containing the code to cut and paste into your blog post. As far as formatting the article itself, Textile is enabled, allowing more advanced users increased control over their writing. There is also a streamlined tagging system in place throughout the various sections. For instance, if a file or image upload pertains to a particular event, I can tag those files for easy searching later, and can also tag the article itself as a way of keeping related things together.
Yet another nice feature is the way that Events are tracked. Upcoming events have little count-down notices below them, letting you know what to prepare for. It also shows a less prominent summary of events that have already occurred, with links to comments and feedback about how things went.
I found it especially interesting that you can plan projects that are only viewable from within the admin interface, but not on the public-facing site. At first, this did not make sense to me, but considering how many missionaries there are in countries that are not friendly to Christianity, this is a very considerate feature. This allows the missionaries and home congregations to coordinate their efforts, while not running the risk of publicly divulging a missionary’s identity or location, accidentally putting them in harm’s way.
I could really keep going, but suspect that you would probably learn more about CrossConnector from the actual site. Make sure to check out the videos section, as it shows the web application in use and better illustrates some of the finer points. Additionally, you can sign up for a free account and play around with some of the features yourself. The tools are flexible enough to allow for a variety of uses, some of which you can see here. It is my sincere hope and prayer that many churches will consider this as an option for organizing their outreach efforts. Give it a spin, and share with your pastor.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 Jeff Croft
Quite simply, this is the difference between using a pre-packaged CMS (or blogging app, since I don’t consider most of the ones you screenshotted to really be a “CMS”) and rolling your own. When you build your own, you get something that is tailored specifically to your content, with whatever sort of design you like.
I don’t necessarily think everyone should build their own blog app. Blogs are such a simple, straightforward thing, and there’s already great blog apps out there. But, these days we have frameworks (you noted Rails, I’d assert that Django is even better for content-oriented sites) that make the building of a CMS a simple and painless process. I don’t see any reason for people to shoehorn something that’s not a blog into a blog app any longer.
Roll your own!
#2 Lelia Katherine Thomas
Nice to see this. I also found eBible via that site’s blog—don’t know if you’ve seen it yet or not, but it appears promising. At least better than BibleGateway, which isn’t very intuitive, though an all right service.
#3 Josh
Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I’ll definitely check it out and show it to my pastor. :)
#4 Nathan Smith
Jeff: While I agree that it is probably in everyone’s best interest to roll their own CMS, that’s not always an option, especially not for churches with little technical know-how. As far as those systems being blog tools, that’s true. However, I still think they fall in the CMS category because they are systems that manage people’s content. To say otherwise would be to invalidate the many writers of authentic media.
Lelia: I’ve been able to be in on the beta test of eBible, and have to say I am quite impressed thus far. Hopefully it will grow in features and popularity, and keep the makers of BibleGateway honest. I’d love to see eBible force them to get onboard with web standards and accessibility.
Josh: You’re welcome. I’m sure Ryan would be very appreciative for everyone trying out CrossConnector and sharing it with their respective churches.
#5 Wesley Walser
I found CrossConnector the other day through their designers website. When I got there however, I could tell who their target audience was, but I couldn’t figure out what problem their product was suppose to solve. It looks like a blogging CMS mixed with, as you alluded to, a basecamp style project management system. I haven’t worked with any churches recently who have told me that they were having trouble because their blogging software didn’t help them track their missions ‘projects’.
The site, and CrossConnector itself look great, and I am sure the functionality within is great as well, but whats the point again?
#6 Matt Heerema
CrossConnector is hot. The user interface is awesome. It makes me wish I had a use for it right now. I played around with it for awhile and started thinking about creating a ministry activity just so I could use CrossConnector to manage it.
We are in the conceptual stages of building a custom CMS for church Web sites. Including events registration, donation tracking, and member management. Our backend needs to feel like this.
Well done.
#7 Ryan Heneise
Nathan: Thank you so much! We’ve really worked hard to make CrossConnector both useful and easy to use. Bethany (my wife) is my main usability consultant, and she made me basically re-write the whole program about three times until we were satisfied.
Nathan and Jeff: My dream has always been for an easy way for missionaries to communicate with each other, so project management and blogging tools seemed to be a natural fit with communication. But our intent was never for CrossConnector to be a full-fledged CMS or website replacement. That’s why we made it as simple as possible – I wanted to focus on just those things that I wanted for our own mission trips, and leave off the other features of a more advanced CMS. Having said that though, we have some pretty exciting new features on the way, such as custom themes. In the future, we’ll be able to create themes to make your CrossConnector account look exactly (or almost exactly) like your official website. So churches and organizations that don’t have a good CMS will be able to easily keep updated information on their website through CrossConnector.
Josh: Thanks! Please do show your pastor. Also, take a look at http://example.crossconnector.com for some ideas about how it can be used.
Wesley: This is really great feedback. I’ve been working on different ways to communicate the point of CrossConnector on the home page, so your comments are very helpful in focusing the way that we present CrossConnector. In truth, CrossConnector was not really built for churches, but for missionaries and mission agencies. We have several missionaries using it to manage individual mission trips, and even some larger agencies that are managing 20 or more trips at a time. For these people, it’s really helpful to have one place where they can keep all their mission activity, especially if they are managing multiple trips.
CrossConnector was built to address the difficulty that missionaries have always had in communicating with their team members, partners, and supporters. CrossConnector gives missionaries and mission agencies one website where they can keep all their mission trips, messages, pictures, and files in one place. It it provides a historical record – you can keep archives of old mission trips around forever on CrossConnector, and then go back to them for reference in the future. And it’s interactive, which means that your team, partners, and supporters can communicate with each other and respond easily.
Matt: Thank you! I’ve used some really awesome web apps that made me wish that I had a use for them, so that is a huge compliment!
#8 Mithrill
I got in on some of the testing for CrossConnector and must say that it is quite a nice system. Makes me wish I had a use for it. I’ll be promoting it to people that are looking for a great, easy to use Church oriented web system.
People2Pray has a pretty nice interface as well. I also just signed up for a alpha test of eBible, which CrossConnector (Art of Mission) is promoting.
#9 Yannick
It’s good to see products like this being built. Once again a job well done by Ryan and Bethany.
Nice writeup also Nathan, I share the same view from my time playing around with it.
As Mithrill mentioned People2Pray and eBible are two more up and coming sites to look out for.
#10 Yannick
There is also Missionaries.in made by Keegan Jones and Jeremy Boles.
#11 Chris Pallé
CrossConnector is a well-crafted application. Ryan has a heart for missionaries and it shows in his work. Well done, Ryan.
A bit off-topic, but wanted to point out: I think Keegan is related to Dennis Jones. If any of you have children, I have to say that Dennis created perhaps the best illustrated Bible ever and you should look into this for them. His style is dramtically playful and conveys Biblical stories even for pre-literate children. It makes family Bible studies understandable for all ages… oh yeah, my daughter loved it too. :-)
#12 Nathan Smith
Mithrill / Yannick: I think we’re living in an exciting time, when Christian start-ups are creating some really high quality web applications. eBible, People2Pray and Missionaries.in look to be very solid products.
Chris: That’s correct, Dennis and Keegan are related. Both are incredibly talented at what they do. If you’d like to read more about Keegan and the work he’s done for Dennis, check out this Godbit interview.
#13 Robert
Very nice write up! Ryan and Bethany have done an excellent job with CrossConnector. I really want to see more apps like this come out for the Church. The Church is in desperate need of getting on board and using technology that is available to them.
#14 Jeff Croft
“However, I still think they fall in the CMS category because they are systems that manage people’s content.”
You’re right, on one hand. By, if a CMS is any system than manages content, then we have CMSes all around us. My TiVo is a CMS, for example. :)
All I was getting at is that blog apps are only really great CMSes for blogs. In my experirence, they start to break down when you try to use them for other types of content.
Rolling your own is probably not an option for everyone, and that’s fine—but using the wrong tools for the job is, well, using the wrong tool for the job. :)
#15 Nathan Smith
Jeff: I’ll conceed your point on those grounds. My point was – here are a few commonly used blog / CMS tools that people seem to flock to, despite their user interfaces, so imagine what could be done with a product like CrossConnector, which is clearly designed with the “average user” in mind.
Incidentally, I am extremely jealous of your site now, and must force myself to learn more about the Django Project, because the über content aggregation you’ve got going on is just too cool for school, or something like that.
#16 Chris Pallé
@Nathan, Thanks for the link to the interview. (and the clarification on the relationship)
@Jeff – Yeah, man. The Django project does look neat. Your article, Django for Non-Programmers makes the Django project intriguing to us
hack job programmerstinkering designers.#17 Wesley Walser
Ryan: Your response to my post was most helpful. There are actually a few new applications that I am interested in checking out. If not for these darn closed betas and alphas.