NewSpring Church Web Campus Site
Posting has been a little more sparse than usual lately. I’ve been in big project land getting the NewSpring Web Campus (live on Sundays at 11:15am and 6:00pm EST) up and running.
For the tech specs crowd, we’re using our current video-on-demand vendor Lightcast Media for the streaming video and live countdown, a hodgepodge of AJAX stuff for the chatroom (I’m exploring other, more scalable options right now), and the site is built on our existing ExpressionEngine install, which makes updating things a lot easier on me. We’re currently using an AOL Wimzi widget for limited live prayer until PHPLive! can sort out their issues and let us give them our money for their extremely flexible multi-operator system.
I started wireframing this in late October, took a few weeks break, buttoned up the first round of .PSDs in mid-November and then started talking to a few web developers to find a good fit to help me with the heavy-lifting. By late November the layout was finalized (ish) and we began development in early-December aiming for an ambitious January 4th launch.
Too ambitious. We had one development snag over the Christmas break, and then we contracted with the lovely and talented Paul Armstrong to help finish out the site for a February 1 public launch. Oddly enough, in order to hit our (still yet ambitious) deadline, I ended up doing way more front-end code than I ever planned to (because anything more than “absolutely none” is actually more). I’m sure at some point someone who knows what they’re doing will be brought in to tidy up my hackery, which will likely coincide with a phase 2 (online user map/count, better live prayer UI/platform, and some other prayer-related features) and a phase 3 (packaging up a simple CSS/HTML free install of a web campus that other churches can easily set-up and use with the streaming vendor of their choice.)
Big props to our Web Pastor Nick Charalambous who’s running the show and the volunteers and Will Rodes, who’s responsible for the video components being what they are and where they need to be. I just build stuff, they make it happen.
Update: if you’re after the technical aspects of the video capture process, Will has a great write-up full of acronyms and schematics.
Nice job so far man! I understand there are always little behind the scenes things that can be fixed. That’s how it goes with any church… yours just happens to be rooted in internet language. Keep up the good work!
said Graham
at 1:04pm on Sunday
Joshua, you have done a terrific job with the NewSpring Church website. The Web Campus is no exception.
An ambitious plan, indeed. Considering the magnitude of the project, you’ve done well.
said Nathaniel Buck
at 2:33pm on Sunday
Looks great. Gonna watch for a little while this afternoon before going to well, church. Can I ask about the intended audience for this? Your plans for marketing it? A little more info about your phase 3 (for-profit sale and such)?
said Christian Ross
at 4:47pm on Sunday
Intended audience for the experience or for the phase 3 thing?
And no, not for profit. We want to give away as much as possible, I just want to get the codebase to the point where it’s a blessing to give it to someone, not a nightmare to deal with.
said Joshua
Awesome, sorry for the confusion. I was just wondering who your intended audience is today. Your congregation first? Just anyone who hears its available through the web (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc)? Any marketing surrounding the initial launch?
said Christian Ross
at 5:15pm on Sunday
Looks good man. I built out a big church site in EE back in December, and I’m readying a rather large blog post outlining how I did it all. I’d love your input on tips you learned along the way.
Nice work on the site homie.
said Aaron Martin
at 12:26am on Monday
Will I be able to watch on my iPod Touch?
said David Gray
at 9:23am on Monday
@Christian – I’d say initially, the audience is whoever finds their way there via Twitter/Facebook/Email invites. Right now, we obviously have a lot of what I call “Church Tourists,” people from other churches checking out what we’re doing. But we’re already starting to see non-church folks participating, which is great.
We’ll begin making a more pronounced push in-house soon, with the intent to coach our current members and attenders to invite their friends and family (whether they’re local or not.) I have a hunch that the Web Campus will be the first impression/entry point for a lot of folks who aren’t keen on the idea of going to a physical church.
said Joshua
@David Gray – not until Apple makes streaming Flash video accessible for the masses. YouTube’s partnership with Apple lets you watch their videos, but we’re limited by technology right now.
said Joshua
Thanks for the love brother — so happy and proud to have been able to help you guys out, on a such a great mission and message.
said Paul
at 2:48pm on Monday
The NewSpring IC is great! We watch every weekend at LC now!
said Mike Jones
at 6:03pm on Monday