OneBody

Web and SaaS

church management software

SHOW HN2014

Legend

OneBody

OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years

github.com

#church directory#member directory#private social network#rails

1,020points
304comments
#3of 2,272 in 2014
Top 1%of 2014 by points

How HN took it

LovedMost comments that take a side are positive

85 positive, 52 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 5 critical, out of 146 comments about the project. Thread score +0.58.

Idea: 23 for, 3 againstDesign: 11 for, 0 againstPricing: 3 for, 0 againstDocs: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 2 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Polished, attractive UI

    From 3 comments
    • I haven't dug into it yet, but that UI is really lovely. Really nice work.
      cheald on HN
    • The site looks really nice and polished. I just passed it along to a coworker who handles most of the IT for his church. I know he has been kicking around the idea of spinning up…
      Neff on HN
    • This looks simply fantastic. You clearly put a lot of thought into making it accessible to the non-technical user which means you really know the audience. Kudos to you on taking…
      ChikkaChiChi on HN
  • Generous free open source release

    From 2 comments
    • I myself am not blessed with the gift of faith, and I don't particularly enjoy Rails, but I greatly appreciate your making your very mature passion project available to one and…
      amcnett on HN
    • This. is. awesome.
      trevorhinesley on HN
  • Useful for churches and other groups

    From 2 comments
    • I remember using this years ago to build out a private social network for a fraternal organization. It works very well even for non-monastic purposes!
      stonogo on HN
    • Really cool stuff. My mother's church would benefit from using this kind of software. They are a pretty disorganized. I like seeing labor of love side projects actually turn into…
      AgathaTheWitch on HN

Objections

  • Niche audience, church-specific focus limits interest

    From 3 comments
    • Is a good software, I'm sure, but 500 points? Is this some sort of communal self-assurance humble-brag about being accepting of "religious software"? Or does everyone just really…
      ivanca on HN
    • Looks cool. Maybe you should change the name so it's not just focused on churches? Non-"church" denominations and organizations could use it as well.
      arikrak on HN
    • What exactly makes it specific to churches and not organizations in general?
      jasonkostempski on HN
  • Resource use of 1GB RAM to run

    From 1 comment
    • It takes 1GB to run? dude I might have to port this to node
      sbussard on HN

Requests

  • Hosted SaaS version for churches

    From 2 comments
    • This is really nice, I've often wondered about the dearth of such things every time I look at a church website. In the Catholic churches in my area, the company that prints the…
      JunkDNA on HN
    • This is great! Are you aware of The City (http://onthecity.org)? Many churches pay $100/month or more for their similar, hosted solution.
      jakespencer on HN
  • Privacy opt-in for directory data

    From 1 comment
    • Beautiful UI! Let me bring attention to one thing that's a bit tangential - I see that you have a "church directory" function. Please make sure that proper privacy settings are…
      makmanalp on HN
  • Sandstorm packaging

    From 1 comment
    • Quick question: have you thought about porting this to sandstorm.io? Having a one-click "app-like" install would help out many less-technical church folks.
      zellyn on HN
  • MIT license instead of AGPL

    From 1 comment

Questions

  • What distinguishes it from general social network tools

    From 2 comments
    • Why can't a church use a general purpose social network framework? How are the constraints/feature-needs different for a non-church group? I'm asking from a place of honest…
      tdaltonc on HN
    • I don't understand what does the software do. It is a "group manager" for churches? Something like Facebook Groups or many others of the same kind? I really liked the aspect of…
      fiatjaf on HN
  • Does it support scheduling, giving or calendars

    From 2 comments
    • Have you got a demo site where somebody who's interested can log in and play around with its features? Two feature questions I can't answer by looking at the screenshots: (1)…
      joeclark77 on HN
    • I'm not very familiar with churchcommunitybuilder so I can't say. As for scheduling volunteer and such, you should definitely check out Planning Center Services app (that's what…
      timmorgan on HN

Alternatives named

  • The City (onthecity.org)

    From 2 comments
    • This is great! Are you aware of The City (http://onthecity.org)? Many churches pay $100/month or more for their similar, hosted solution.
      jakespencer on HN
    • I know little about this kind of software, but a local church uses this site like it provides similar functionality?: http://www.onthecity.org/ Have you compared your project to…
      kyrra on HN
  • Planning Center Services

    From 1 comment
    • I'm not very familiar with churchcommunitybuilder so I can't say. As for scheduling volunteer and such, you should definitely check out Planning Center Services app (that's what…
      timmorgan on HN
  • ChurchTools

    From 1 comment
    • Just for your information. There's is a simliar tool from Germany in german: http://www.churchtools.de/
      devOp on HN
  • BuddyPress

    From 1 comment
    • Would it not have been more efficient to build a plugin for, say, BuddyPress?
      beejiu on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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