A peek behind the site

I recently received an e-mail from a church up in Maryland asking what tools we use to build/maintain the website. While the main areas of the site (events, news, etc) are handled using a home-grown system, we use many 3rd-party products throughout the site. I thought I’d share that info here for anyone else that is curious:

• We use a product called vBulletin to handle our user authentication and the forums. The authentication is used so that we can give access to the back-end of the site for those that need it. Cost: $160 (one-time) + $30/year
• SignUsUp for online registrations. Cost: Varies
• TinyMCE handles the WYSIWYG editor on the backend, so that we can use buttons to make things bold, italic, linked, etc, rather than having to write code for all of that. Cost: Free!
• We purchased Widget Podcast a few years ago to power the Podcast. We’ve modified it very heavily, but it’s technically still in there a little bit. Cost: $40
• Flash Nifties XML Flash Slideshow helps power the animated Flash elements throughout the site. We’ve extended the script quite a bit using mod_rewrite and our main database, but their script has saved us a lot of time. Cost: $10
• This blog is powered by WordPress. Cost: Free!
• We use Twitter to handle the Rec Update, which allows our rec staff to update it from anywhere via cell phone, and allows members to receive text message updates if they sign-up. Cost: Free!
  • We also use Twitter2HTML to help us pull the Twitter data and show it on the site. Cost: Free!
• We use Constant Contact to manage and send our e-bulletin. Cost: $30/month
• We use PHPforms to help us build some of our non-paid registrations. Cost: $29.99
• We use Animoto to help make some of the cool videos on the site (like this one). Cost: $30/year
• We use the Google Maps API to help with the directions page and the “map of off-campus events” page. Cost: Free!
• We use Riva Encoder and Flow Player to embed some of the pre-mixed videos on the site (like this one). Cost: Free!
• We use SmugMug for some of our photo hosting. Cost: $99/year

That’s about it. If you have any questions about specific items, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.

Mickey