Web services for synagogues

[sethg at ropine.com (Seth Gordon)]

   Yes it does. :-) This is going a little OT form Linux, but here goes 
   anyway. I've always thought there should be a drop-in package that churches 
   or similar organizations could install to get "instant" websites w/ contact 
   info, calendars, mailing list, etc. I knew a guy in NC who had done it for 
   his church, and it was really slick, but simple. And it all ran off text 
   files, so no DB was needed. I like databases, but it's cool to not have to 
   rely on having one.

There's a guy who started a service called "shuls.net" for providing
just this kind of functionality to synagogues.  My synagogue,
Kadimah-Toras Moshe (ktm.shuls.net), was the first customer.  The
system runs under ColdFusion, so the ISP's hosting fee alone is
something like $50/month.  (I don't know how much the whole package
normally costs; since we were the first customer, they let us buy the
service for just the hosting fee.)

When I was told about the cost, I felt (a) shocked that someone was
taking so much money for the service, since I had friends who had
implemented all the same functionality for their synagogue using Perl
scripts and ran it on Hostway for $10/month, and using ColdFusion for
this kind of thing seemed like overkill; (b) irked that someone had
spent all this time arranging for the design of a synagogue Web site
without mentioning it to any of the Web-savvy synagogue members.

However, then I realized that if I wasn't responsible for writing and
maintaining those scripts, then I didn't have to field a stream of
complaints about how the Web site looked and questions about "why
can't we do it *this* way?..."

-- 
"Virtue has its own reward, but has no sale at the box office."  --Mae West
== Seth Gordon == sethg at ropine.com == http://ropine.com/ == std. disclaimer ==