Question

Photo of Don Smallman

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Adding a Countdown

Hi, has anyone added a countdown to the next service widget to their RMS site?  If so, can you share how you did that? 

  • Michael Garrison

    Rock uses the iCal content to determine when the services are. I'm presently trying to figure out how to parse that in SQL or something to determine the "current" (or most recent) service for another function, but the same method should work for what you want to do. I'll report back when I find how to do it, if you'll do the same ;-)

  • Photo of Jeremy Hoff

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    Here's our code, with some docs, which powers the countdown on http://shepherdchurch.com :

    http://shepherdchurch.com/usercontrols/custom/shephills/countdown.aspx

    • Jeremy Hoff

      I'm sorry Don - I should have said "comments in the code" rather than "docs" :-)


      [Some programmers out there are probably thinking "the code is the document" ;-) ]

    • Don Smallman

      Hi Jeremy. I am not a programmer, so I am looking and do not see any comments. Is there a way to give a short blurb on how to use this script? I assume I will need to edit the template. Also, after I add the script, will I need to recompile the Template every time there is an update to the RMS?

    • Arran France

      Hey Don,
      Looking at this code it wouldn't be a simple case of dragging and dropping it into what you're already doing (it mentions some Shepherd specific events)

    • Don Smallman

      Thanks Arran. They are not planning on implementing anything like this into the Rock are they?


      Personally, I don't understand the appeal of a countdown timer; I know what day and time it is and when the next service starts. But everyone seems to be doing it. :-)


      Do you have any suggestions on adding one?

    • Arran France

      I don't know if this is planned for core. I think at this point you'd have to be either comfortable editing your own theme files or have very regular service times in which case you could probably cook something up fairly easily with JavaScript.

    • Jeremy Hoff

      It's not very Shepherd-centric - I suspect most churches can make use of it for a quick-and-dirty solution with a few changes in the code. The styling is CSS-driven. I'll repost with some additional comments in the code, however it's going to take someone with CSS experience to get it integrated... and editing the code directly is required to make changes to the event countdown.


      For Shepherd, the code is edited once yearly for each of Christmas and Easter (look for the Christmas and Easter comment) as well as every other year for our Revival.


      We'll add this to our list of blocks to create and release in the wild.