Tricky Terminology #
Everyone uses jargon. Both the ministry world and the technical world excel in it! We’ll try to minimize our use of jargon and attempt to explain it when it must be used.
Contact #
A person whose spiritual progress your team wishes to track in an effort to see spiritually maturing disciples rather than losing track of those who need follow up.
Extension #
Extensions are designed to extend/modify the functionality of your website while plugins perform a particular task or set of tasks.
Geolocating #
Disciple.Tools uses a location grid to attempt to place your contacts or groups in standard locations.
Group #
Several people with a common spiritual affinity that have been meeting together. A record of its spiritual progress is kept by the team.
Hosting #
Disciple.Tools is a free, open sourced, web based software but, a host is required to store setup, contact, and group information in a secure location. Several recommended hosting services are available for reasonable cost. Alternatively, if expertise and hardware is available, an organization can decide to self host.
Mapping #
Disciple.Tools will place contacts and groups in diverse ways on a map for information sharing.
Multisite #
Disciple.Tools can be set up as a Single Site or as a Multisite.
With a Multisite, the same user can log into multiple instances or versions of Disciple.Tools using the same username and password.
Unpacking some of the foundational concepts might require more jargon than average. If you hit a word or phrase that is unfamiliar, hopefully you can find it in our glossary and quickly re-orient yourself to an improved understanding.
- ministry.com – a D.T instance, or a front facing webpage
- new-york.ministry.com – instance for the New York team
- chicago.ministry.com – instance for the Chicago team
- etc
You may choose to have a different instance for each location you are in. You can also separate based on teams, language, media page, etc.
A single site will give you an instance where you and your users can collaborate on contacts, groups, and more. All your contacts will be in one place and are managed by the Admin and Dispatchers. This is a great starting point if you are a small team working in together over one region. But suppose you have a team in New York with a Facebook Ministry and a team in Chicago with a cool Website and another team in a different location doing campus ministry. It soon becomes overwhelming to have all the contacts in one spot. This is why you might want to separate the teams out into different instances using WordPress as a Multisite. The system could be set up like this:
Plug-in #
A plugin is a software component that adds specific functionality to an existing computer program or web browser. Plugins are designed to extend the capabilities of the host application without requiring any changes to its core code.
Profile #
A user’s contact and personal information. It is used to help other users work with each other. The amount of information recorded is up to the individual team or organization.
Records #
A saved data slice reflecting a specific contact person or group.
Role #
A user’s work assignment dictating access level to Disciple.Tools. A particular user may have multipleroles depending upon team size, capability, and dynamics.
Users #
A person with access to the team’s instance of Disciple.Tools. Access is graduated upon the needs and expertise of the user with security always in mind.