A few years ago, I approached Saddleback church about using Open Source for their web development efforts. Saddleback is a very very heavy user of the internet in their ministry. They are using the Microsoft set of products because there are "just more development support for them". They can find many developers who will volunteer their time, because they know ASP, rather than Typo3.

I am finding that in my own experience Typo3 training is an issue. I could learn ASP thorugh work. The issue with ASP is the CO$T.

Typo3 comes with a lot more than ASP, but for some reason people like spending money and time to start from the ground up.

Mickey,

Yes, I know Eric Busby out at Saddleback who leads their IT efforts. They are doing some awesome things with the web. But as you say, the costs are very high. They are blessed to be a large church with significant resources and an awesome pastor, Rick Warren, who appreciates the value of technology. Web-Empowered Church is designed to support the majority (probably over 99%) of other churches in this world that don't have a lot of resources and don't have a superstar like Eric on their staff. By the way, Eric will be speaking at the upcoming Technology and Ministry Conference, April 13-15, 2005. (http://ccmag.gospelcom.net/conference2005/index.htm)

Regarding ASP vs. PHP. Both are extremely popular. We prefer PHP because it is free, powerful, open, and not tied to a specific operating system.

In Him,
Mark