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This document is intended as a practical guide to working with the GENUKI Church Database.

Church Node
A node containing church details, which is part of the Drupal version of the church database. A church node should be thought of as being for the congregation, not a particular building. So if they start in one building but later move elsewhere, create just a single node as there will be one set of records. When they move out of a building and a different denomination take it over then there will be two separate nodes which used the same building. Where a building is shared by two denominations with their own services then again two nodes. Distinct cemeteries without regular services are also recorded in church nodes.

Note that this means that a single location and/or a building or photograph thereof may appear more than once in the church database, as two or more different churches.

To Create a New Church Node
When logged in, on the Maintenance Menu click "Add Content", then choose "GENUKI Church page". The Church Page template will open and should then be completed and saved.

To modify an existing church node, open the church node in question in Edit Mode, make the necessary amendments, then save.

The template comprises a number of fields as below, with appropriate guidance text as below, and other supporting information. Fields marked with a * MUST be completed. A unique URL alias in the appropriate format should be provided,

Title *
The title should be composed of three elements, separated by commas.

  • The dedication if there is one, otherwise the name of the street.
  • The name of the place in which it is located.
  • The denomination. If that has changed over time due to mergers use the one it started out with.


URL Alias *
Specify a URL by which this content can be accessed. Don't add a trailing slash or the URL alias won't work.

County *
Select the county from the drop-down list.

Place Code *
The gazetteer place code field for the associated town/parish node. This is used to associate churches with a place node.

The church is in a place and this will very likely have its own entry in the gazetteer with a place code, but we have place nodes for areas such as historic parishes and not for every place name. Enter the place code for the area (town/parish page) rather than for the specific place name

Unique Key
Each church has a unique numeric id within a county. The first three characters of this key are the Chapman county code.
This is only used for linking in csv files containing details of church records and can be omitted if this is not being done as we hope to use a different technique in the future.

Church Type *
The broad category of churches into which this denomination falls. This is only used in searching, for example to just select Methodist churches.

Denomination
The detailed church denomination. Frequently this has changed over time and the initial one should be recorded here. Changes over time should be detailed in the Church History field.

Founded
The year the church was founded. If completely unknown enter 1 or the earliest known year. Also add details under Church History. A good source for dates is record office register lists as the founding date will be on or before the date of the earliest register.

Closed
The year the church closed. Enter 9999 for those that are still open. 9998 if you don't know whether it is still open or has closed. 9997 for closed churches.

Has Graveyard?
Whether the church has ever had a graveyard. In towns there may have been one there in the past. Specify Yes if there was one in the past but it is now been cleared.

Street
The street on which this church is/was located. This is only used in possible searching and sometimes in titling. The address field is where the street can be recorded to appear in the web page. If the church has moved then detail previous locations under Church History.
Hint: If the church name forms part of the address, you may wish to consider NOT providing a hyperlink to any external site, as such links to religious web sites tend to become outdated very quickly.

Place
This should be set to the name of the town or village in which the church is located.

Dedication
The dedication of the church. e.g. St Mary. If it is a chapel, with a name such as Bethesda or Jireh. Leave it blank if there was no dedication or name. Do not try and create a title in this field.

Flag
The flag field is now deprecated and is there to hold the genuki-1 church database flag field. That has been used as an additional way to select a group of churches e.g. those with registers transcribed by the Lancashire Parish Register Society. It is hoped to provide a more flexible replacement using Drupal Relations.

Address
The street address of the church.

The street address should be the location of the church, NOT the contact address, which may be different.

Picture and Citation
Upload a suitable image. Prior to doing so, copy the draft copyright citation from the template, to paste into the Title field (the Alt text field does not accept sufficient characters). For photographs downloaded from Geograph (recommended), this citation is of the form

&copy; Copyright <a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/nnnn" title="View profile">name</a> and licensed for reuse under this <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons Licence</a>.

Then replace "nnnn" and "name" from Geograph as appropriate. For other sources use a suitably amended citation.

Click browse to select an image to upload from your local machine (about 800 x 534 pixels, <2 Mb). To use a GENUKI (e.g. Genuki-1) library picture, select "Library" as the source.
When complete, scroll down and save.

When the page is fully complete, save the page.

Introduction
Text that will appear above the content. In most cases we don't need to use this field.

Quote
A quote extracted from a gazetteer or other source describing the church. Name the source in a separate paragraph at the bottom.

Topic *
The Genuki topic under which this information will be classified and displayed. You MUST select an item from this first menu, but do NOT select a sub-topic in the second menu.

Sub-Topic
The sub-topic is an optional way to sub-classify your data within the topic.
Do NOT select a sub-topic in this second menu.

Topic Description
An additional way to further sub-classify this data, especially when it does not appear in the sub-topic field above.

Genuki Topic Data
The data that would wish to store under this topic heading

For church history information, select "Church History" and add data in the corresponding text box, or edit what is already there.

Note that text entered within these topic collections cannot be searched for or amended using VBO.

Location - Map Location
Comprises Geoloc, Precision, Notes, Location Picture, GridRef (now redundant).

Geoloc
This set of fields should be used to identify the location of the church or cemetery:

  • Either set a location by placing a marker icon on the map using the controls on the right-hand side of the map screen. The marker can be moved at any time in the future by using the "edit layers" control button.
  • or enter latitude/longitude in WKT* format e.g. POINT (1.495653 52.212801) in the box below the map (with longitude first), and click "Replace".
  • or enter an OS grid reference in the OS grid reference box immediately beneath, and click "Replace".

    * (WKT Format - Well-known text (WKT) is a text markup language for representing vector geometry objects on a map.
     

Don't forget to set the precision field as well.

Precision
The precision of the location that has been supplied.

Notes
Additional notes about this location. Only use this if the church has been in more than one location, using this text to differentiate between them along with dates.

Location Picture
An image to be used instead of the one from the node so we can show one for this specific location. The default is to use the the first image from the node pictures.
Files must be less than 2 MB, (about 800 x 534 pixels is convenient)
Allowed file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg.

Grid Ref (use the gridref box described above under Geoloc instead)
Ordnance Survey grid reference. This is provided just for the convenience of entering the location as a grid reference, it is not used for positioning.
Any value entered here is converted to lat/lon and stored in those fields, and this field is then cleared. You can thus either specify the location as a grid reference or a lat/lon.

Notes
There are a few churches that have moved to a different location, so in some cases there is the need to record more than one location for this church. If a church closes and the remaining congregation move to another existing church, do not add that location here. But do add a note under 'Church History'. Each building in separate locations will require a separate set of location details. When creating a new church node start by entering the address in the Geocode Address field above the map and the the map will change to that location. Then adjust the pointer on the map to the exact point for the church. Then set the Precision to indicate whether it is the exact place where the church is/was. Alternatively you could enter the latitude and longitude if you have that from another source, or for those of you still using grid references you could enter that although it will not move the map marker until you do a save.
If there are multiple church locations, enter some text in the Notes field to identify each location with the date range they used it.

Location picture
When we are displaying churches on a map we try and show a picture but if they have met at multiple locations we need more than the picture entered at the top of the node. So there is another picture field here just for the locations that don't match the first picture defined at the top.

Footer
Place text in this field that will be placed just above the footer at the bottom of the page, if desired.

Maintenance Level
The level of maintenance being provided for this node. It is used to automatically add text to the foot of the page when we are looking for a new maintainer linking into to pages describing what the job entails and sell the idea to them.

District
This field should be used as part of the church address. Ignore this field, it is used only by Ken Greenslade.

When fully complete, save the page.