CiviCRM / Drupal for small membership based non-profit?

[cudder23]

Thanks, Lobo. I'll check out that page.

And to summarize my "Should I use CiviCRM?" questions:

1. Can you automatically (e.g. with Rules) create a new Drupal user from an existing CiviCRM contact? Or does the Drupal user have to be duplicated manually?

2. Can the purchase of a Membership through CiviCRM change the user's Drupal role? Or is this all done using the OG integration?

3. Can CiviCRM switch a user from one type of contact to another (e.g. "Assoc. Member" to "Regular Member", which have some fields the same and some unique fields) upon payment/approval? Or is a user stuck as whatever type of contact they start as?

I have done some research on CiviCRM on these questions.

This page: http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/membership/defining-memberships/ is missing an image that apparently shows how to set up different memberships. And it appears from the bottom of that page ("Collecting additional information about your members") that you can gather different data for different membership types, but wanted to confirm. And I wanted to make sure I'm thinking of this in the CiviCRM way.

And this page https://civicrm.org/blogs/petednz/creating-drupal-users-made-easy-single-or-multiple-contacts-civi-imports-and-webforms suggests a Rules based method for converting CiviCRM contacts to Drupal users, but it seems a bit out of the way. Is this the best method?

[Coleman Watts]

Can you automatically (e.g. with Rules) create a new Drupal user from an existing CiviCRM contact? Or does the Drupal user have to be duplicated manually?

Yes. There are several ways to accomplish that. I think you're right there is a simpler method for the drupal user creation, might want to ask @petednz for an update.

Can the purchase of a Membership through CiviCRM change the user's Drupal role? Or is this all done using the OG integration?

Yes. This is a built-in feature with the bundled CiviCRM-Roles-Sync module. You do not need OG for this, and I recommend you avoid the added complexity of OG. From your description it would be overkill for your purposes.

Can CiviCRM switch a user from one type of contact to another (e.g. "Assoc. Member" to "Regular Member", which have some fields the same and some unique fields) upon payment/approval? Or is a user stuck as whatever type of contact they start as?

Contacts can always be changed from one type to another. They can even have more than one type. If you wish to have this happen automatically (e.g. with rules) it may require a small amount of php code.

In general, though the best way to have contacts automatically inherit something based on some criteria is smart groups, so you may want to look into the capabilities of those before you set up too many rules for your site.

[cudder23]

Thank you Coleman for all your help and insights on using CiviCRM and how it can work with my project.

I do have another question. One of the requirements of the client is that the site is mobile friendly, so I've been using Bootstrap as my starting point for a responsive design. Are there CiviCRM compatible themes (both front end and backend) that are mobile phone friendly or designed to be responsive?

My expectation is that most of the administration of the site will be done on desktops. But the users will potentially be using a mobile phone to find and contact a member of the organization, using CiviCRM listings of users, etc. or search tools that are native to CiviCRM. Or just using the membership listings on a smart phone.

Are there mobile friendly/responsive themes for CiviCRM front end tools? And how easy are they to customize and/or simply adjust with CSS edits?

Thanks.

[cudder23]

Also, what about Siteground as a host?

This page:

http://www.siteground.com/civicrm-hosting.htm

...suggests that, even though they are a cheaper host ($3.95/mo), they are designed to be used with CiviCRM.

Anyone used them or have any thoughts? I'm thinking of switching hosts after learning about the backup policies at GreenGeeks.

[Coleman Watts]

A bootstrap-based Drupal theme seems like a great starting place. You might even find one that works well for the backend, I'm not sure it's been a while since I researched drupal themes. I used garland in "fluid" mode for my backend theme but there's probably better choices available today. Civi also gives you the option of picking a theme just for backend civi pages (so I use "seven" for non-civi backend pages and "garland" for the civi backend because the civi UI is better with sidebars).

My advice would be to start building your frontend theme, and also your frontend content (I don't think one necessarily comes before the other), without worrying too much about how civi will fit into it at this point. I think a lot of your "civi" front-end pages will actually have the markup generated by drupal modules (namely views and webforms), so that will be completely seamless with your theme. If you end up using any "native" civi front-end pages (e.g. for some reason you prefer the "native" contribution page rather than making one with webforms) you might need a few css tweaks but I'd wait and cross that bridge when you get to it.

[cudder23]

I'm sorry to keep extending this thread, but I just discovered another issue I am concerned about.

One of the client's requirements is that they be able to send bulk emails to the members. It seems the easiest and favored (if not only) solution to this is to use CiviMail.

But in looking for hosting solutions that fit the client's budget (<$100/year), I have come across concerns that CiviMail is a very resource intensive extension and that many (all?) hosting providers will not support it's use in a shared hosting environment.

So my question...

Does anyone here know of a shared hosting environment that is:

• under ~$8/month
• can support CiviMail

OR

Are there less resource intensive tools aside from CiviMail that one can use for bulk mail, but leveraging the CiviCRM database?

The client doesn't have a large member base and so won't be running a huge mailing list (under 250 recipients). Mailchimp has services for such small orgs for free. Is there CiviCRM integration with Mailchimp? Am I thinking of this all correctly.

And while it was suggested upthread that I encourage the client to pay more for hosting, it is a really small budget org. They don't have staff, or offices, or phone bills.

Thank you for any help.

EDIT: I found this page about Mailchimp/CiviCRM integration, but it uses CiviMail and is therefore (apparently) too server resource intensive for the budget for hosting.

https://civicrm.org/extensions/mailchimp-civicrm-integration

[Donald Lobo]

If that is your hosting budget, I  would recommend that your client does not use CiviCRM. It will probably not leave them with a good experience)

lobo

[Coleman Watts]

http://civihosting.com/ is the cheapest host I know of that supports all those things (there may be others too). But it is not as cheap as $8/mo. I agree with Lobo on that point, if your goal is to pinch pennies to that extent, I don't think we can help you. Civi is a full-featured CRM and if you cripple it with cheap shared hosting it will be slow and unresponsive. Ultimately this just hurts our reputation when people using Civi have a bad experience.

[cudder23]

Thank you Lobo and Coleman, and I was afraid this was likely the answer...

I am very concerned about trying to make CiviCRM work in a cheap, shared hosting environment, and having the challenging experience you both and others have predicted when insufficient resources are available to CiviCRM.

I think I will present to the client the options:

• pay more for hosting (Coleman, yes, I was looking at CiviHosting @ $15/month) and use CiviCRM
• pay $8/mo for hosting and don't use CiviCRM (though at this point I'm not sure what I would use instead)

I totally understand and agree with both of your arguments about paying a bit more for hosting in order to ensure solid, reliable functionality. I wish it were up to me, but the client is a small non-profit with limited resources. Perhaps I can convince them that the features they want to have are worth the extra $7/month...

[cudder23]

I have another couple of questions:

1. Is it possible to run CiviCRM without having to run the CiviMail component?

2. Are you recommending non-shared hosting primarily for running CiviMail? Or for any CiviCRM installation, even one not using CiviMail?


My understanding is that CiviMail is the more resource intensive component, and the client is currently using iContact anyway.

3. Could they keep using iContact (and, I guess manually sync the CiviCRM contacts with the iContact list) and just not implement/run CiviMail?

Alternatively, assuming:

• you can run CiviCRM without running CiviMail
• the client were to switch from iContact to MailChimp

4. ...is there a way to use the MailChimp integration tools (likely this one https://civicrm.org/extensions/mailchimp-civicrm-integration), without running CiviMail?

And, lastly, am I getting too specific for this discussion group?

Thanks! 

[Coleman Watts]

My understanding is that CiviMail is the more resource intensive component

I think you are misinformed about this. CiviMail is probably one of the least resource-intensive components because it is used relatively infrequently compared to contacts, groups, profiles, etc which are used all the time. It does require a different type of server resources to send emails (although it's not terribly processor-heavy). I think the biggest issue with CiviMail and cheap hosting is that some hosts limit the number of emails your server is allowed to send per day, which makes use of CiviMail impractical for mailing lists of any size. Sending the messages via MailChimp would probably be a good workaround to this problem though, since they would not be originating from your server. There is also the CiviSMTP paid service.

My advice for you at this point is, if you already have a contract with a host you may as well install Civi on it and see if it is reasonably responsive - you might get lucky.

[cudder23]

Thank you again Coleman for your help and information.

Actually, the development site is currently hosted at a place I recently discovered doesn't keep their in-house backups longer than 48 hours, and charges for reinstating backups after the first one each month. Perhaps this is standard, but I am used to a different host that keeps their internal backups for at least 30 days and doesn't charge to have them used.

So, while I'm trying to determine which CRM to use, and wanting to use CiviCRM, I am also switching hosts and trying to make sure I find one that will support CiviCRM as an option.

[Coleman Watts]

You're welcome. I'd suggest you sign up at the new CiviCRM Help site - if you sign up now you'll get exclusive access to the "private beta" phase (starting up in a week or two) when a whole bunch of CiviCRM experts will be hanging around with nothing better to do than answer your questions! Should be great timing for you when you're getting your site set up and configured.