New Drupal Module - Add Drupal Content to CiviMail

[petednz]

Hi Adam - thanks for response - issue came up with a client about newsletter on drupal and via civimail so i was just doing some scouting - their needs are actually simple as it is a single node to copy across - but thought I should be nosey about this one to see how you got on.

[adshill]

I'm sorry to say that our developers really dislike coding for Civi otherwise we might have done more development. I reckon with a day or two's work we could get this kind of functionality properly off the ground. I know some others on this thread have done some bits and bobs, so if someone has a roadmap, a timescale and a budget, I could be tempted at least to contribute to this like we did recently with the ubercart integration.

[Donald Lobo]

hey adam:

can you be more specific with what aspects they dislike and why?

lobo

[adshill]

hey lobo!

Sure... be happy to try and communicate their difficulties. First you should understand they're not until the last year or so used to open source communities at all and were generally coding their own stuff from scratch - so working with others code was a learning experience in the first place. Also, their first language is not english - two important pre-requisits. Additionally I'm pretty sure from my involvement in the training in London and discussions with civi folk at drupalcon paris that there's not much new here. However, happy to share!

They had to learn Civi and Drupal at the same time, and they found the learning experience very different for the two. I think the main difference here is documentation - and I know this is something that the civi community is working on, but Drupal is much bigger and much more active in this area - one which people often don't want to get involved in.

I think the development road map and paths were much clearer for Drupal - it wasn't so clear what were going to be the next big steps for civi and there are many smaller releases with features, rather than larger, long term goals. This was frustrating three times now, just as they wrote custom modules, a new release came out with new considerations.

Information is quite dislocated - so a search in the forum lacks the results of the documentation and the blog (which holds some real gems) and while there is of course google, its not real-time and doesn't always find things that for example forum searches would.

Additionally they describe civi as a "beast" They found/find it very hard to find the aspects of the system they need to work on, and in some cases the infrastructure is quite constraint. I know these are things that are being worked on. Drupal by comparison has very small, manageable modules, and an easier to work with themeing system.

There are other reasons - sometimes I think its just a bit of hot-air - and please understand that as far as open source goes, I think they're quite aware that there is much worse! The above are not meant as criticisms, just observations that I made as their manager. As I said, the items that are relevant I think are already clear and being developed as time goes on.

Hope its helpful, despite probably being completely the wrong place for such a post! - sorry for the tangent those actually following the post title!

[Donald Lobo]

the criticisms are indeed valid. Its a wee bit unfair since drupal is significantly older and significantly larger, so to some extent its an apples-to-oranges comparison also. I'll avoid doing a drupal comparison in my comments below. (we do admire and definitely try to emulate drupal in many areas)

a bit confused on the roadmap point: i do think we publish what will be in the next release well ahead of schedule (we have one and try to follow it!). We also have a potential list of features which are being considered for future releases (though sponsorship drives a lot of the feature development)

Ultimately it is the community that makes things better. Linking blog entries / forum posts from the wiki documentation is good. They can and should make those changes and improve the docs. Will help them, us and the community

Would be good to get more details and specifics on:

* what part is a "beast"
* what aspects are hard of the system to work on
* what parts of the infrastructure are constrained

We can and will try to improve things if they are specific enuf (i.e. we know what to improve on). else it makes it much harder and we remain ignorant (and bit blissful in our little worlds!)

lobo


lobo

[FatherShawn]

Having an accessible method of pulling CMS content into CiviMail would be awesome.  It would allow CiviMail to send site newsletters without a bunch of cut and paste.

[tiborg]

Hi all,

i would like to ask whether it is possible to have drupal node or drupal views show up in contribution page (either section) correspondingly in civimail.


thank you,

tiborg

[petednz]

That doesn't seem a very clear request - are you wanting the content showing on Contribution Page (and what do you mean by 'either section') or in CiviMail?

[tiborg]

Sorry my english.

Yes, i like drupal content showing on Contribution Page and CiviMail.

it's possible? how to?

thank you

tiborg

[tiborg]

Dear All,

Please write to me link or mini how to about civimail insertnode module. (how to add drupal content in civimail) I'm not found installation description and i don't know which module (insertnode, civimail_insertnode, LinktoContent, TinyMCE Node Picker, Wysiwyg API, TinyMCE, FCKeditor or that's all) and version work fine.

My previous question is not important, but i like use this drupal content in civimail solution.

thank you

tiborg

update: in my sites/all/modules/civicrm/templates/CRM/Contact/Form/Task/EmailCommon.tpl file line 18-19 is this (under civicrm 3.0.2):

Code: [Select]

   <h3 class="head">
<span class="ui-icon ui-icon-triangle-1-e" id='html'></span><a href="#">{ts}HTML Format{/ts}</a>
and no </tr>

[tiborg]

Hi All,

I installed and configurated the modul http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC32/Add+Drupal+content+to+CiviMail , but i dont find the insert node button in html editor. Where is the add node link in civimail wysiwyg editor? How to use this modul?

without enable content
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_7bFxb7bnJTw/TLtupb48UtI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/XqtNgGQCSdk/01.jpg

work:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_7bFxb7bnJTw/TLtt9NI0X-I/AAAAAAAAAgA/q772aEgPu1o/02.jpg


thank you

[westy]

@ Adam,
This module seemed to me to be such a good idea that I thought I'd try it out but I can't even get to first base with the install.
An insert is required to sites/all/modules/civicrm/templates/CRM/Contact/Form/Task/EmailCommon.tpl file line 18-19
But I'm using the latest version of CiviCRM and EmailCommon.tpl seems to have undergone quite a few changes since 2.7
Would you be able to look at the 3.2 version of this file  and tell me which line we should insert your line of code into?
If we can get it running on the current version then we might be able to get some interest in developing it.
I'm sure lots of users would love a module that did what this is intended to do.
Thanks

Pete

[linkx]

For anyone who finds this thread, please check out the project https://www.drupal.org/project/newsletter_export along with the tutorial at  http://www.freeform.ca/en/blog/updated-recipe-building-newsletters-drupal-7

[petednz]

The other option is this civicrm extension which pulls in Views display in to civimail via a token

https://civicrm.org/extensions/css-inline

http://fuzion.co.nz/blogs/styling-mails-civimails-civicrm