CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm trying to setup CiviCRM for the first time.   The first thing I want to do is setup a membership/mailing list signup page so people can signup and get in our membership database.

As far as I can tell from the online documentation, I have to setup a contribution page with a membership option, but have no contribution required.   Is this correct?  It seems sort of bizarre.

Anyway, I've tried to setup a contribution page, first by setting up a dummy processor, but I've gotten stuck in the "Configure Membership Section" where it gives an error, "select at least one Membership Type to include in the Membership section", eventhough I have all three membership types selected.   

You can see a screen capture of the error at: 

  http://www.b4w.org/images/BadMembershipType.png

Thanks in advance

Ben Slade
Chevy Chase, MD

Explore profiles:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Profiles+Admin
The "context and overview" sections of the documentation are particularly useful.

You'll create a profile that exposes the postal address fields. Then enable that profile in your contribution page.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Manage+Contribution+Pages

Not sure about the logout issue. Here are some common import issues (more for large files):
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Import+Large

We had a quickstart guide that, I think, wasn't carried over into the new documentation:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Quickstart+Guide

Ok, the problem seems to be related to running member imports on Mac OS X with the Firefox web browser (at least that's the configuration I'm using where the problem occurred).

When I run the import from a MS-Windows environment, it gives an error message "Unknown error: [Object object]" (null pointer I guess), the import never gives a finish message, but the import does finish.

Background information in case someone tries to debug this someday:

Looking at the web server logs of the failed import on OS X w/Firefox, here are the relevent entries:

• 138.88.108.xxx - - [08/Oct/2007:09:16:09 -0500] "POST /administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import/contact HTTP/1.1" 200 89 "http://b4w.org/administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import&_qf_Preview_display=true&qfKey=2eb77accc7ef11a4852c20b51b4f728f" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7"
• 138.88.108.xxx - - [08/Oct/2007:09:16:09 -0500] "GET /administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/ajax/status&id=bf9d0ca2cfdad0b78450b26e401ff522 HTTP/1.1" 200 91 "http://b4w.org/administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import&_qf_Preview_display=true&qfKey=2eb77accc7ef11a4852c20b51b4f728f" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7"
• 138.88.108.xxx - - [08/Oct/2007:09:16:09 -0500] "GET /administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import/contact&_qf_Summary_display=true HTTP/1.1" 200 89 "http://b4w.org/administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import&_qf_Preview_display=true&qfKey=2eb77accc7ef11a4852c20b51b4f728f" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7"
• 138.88.108.xxx - - [08/Oct/2007:09:16:10 -0500] "GET /administrator/index.php?mosmsg=You%20need%20to%20login HTTP/1.1" 200 2154 "http://b4w.org/administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/import/contact&_qf_Summary_display=true" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7"
  

So the last entry says, the import task had displayed a web page with an auto-refresh option, but when the browser kicked off the auto-refresh page request, the web server php script handling the auto-refresh didn't like the request from the browser and sent back to the web browser, "who the hell are you?" (in so many words)

Thanks very much for you help.

Ben Slade
Chevy Chase, MD

I would check your apache settings and configuration. I do all my development on Macosx and FF and have had no issues. Does 'file upload' work for you with other web applications on macosx/apache

thanx

lobo

Ben,
Couple suggestions/questions --

1) Are you using Joomla or Drupal for your CMS? I have found some similar issues with Joomla where I'm logged off the CMS administrator page unexpectedly. I haven't discovered the root of the problem, but have noticed that it tends to happen more frequently after having done something that created an error message (as though the cache doesn't clear out correctly and so subsequent work within the CMS bugs out a little). I've also found that if I try to get multiple tabs open in Firefox with different CiviCRM pages, I start to run into the logout issues. I suspect this is because the session variables for CiviCRM get muddled when you're trying to work on different records and use different tools in different tabs simultaneously. Not sure there's a workaround besides decreasing your multi-tasking!

2) For your membership/mailing list. If you're not collecting dollars, you shouldn't need to use CiviContribute. It should be sufficient to setup your membership types in CiviMember and use a profile page to collect the mailing list "membership" from the user. You may want to look into the custom data tools if you need to collect data points that are different from what the CiviCRM core includes. Those custom fields can then be included in the profile page.

3) CiviCRM can be a little daunting to get your arms around when you're first introduced to it. But stick with it -- it really is a fantastic program. I've only been using it for about 2-3 months, but have a become a huge believer.

-Brian