CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi, I have a few queries/questions and was wondering if anyone can help.

Ive been recommended CiviCRM. I work for a small charity and we're looking for a solution which allows to keep information on the people we work with. Thsi information will consist of personal details as well as an ongoing record of any work carried out with them as well as anything else that crops up that is relevant. We would like to be able to produce stats on these people using different variables which I understand CiviCRM can perform.

Firstly, I consider myself quite technical (from an amateur point of view) but not technical enough to carry out an installation of this nature but I can get help in that respect. Once it is up and running, is it quite easy to run/maintain if I wanted to carry out certain tasks i.e. new field for records, backup, maintenance, general administration, etc. Would I be able to do it? What are other people's experiences?

In terms of the CMS I havent really researched the options yet but can any recommend which one I should use based on our needs? Or is there somewhere I can go which highlights the differences between the two to help me decide?

I do know that if you want to use security (ACL) you would have to go for Drupal as this is not supported in Joomla for CiviCRM.
For all you other questions, it is hard to judge what you can do, or compare to other users without knowing you :-) Do you have the possibility to set up Drupal and CiviCRM on a local computer somewhere so you can have a play and see what you feel comfortable with?
Erik

IF....IF no circumstances changes, no new requirements appear and all things stay the same, the maintenance would be limited to making regular backups (and restoring as an exercise). I do not believe this is hard work or requires lots of expertise. If nothing changes you do not necessarily need to upgrade versions.

Having said that, usually things do change and new requirements do come up. That usually means that either someone develops some skills in CiviCRM to be able to 'have a play', or you hire the occassional consultant to get you going in the right direction. For example, we are now starting with a project where someone expects to spend 2-4 days per month in getting to grips with CiviCRM. That is NOT linked to CiviCRM, it is linked to their specific ambitions and desires, where they want to continue developing new products, services and ways of communicating.

In general, the process of upgrading Drupal or CiviCRM is not too difficult. I never experienced any problems so far, it requires roughly an hour. It can get more involved if you customized CiviCRM heavily, in that case you would have to test all your customization and possibly modify it to work in the new version.

I hope this helps!

Some good feedback... thanks.