CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi everyone,

I'm new to CiviCRM and to this site.  I installed CiviCrm successfully on Joomla on my localhost and I am totally confused as to what to do next.  WHat I would like is for there to be a log-in form on side bar of each page of the site with a link to sign up.  The thing is, I am totally stuck about how to proceed with this; meaning, how do I link a sign up form with the CiviCRM database?  New members would put in name, address, email, etc. and have to pay membership dues and existing members would log-in and then be given access to view/edit their own profile and search a member directory. 

I've searched all over this forum and I have not found any real information about how to set up a front-end log-in/sign up form connected to CiviCRM and any guidance would be GREATLY appreciated. 

Thank you!

Thank you!  I will take a look at this; hopefully it will answer my questions.

In general, for Joomla it an work something like this (refer to the online book for details on various steps):

1. Set up your membership types
2. Create a CiviCRM profile or use one of the samples - including fields which you want to collect from members as they signup (e.g. name, address info etc.). In the Advanced Setting for that profile - select "Account creation required"
3. Create an online contribution page which includes Membership block and include the profile from step 2 in the contribution page
4. Create a menu item for your 'front-end' menu which points to that contribution / membership signup page (see info here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC32/Displaying+Online+Contribution+Pages+in+Joomla%21+Frontend+Sites)

At this point, you have a page that you can point folks to get their membership AND become a joomla 'user'. Then you should be able to use the community-contributed CiviAuthenticate plugin to control access:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC32/Joomla!+Extensions+for+CiviCRM

Steps 2 and 3 address that. If you have setup a profile w/ the Account creation required option and included it in your contribution page - then folks who aren't logged in / don't have a joomla account will be forced to create one as part of purchasing their membership.

This chapter in the online book (which is good to get oriented in general) might help:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM/CapturingExposing

esp section on "New account creation during profile sign-up "