CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We are an activists organization, looking for the right software.

The website will provide the following services:

    * About the movement
    * News, activities, announcements, etc.
    * Forum
    * Events calendar
    * An articles and information database in the form of a wiki. Users can write/edit material about various subjects.
    * Groups which are working on a project can easily create a mini-portal. Groups can have a profile, a blog, a forum and an events calendar. This can serve as a communication center for the members and can also act as a public portal. The administrator can give out permissions to users to edit the profile, post in the blog, add events to the calendar, and so on.
          o Profile: Can act as a public portal, possibly describing the nature of the group and it's activities.
          o Blog: News and announcements about the group's activities, plans, etc..
          o Forum: Communication between the group`s members and also with the public.
          o Calendar: Upcoming events can be posted in the calendar, relating to the group's activities, meetings, and so on. These can be chosen to appear in the main website`s calendar.

Thanks!

First, understand that CiviCRM is a constituent relationship management system... it stores data about people. The thing that runs your website is a content management system (CMS)... it stores pages and content for your website. Your needs are more about the CMS system.

CiviCRM is integrated with both the Drupal and Joomla content management systems. You can get Joomla+CiviCRM quickly and relatively easily from http://www.nonprofitsoapbox.com/ for $1000 set up and $50/mo. You can get Drupal+CiviCRM by filling out a 3 page wizard on the web for $50/mo with a free trial from http://civicspacelabs.org.

Or you can install Joomla+CiviCRM or Drupal+CiviCRM on your own:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/2.+Install

Or you can hire a consultant to help you:
http://civicrm.org/professional
 

    * About the movement

This would be handled by the CMS.
 

    * News, activities, announcements, etc.

This would be handled by the CMS.

    * Forum

This would be handled by the CMS. Having it integrated with CiviCRM would allow you to identify and communicate with the active participants of your forums, mobilizing your strongest activists. This is not a default functionality and would require a programmer.

    * Events calendar

This is more the CMS than the CRM. However, with CiviEvent, you can have events that people pay to attend and CiviEvent will handle the attendance list, processing payments, etc.

    * An articles and information database in the form of a wiki. Users can write/edit material about various subjects.

This would be handled by the CMS.

    * Groups which are working on a project can easily create a mini-portal. Groups can have a profile, a blog, a forum and an events calendar. This can serve as a communication center for the members and can also act as a public portal. The administrator can give out permissions to users to edit the profile, post in the blog, add events to the calendar, and so on.

This would be handled by the CMS. Currently I believe this is only in Drupal (organic groups)... not sure if you can do it in Joomla.  The integration that would allow you to see your group members in CiviCRM is currently not turn-key, so it would require some programming time to get working.

          o Profile: Can act as a public portal, possibly describing the nature of the group and it's activities.

CiviCRM provides a directory functionality that can serve this purpose (Profile Listings- http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Profiles+Admin)

          o Blog: News and announcements about the group's activities, plans, etc..

This is the CMS.

          o Forum: Communication between the group`s members and also with the public.

This is the CMS.

          o Calendar: Upcoming events can be posted in the calendar, relating to the group's activities, meetings, and so on. These can be chosen to appear in the main website`s calendar.

This is mainly the CMS, but as mentioned CiviEvent events can be a very useful addition, allowing people to sign up for events, pay for them, and allowing your staff to track this.

Good luck!

Quote

    * Events calendar

This is more the CMS than the CRM. However, with CiviEvent, you can have events that people pay to attend and CiviEvent will handle the attendance list, processing payments, etc.

What makes this a CiviCRM function is that the user should not have to fill in name and personal info, but that should be drawn from the existing database for them.

There isn't any problem using the CMS for event display, if there are easily connected hooks between an event display module and CiviCRM.  If I have to invent or engineer the connection between CiviEvent and display, then that is more of a hurdle...

Sure, I'd be happy too!

JEvents is an open source Joomla module that displays events in multiple views.  Another module, Attend Events is another module that duplicates much of the CiviEvents functionality and is designed to connect with JEvents.  Said another way, the Events can "hook" to the reservation module.

The CiviCRM team shouldn't have to write a graphical front end to events if another group has already done so.  This forum is a good example.  You didn't write it, but it hooks into the registration info in the main site.

I'm paricularly fond of the quality of presentation offered by the Thyme calendar module, however that's a commercially licensed project and I'm sure that there are licensing issues "hooking" into an open source project such as CiviCRM.

In summary, the user experience that I'm advocating is an easily navigated, flexible event front end that hooks into or connects to both contact information and registration/reservation tracking so that the user can easily navigate through events or volunteer opportunities, select to participate and sign up without retyping personal or event information.

I hope this makes sense !

FatherShawn,

I totally agree with your statement that "CiviCRM team shouldn't have to write a graphical front end to events". :-)

Does the approach with iCal work for you? It seems you're talking about presenting CiviEvent data within separate calendaring application, and this approach is currently achievable with iCal file export and import. In order to make it even more convenient, it was recently decided that behaviour described in this post: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,36.msg144.html#msg144 will be implemented sometime soon.

Thx,
m

You can do the following quite easily and avoid technology issues with your users I just tried this out locally on a drupal site and it took me approx 10 mins:

1. Create a public google calendar and follow the instructions from this page (Display a calendar on your site)

http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/event_publisher_guide.html#site

2. Embed the URL in a Drupal Block or Node (based on your needs). I assume you can do something similar for Joomla.

3. Expose the above url (in case of a node) to all your users

4. On a regular basis, update your google calendar using CiviCRM's iCal feed (i.e. via import and export). You can improve on this and set up a cron job to do this using the GData API. If you automate this, please let folks know so they could use this. CiviCRM v1.8 will also be publishing event information using the GData Event Spec

lobo

OK - the Joomla component JEvent looks promising.  The most recent feature list states

Links can be created within event descriptions (via the new event report mambot) - this allows you to create a link to an event report, photo album etc. This link is not shown until a specific date.

So shouldn't one be able to link those calendar events that need to take registrations (only a sub-set) by placing a link to a CiviEvent page into the event using such a feature?