CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

There seems to be two paths for a registered user to set up a PCP

1) Make a donation and on some final screen, set up the PCP (accessed by a potential contributor by a "PCP info page" link

2) Go directly to a screen (via a "Personal Campaign Pages" link) which allows a PCP to be set up without a donation (and accessed I-don't-know-how by potential contributors)


I cannot find any documentation on the latter option, nor any recognition in the documentation that these two paths exist. 

Is there any published documentatin that explains this (or can you provide a brief explanation)?

Thanks

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan - There's definitely some improvements needed in some aspects of the PCP feature set - waiting on folks with interest and resources (coding and / or sponsorship) to make happen. In your post seems like there's potentially a bug, and then 2 areas which need improved documentation and additional functionality.

Using the front-end and a Joomla link to "CiviCRM:Personal Contribution Pages", a registered user can create a PCP not linked to any other campaign, and save that PCP, but the data seems to go into its own private Idaho - invisible in the back-end and equally undetectable in the front-end. 

1. This seems like a bug. However, I just checked our Joomla 1.5 / CiviCRM 3.4 demo and the front-end link creation for CiviCRM :: Create Personal Campaign Pages - and it "forces" me to select a Contribution Page to link to this PCP create:

http://joomla.demo.civicrm.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_menus&task=edit&type=component&url[option]=com_civicrm&url[view]=Contributions&url[layout]=pcp&menutype=mainmenu

If you can create a situation which doesn't create that linkage - then please file a bug on the issue tracker w/ specific steps for reproducing it.

2. On the 'create a PCP side' - there is some documentation about how to provide constituents with a link to create their own PCP w/o forcing them through the contribution process (but it's pretty 'drupal specific' and not general enough IMO:
* This wiki page covers it under the "I forget to click the button" hint: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/Manage+-+PCP … Would be great if you could update the wiki page to explain that you can offer these links to constituents as menu items or navigation elements  etc. and mentioning the Joomla front-end link create process.

There's also some inline help … help pop-up on "Personal Campaign Page Settings" form (e.g. at http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/contribute/pcp?reset=1&action=update&id=1)  'Create Personal Campaign Page' link text field shows the URL pattern for Drupal and describes the front-end menu create process for Joomla. I'm going to copy that text and also place it on top of that form in hopes of making this option a bit more visible.

3. Exposing existing PCP's to constituents is a problem that needs work. Prader-Willi Foundation (among others) has done a nice job building a Drupal-based solution for this - http://giving.fpwr.org/contributions/campaigns -  and they have committed to sharing their work with the community (hopefully a blog and link to their repository will be posted soon). If you have interest and resources for pulling together a more general solution (or a Joomla equivalent module) - that would be awesome. Catch us on IRC to discuss further.

Dave / “Stoob”

Thanks for your feedback- completely helpful.  Last time I did real software professionally was 1996 (anyone remember Lotus Development Corporation?? 1-2-3?? Notes?? Heck, does anyone IBM??), so I am unlikely to find the time to dive into JFactory, jQuery, and the 3,676 .php files in the web site (Joomla, CIVICRM and a forum implementation, and I am not even counting the .tpl files). 

Stoob – thanks for the offer, but I am trying to keep the site completely bread-and-butter – if for no other reason than I will not remember what the heck I did. 

Dave -
I filed a bug report as CRM-8473.  Not a very important bug, only likely to be encountered by newbies blundering around without enough context (sounds like me …).

For what it’s worth, please find below a brief explanation of how to expose PCPs to users of the Joomla front-end – please feel free to use, edit or ignore (as you can tell I have yet to completely grok the widget creation/usage thing, so I am completely vague there – reply in this thread if you want me to update this after I get an understanding of the widget thing):

The PCP creation process for users of Joomla front-end
All Personal Contribution Pages must be linked to a campaign created in the CiviCRM back-end under CiviContribute: “New Contribution Page”.  A user of the front-end can create a PCP either of two ways
1)   By making a contribution to a campaign.  This can be exposed to the front-end user via a Joomla menu item of the type “CiviCRM >> Contribution” (this menu item type will have been added to your Joomla back-end during the CiviCRM installation).  As a final step in making a contribution, a front-end user will be given options to create a PCP, with optional greetings, images, and e-mail distribution. 
2)   By directly setting up a PCP. This can be exposed to the front-end user via a Joomla menu item of the type “CiviCRM >> Contribution/PCP” (this menu item type will have been added to your Joomla back-end during the CiviCRM installation), BUT YOU MUST FIRST create a campaign as described immediately above, as the “CiviCRM >> Contribution/PCP”  menu item type requires a valid reference to the campaign.

Making a contribution via someone else’s PCP for users of the Joomla front-end
The purpose of PCPs is to allow the creators of PCPs to solicit contributions from their acquaintances, so it is necessary that users be able to access the PCPs for the purpose of making contributions.  There are three intended ways of doing this
a)   E-mails distributed (either by CiviCRM processes or manually by the PCP creator) with a link to the PCP contribution page,
b)   A widget (a graphic encapsulating coding to reach the PCP contribution page) embedded in (i) a social networking or other web page or (ii) an e-mail, or
c)   A Joomla front-end menu item of the type “CiviCRM >> Contribution/PCPinfo” (this menu item type will have been added to your Joomla back-end during the CiviCRM installation).  Note that – in current CiviCRM versions – the site administrator is responsible for manually maintaining such links for each PCP. 

Cool -

And i told you I would get back to you with thoughts on the contribution widget.  I have been on completely unrelated topics for a few days, so sorry for the delay.  So more thoughts on the whole participant fund-raising aspect as implemented in CiviCRM. 

1) the whole organization-campaign-campaign page-personal contribution page-"Tell-a-friend"-"web-page-widget" factoring may be a completely sensible set of programming objects, but essentially no end-user will come to a site with any sense of that or any real desire to figure that out.  Not an PHP implementation challenge, obviously, and the only remediation i see is a "How you can help" fundrasing page that provides some instructional test as to what apporaches the a consituent might employ. 

2)I think the personal-identified fundraising aspect is an important tool, and a conducive element would be a "personal fundraising widget" that could be embedded in the likes of a Facebook page (I am not even clear on the conditions under which Facebook allows this).   The current implementation obviously only generates a widget for the campaign. 

Thanks again for your help. 

Jonathan

Quote

By directly setting up a PCP. This can be exposed to the front-end user via a Joomla menu item of the type CiviCRM > CiviCRM Contribution Pages > Create Personal Campaign Page Contribution/PCP”. This menu item type will have been added to your Joomla back-end during the CiviCRM installation, BUT YOU MUST FIRST create at least one online contribution page as this type of menu item requires a valid reference to a contribution page.

However, I don't have "CiviCRM > CiviCRM Contribution Pages > Create Personal Campaign Page Contribution/PCP” in my Joomla menu. 

I only have two (2) separate menu items available: Manage Contribution Pages and Personal Campaign Pages.

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place? 

Above reference is to creating front-end menu items in Joomla's Menu Manager. From you Joomla Administrator login - select Menus > Main Menu > New > Select Menu Type => CiviCRM ....

Hmm - looks like this particular front-end menu type is not working properly on Joomla 1.6 / 1.7. Just tried it on our public demo and I get this error:

"We can't load the requested web page due to an incomplete link. This can be caused by using your browser's Back button or by using an incomplete or invalid link."

http://j16.demo.civicrm.org/index.php/create-your-own-fundraising-page

I've reached out to some of our J! experts for input - but if you can investigate on your side that would be helpful.

This seems like a configuration issue. The CiviCRM needs to know if you're using some alternate table prefix for your Joomla user table (i.e. xyz_users rather than jos_users). Check the CMS Integration settings (CiviCRM > Administer > Configure > Global Settings > CMS Integration).

Problem solved!  During my installation of civicrm, it chose another prefix. I went into phpmyadmin, and looked for the actual prefix.  I changed it in the settings to match the actual table pre-fix, and the mass mail cron job finally went out.  I am having another mail problem suddenly, but that's for another board.  THANKS!