CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Good to hear that you like the CiviCRM sites :-) And understandably you want both a customer facing website and a back office CRM. Let me first point you to the CiviCRM user guide before I try to answer your question: http://book.civicrm.org/user/. And obviously it would probably benefit you if you can attend a CiviCRM meeting in your area, whatever that may be.

So CiviCRM is a Drupal module, if you swich it on in your Drupal website your permissions determine if you can access CiviCRM. It is possible to set specific permissions for various parts of CiviCRM, so you could use that to control outside access. In general, that is not how it is done however. What tends to happen is that sites use different methods to show data from CiviCRM to website visitors:

• you can use Profiles to expose data to visitors and enable them to enter data. Read the chapter on Profiles in the user guide. Using custom data, API and hooks the profiles can be customized to deal with all sorts of situations (
• using the WebForm integration (check http://civicrm.org/blogs/colemanw/civicrm-and-webform-module-together-last) to access CiviCRM data
• develop Drupal forms that use the API to access CiviCRM data

As a non-technical user I would recommend you focus on Profiles and/or WebForm integration. Hope this gives you enough guidance for a first step :-)

Thanks Erik and Xavier.. I'm busy reading anything I can find...  I'll be back with more questions.. at this point I have Drupal by itself and Drupal with CiviCRM installed in my space on a web hosting service so luckily I'm able to read the manual and click a tab to try things out in CiviCRM (or Drupal).  I also have WAMP and Dreamweaver installed on my personal computer so I can learn PHP, XHTML, and CSS.. will get to MySQL later... but is there a preferred practice?  like creating a front-facing web site in Drupal with links back to CiviCRM? or can this be done straight within CiviCRM?  Right now our web site is straight XHTML + CSS and rather crude and difficult to update... it does have links to twitter, facebook and PayPal... I understand about Permissions and Dashboards (to some extent)... and will get up-to-speed on Profiles, Views and Webform... but I don't want to spend too much time going down the wrong path... obviously we are on a very skimpy budget (VERY skimpy) or we'd hire it all out.    I may be answering my own question as I write this... Since we are going to want Book and Blog functions plus access to forms for our volunteers, I'm thinking develop the website in Drupal and use permissions and specialized menus for access to CiviCRM.


I'm not exactly non-technical... I was a programmer analyst for many years but then migrated more into S/W design, project management and Business Process Redesign... and retired 10 years ago... so I'm very rusty on the techy nitty gritty... plus I was a Lotus Notes expert in the 90's which had an elegant front-end and protected the business application creator from HTML et al.

if u r in the bay area, u might want to consider attending:

* CiviCon pre-sprint: http://civicrm.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=183 - We are experimenting with a new format for "code sprints" / developer training during this event

* CiviCon: http://civicrm.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=174 - will be a good intro and meeting of the extended civi community

lobo