CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hey folks,

I would be most grateful for any guidance/feedback!

Kabissa launched its Drupal/civicrm site on February 2nd, which has gone reasonably well. We migrated our existing member database into civicrm which is accessible via a member directory using civicrm profiles, and which members themselves can update. The drupal users that can manage their own profiles also are able to contribute to the blog and other content on the site. So far so good!

Now we need to move to a second stage, which is to migrate over our website hosting/billing info (specs 5-8 on the Kabissa project pages on the civicrm wiki - though our setup has advanced since that was originally written last year). As you may or may not know, Kabissa not only has an online community website, but we provide domain hosting to African civil society organizations. The tool we used previously for this was modernbill.

The basic overview of our requirements:

• We have three 'packages' for hosting - free starter, $100 standard and $200 power
• Only approved organizations can be signed up for a package
• Each organization can only be signed up for one package at a time
• It is anticipated that some organizations will upgrade from free starter to standard to power
• Some organizations have credit cards - but most do not and pay our invoices via wire transfer or other non-cc means
• We set up the hosting accounts on the server manually
• we'd like to be able to organize, contact and display members based on the packages they have[/url]
  

My idea is to use civimember and civicontribute to provide this functionality, and my initial exploration seems to reinforce that this is possible.. but if anyone has other ideas please let me know. Here's what seems to need to happen:

• set up payment processing gateways
• set up one membership type for each package
• set up civicontribute form for each package
• import existing packages from modernbill
• create pages for hosting and link to the package signup form

I have not done this yet, but I suppose that once I've got everything set up in civicontribute and civimember, the migration process would be as follows:

• To get hosting packages into civimember, Export packages from modernbill, massage into CSV file containing info required by  civimember, and then use civimember import - civicrm/member/import
• Export invoices from modernbill, massage into CSV file containing info required by civicontribute for each package, and then use civicontribute import - civicrm/contribute/import

This is as far as I've gotten. Issues I am already encountering:

• Paypal processor doesn't work - get a blank screen.. seems to be a paypal issue if I understand the forums
• don't see immediately how to have a non-cc payment processor that people can choose, eg one that sends them an invoice by email with non-cc payment instructions
• don't see yet how to invoice people that are past their renewal date - this may be automated via cron? I will want to be sure this is worknig properly before importing packages!

Again, may thanks in advance for any guidance/support with this -

Tobias

PayPal - you should clarify which flavor (Pro vs. Standard), how you're testing etc.

Paypal standard... not paying anything extra just yet. What do you recommend? I've created a sandbox account at paypal. Testing initially on my live site at http://www.kabissa.org by creating a payment processor for paypal, a civicontribute form and civimember types. I have followed the instructions on the civicrm wiki, and stopped when I got the blank screens and didn't see anything in my logs. 

Non-cc option for payment - the Pay Later feature in 2.0 mostly covers this, altho in 2.0 it doesn't email an "invoice" up front but rather sends a receipt after payment is received. Instructions you can configure for making payment are shown on the "thank-you" screen.

I'm stuck at 1.9 for the moment so any advice will have to be for 1.9, unless you'd like to talk about the benefits of upgrading the Kabissa site to 2.0 and what's involved. Beyond the scope of this conversation I know.

CiviMember has a cron job which keeps membership statuses up to date and optionally emails renewal reminders (described in the docs). Invoicing "expired" members would require creating a different (but similar) cron-driven script - or doing a search on expired members and then using "Send Email to Contacts" with a message template.

Sounds good to me!

So far it appears that this may work for me, but I'm not clear yet on how easy it will be to set all this up and get going with it. The biggest issue is the "pay later" option which you seem to be saying I don't have with 1.9.

Cheers,

Tobias

Hi Lobo,

at what part did u get a white screen. Can you also check the drupal watchdog tables to see if any message is recorded there

I created a paypal (standard) payment processor and a simple "donate to Kabissa" contribution page that uses it. When I complete the "test drive" or the "live" page, it fails when I click on the "checkout with paypal" icon. I get a blank screen and the URL in the address bar is /civicrm/contribute/transact 
 
There is nothing in watchdog.

We will try to upgrade Kabissa to 2.1 as part of a "can we extend civicrm easily without hacking core". We hope to do some work on it in our NZ meetup starting tomorrow.

That would be awesome - please ping me on IM when you see me so we can talk about the implications. I presume it's time for me to set up another sandbox and I am in the process of doing so now.

Cheers,

Tobias

Hi Lobo -

OK re 2.1.

BTW: last night I randomly saw a payment processor related error - something about HTTP:curl_exec. It isn't being logged to watchdog or the apache error log, but appeared on step one of the kabissa new member signup form along with the "if you continue youw ill be assigned as the contact for this organization" type message. Since then I haven't seen it again.

Cheers,

Tobias