CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Perhaps a slight aside but I had been mulling what would be involved in doing a printed book of the 'civiCRM for dummies' variety. Probably writing and getting a book published is a bit beyond my resources - especially as the release cycle is so rapid - but would probably open it up to a whole new bunch of users ( and I suppose book sales might compensate the time put into writing it)

Hallo lobo

I do not mean to flame anybody. I am too long in this business not to understand, that it is open source and therefore best effort.

I admit, it frustrates me, that there is so much clever information in the documentation, but the few simple things one would need to start has to be found out by reverse engineering.
I understand also that me not using drupal but having to integrate it into another CMS is not the easiest job to wish for and I am possibly not your target audience.
However I am not new to web programming and I know quite a bit about the user requirements as I need to live from this work.

None the less thank you for offering help.

The points you mention:

==>1. 2.1 is the first release with standalone, as such it probably has quite a few issues that we are not aware of. To get a better idea of the system, you might be better off playing with the drupal demo and figuring things out there.
>>I have registered for the demo and I can log in and see my profile but when I want to try the dashboard it says "You are not authorized to access this page".
>> Unfortunately this is a recurring experience with civicrm standalone that thing either crash or then just deny operation.

2. Profiles documentation is here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Profiles+Admin. It is probably written from a drupal/joomla perspective since standalone came after the docs
>> This is great but lets me in the cold about how to link with the db and how to integrate it into a page without drupal.

3. Might be easier/quicker to ask questions on IRC: http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%23civicrm&forcePrompt=true
>> Thank you for the offer, I will install this and call soon

4. having a better attitude / tone would make helping you out a bit easier.
>> I'll try. As you can see in the forum, I am not only complaining but have started with translation and documentation to contribute to the effort.

5. i have no idea what you mean by: "I clearly don't think that the developers thought the standard civicrm GUI to be the production interface for users."
>> As standalone presents itself when I start up civicrm standalone (even assuming that setting the css right would help the layout) it is not user friendly. But OK, this is a start and the system provides for a lot of configurability.

My most basic queations are:
- How can I integrate the form created in civicrm into a page body that has been created by a cms.
- How to best access the db. Example: I have an event, people get themselves registered, now I need various views of the event and Participants. Hooks would not be enough as this only handles the event management and event registration. I would need for instance room resource management, group scheduling for workshops. Hooks do not seem to help here.

Thank you for your help

One other note - the evolving REST API is being driven to a large extent by the need to make it easier to integrate CiviCRM with "other" CMS's. Aaron Crosman from AFSC.org is helping to drive this forward since that is his org's "requirement". You might want to join in this effort going forward.

http://civicrm.org/node/478

Perhaps a slight aside but I had been mulling what would be involved in doing a printed book of the 'civiCRM for dummies' variety. Probably writing and getting a book published is a bit beyond my resources - especially as the release cycle is so rapid - but would probably open it up to a whole new bunch of users ( and I suppose book sales might compensate the time put into writing it)

Hallo Eileen

I do not think a book would be what is needed at the moment.
- Things evolve at such a fast pace.
- My target audience are not the dummies but the experienced programmers.
- We need to find a method of writing dokucmentation that has a clear referennce to Releases, avoiding the time spent in vain because the documentation is not in sync with the release. This is particularly accute for standalone.

What clearly is needed is an ongoing effort in code and documentation to make integrating civicrm to non joomla and drupal systems a reasonable proposition.

I certainly would be interested to participate, as I have to achieve the integration for my CMS anyhow.

Hallo lobo

I do not mean to flame anybody. I am too long in this business not to understand, that it is open source and therefore best effort.

I admit, it frustrates me, that there is so much clever information in the documentation, but the few simple things one would need to start has to be found out by reverse engineering.
I understand also that me not using drupal but having to integrate it into another CMS is not the easiest job to wish for and I am possibly not your target audience.
However I am not new to web programming and I know quite a bit about the user requirements as I need to live from this work.

None the less thank you for offering help.

The points you mention:

==>1. 2.1 is the first release with standalone, as such it probably has quite a few issues that we are not aware of. To get a better idea of the system, you might be better off playing with the drupal demo and figuring things out there.
>>I have registered for the demo and I can log in and see my profile but when I want to try the dashboard it says "You are not authorized to access this page".
>> Unfortunately this is a recurring experience with civicrm standalone that thing either crash or then just deny operation.

2. Profiles documentation is here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Profiles+Admin. It is probably written from a drupal/joomla perspective since standalone came after the docs
>> This is great but lets me in the cold about how to link with the db and how to integrate it into a page without drupal.

3. Might be easier/quicker to ask questions on IRC: http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%23civicrm&forcePrompt=true
>> Thank you for the offer, I will install this and call soon

4. having a better attitude / tone would make helping you out a bit easier.
>> I'll try. As you can see in the forum, I am not only complaining but have started with translation and documentation to contribute to the effort.

5. i have no idea what you mean by: "I clearly don't think that the developers thought the standard civicrm GUI to be the production interface for users."
>> As standalone presents itself when I start up civicrm standalone (even assuming that setting the css right would help the layout) it is not user friendly. But OK, this is a start and the system provides for a lot of configurability.

My most basic queations are:
- How can I integrate the form created in civicrm into a page body that has been created by a cms.
- How to best access the db. Example: I have an event, people get themselves registered, now I need various views of the event and Participants. Hooks would not be enough as this only handles the event management and event registration. I would need for instance room resource management, group scheduling for workshops. Hooks do not seem to help here.

Thank you for your help

Hallo lobo
I am trying to configure the irc connection. I am using the ubuntu irc client conversation. The link you give me does not seem to fit the fields I need to fill in my irc client.

Thank you for more explanation

Hallo lobo

I am on IRC and am trying a PM with dlobo. But no response?

I've longed for a civiCRM for dummies type of book too . . .

But then it occurred to me that what I wanted was a book that would tell me all the things that weren't in the documentation.  Which means that what I really want is for better documentation, and that's the place to start. 

I several things I mean by "better" documentation:
1. There are more errors than I'd expect.  For example, tonight I just spent 2 hours trying to figure out why my profile didn't work and traced it down to a type in the documentation. 
2. Much of it is written from a Drupal perspective and things like file locations are offered, but not noted as being wrong for Joomla
3. As noted above, there are some missing places.

So I hope that anybody who figures out these errors or unexplained places will contribute back to the documentation!!  Let's all save each other these hours and hours of trying to figure out why something isn't working!

I fully agree.

The coreof the problem: There is unfortunately no clear separation of core civicrm code and integration code to drupal, joomla and standalone. As far as I can see it has started as a drupal centered approach. Therefore integration code is found in many places within the core modules.

To correct this a mayor rewrite would be needed. So for now, the only sensible way is to create a documentation that has three branches (drupal, joomla and standalone). There will certainly be some duplication of information (just cut and paste) but it would be much more easy to make shure that the documentation pertains to the particular setup.

Who has the right to do the change in the docu structure?