CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Really looking for some feedback here on this idea.
I am starting to think about making all civicrm clients in standalone mode (see the last lines for what I mean by this word). One reason is to make sure they have the latest CiviCRM w/o worrying about breaking a relationship it might have w/ drupal.

Now most clients are not benefiting a ton by the drupal / civi integration for example that they can make a node link it to a civi contact using a civirelate cck field module (will be on drupal.org once they clear my cvs request).

So for example the client could use drupal 5 and civicrm 2.2 if this module (if it worked in drupal 5) did not need civicrm installed into drupal. But instead used enough of the civicrm api to call to the civi database and do queries etc.
How much of the api would I need? Not sure. I know for some work I had the client set the CiviCRM database in the Admin area for the module then the module would query some basic info from the civicrm database to show on the drupal site. The module did not care if civi was installed or not.
I know this breaks a ton of rules like security to a great degree (though in this simple case not cause the person entering the data had the right permissions).
But I am trying to find the balance between to fast moving technologies.
Let me give two clear examples.
1. The OptOut notice.
The admin of the site wanted a notice every time the someone opted out via email.
I know drupal better then civi code so I made a module for drupal that ran when the cron of drupal ran and once a day would see if there where any opt outs since the day before.
This module really did not need civi installed as a drupal module all it needed was permissions to read the cividatabase and a place to set that. You can set that in the drupal settings.php but what I opted to do is create and admin/civioptnotice interface where the client(admin) could enter the civicrm database and the person to get the email notice. These variables where then passed to the module.

2. A client wanted a block in drupal to show all related nodes to this civicrecord.
This sounds odd but lets look at it this way.
a. CiviStand alone does not do it for me either in that I know drupal and can do a bunch to add on to Civi via drupal.
So when I say "Stand alone" it could mean
a.1. One drupal (5 or 6) install for the clients main site
a.2 One civicrm install and a clean simple drupal install for the Clients civi needs.

This seems to me easier cause if Civi has a large update then I can update this simple drupal site with out worrying about the 100 modules that may also need updating .A good example of this are clients now stuck in drupal 5 (which really is not stuck just no need to go to d6) and limited to CiviCRM 2.1

So the client that wants the block showing all nodes related to the civicrm contact could have it done like this.
1. on their drupal 5 site there is a module called civirelate and when they make the node they can choose with civicontact to match it to.
2. this module has permissions to query the standalone civicrm and grab the names and ids
3. the in the standalone install that block has permissions to query the drupal database and based off the cid in the url find the related nodes.

The above allows
Drupal 5 users to benefit from CiviCRM 2.x
Drupal 6 users can continue to upgrade their CiviCRM's w/o the worries of falling behind ie when CiviCRM 3.x only works for Drupal 7.

Alright sorry so long, Any thoughts would be appreciated and don't hold back, if it is totally a waste just let me know.
I know this solution may not scale well especially once you get into more complex permission but I think alot of sites are small orgs just with one or tow admin people.

******************my definition of standalone in this post********************
standalone mode - to me this is an install for the client of drupal 5 or 6 and then another install (that uses the same theme) of drupal 6 and the latest civicrm. This basic install of drupal has no extra module etc. It just gives a way for clients to access civi and benefit from the addons that I can make in drupal. And their drupal site 6 or 5 castandalone mode n still call to this stand alone as needed.