CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am designing a new website for a professional Association of which I am also a member and director.  We currently have about 400 members.  I am using Drupal as the platform for our new website.  I would like to use CiviCRM to do a number of things:

• Allow new members to sign up (which then need to be approved)
• Allow existing members to renew their annual memberships
• Use CiviEvent to schedule meetings and conferences, track rsvp/attendance and collect payments when needed

The issue I face is that our Board has not yet approved acceptance of credit cards or online payments.  It is my understanding that CiviMember cannot sign new people up unless there is an online method of payment (our current custom website has the applicant send a check in after filling out the online application).  So, should I use Drupal's sign up or CiviCRM's sign up functions?  Would it be easy to change from one to the other if the Board should allow online payments in the future?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Marv

Hello, your association sounds very similar to a client of mine.  They have a few hundred members that need to join and renew their memberships as well as register for their annual convention online.

You could take a look at their site for some inspiration and examples:
http://nscss.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1

They accept credit cards (through GoogleCheckout) but they also allow members to send a check with this option:

Check this box to pay by check instead of credit card

The site runs on Drupal 6 and CiviCRM 2.1.  It is easy to add online credit card payments at a later date if you don't have them at first.

Stoob,
The NSCSS site is functionally similar to my own,
http://www.ansm.ns.ca/content/membership-application
My question for you is, how did you make your custom data fields, that is, where did you put them?
For example, Other Memberships - where is that stored?
I've always had the problem that I keep getting an error that certain combinations (like individual and organization) can't be included in the same profile.  Thus I was stuck with putting everything (all new custom fields) under Membership simply because it didn't cause a conflict.
Ideally I'd like no restrictions on what types to put in a profile.  A profile to me is simply a place to collect arbitrary information of various types, and I don't see why there should be such arbitrary limitiations.
The result of my workaround is that I am unable to view or edit any membership information once submitted.
I also can't get create an account to show up anymore since upgrading to 2.2.