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Website integration

Aim

Understand how CiviCRM relates to its host CMS, the options for host CMS, and the possibilities and drawbacks that are associated with each CMS.

Objectives

Learning points

Session Plan

CRM and CMS (5)

Explain the relationship between users and contacts.

  • That they are different
  • That all website users have a contact in the CRM (show the link)
  • That not all contacts have to have a user in the CMS

CiviCRM is a CRM. Your CMS is a CMS

  • What do they both stand for?
  • What does the C stand for in each?

Draw them initially as seperate, and then join them together.

Ask people about the

  • possibilities

    • low admin online event registration
    • low admin donate pages
    • application forrms
    • other online forms
    • directories
    • updating information

    • precautions

    • duplicates

    • data proection

    • areas of overlap

    • users linked to contacts (specifially indivuduals)

Tell learners that the main all users are contacts and that all contacts can be users. Show users how they can go backwards and forwards between website users and CRM contacts.

Drupal vs. Wordpress vs. Joomla (5)

Ask people what CMS they are using and ask them what they think of their CMS - what experiences, good and bad they have had. If no-one is using a particular CMS, ask people if they have any experience of that CMS in other roles.

Highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Permissions (3)

This may have been covered during the set up session.

Show the Drupal permissions table. Explain how roles and permissions work. Give some examples like you could create roles and give them permissions to do certain things, e.g. access members areas.

Linking to CRM pages (3)

Each CRM has its own way of handling content.

There are two types of CiviCRM pages

  • admin pages (designed for configuration and back end management, e.g. the contact screen)
  • public pages (designed for users to interact with) e.g. event registration, contribute, membership sign up and renewal.

Note:* in Drupal you can set it up so that admin pages and public pages look different. Quite useful.*

Each page has a link, which can be used to link to the page (show a couple of examples).

Drupal website integration modules (3)

Introduce the context of CMS integration modules that can be useful, e.g. Drupal has:

  • webform
  • views
  • CiviMember Roles sync
  • CiviMember Groups sync

Exercises (10)

Learners