Upcoming Events
NYC CiviCRM Meetup - September 7th
September 7th, 2010
This next NYC meetup will feature a case study or 2, a look at what's new in (more...)
Configuring, Customizing and Extending CiviCRM - New York
September 16th, 2010
This comprehensive two-day hands on training course is targeted at (more...)
CiviCRM User and Administrator Training - New York
September 16th, 2010
A comprehensive two day hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
CiviCRM Code and Test Sprint - New York
September 18th, 2010
This code and test sprint is targeted at experienced developers who want to (more...)
CiviCRM Toronto Meetup
September 21st, 2010
Come meet others from the Toronto Area who are interested in, using or (more...)
CiviCRM Philly Meetup – September 2010
September 23rd, 2010
Come meet others from the Philadelphia Area who are interested in, using or (more...)
CiviCRM Seminar - Dublin
September 28th, 2010
NfP Services are hosting a free seminar at The IBOA, Stephen St Upper, Dublin 8 (more...)
London developer and implementer training
September 30th, 2010
This comprehensive two-day hands on training course is targeted at implementers, (more...)
London user and administrator training
September 30th, 2010
A comprehensive two day hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
Berlin user and administrator training
October 6th, 2010
A comprehensive one day hands on training course covering the configuration, (more...)
Berlin developer and implementer training
October 7th, 2010
This comprehensive one-day hands on training course is targeted at implementers, (more...)
Benelux meetup in Brussels: Connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents
October 11th, 2010
Come meet others who are interested in, using or developing for CiviCRM. For (more...)
CiviCRM Toronto Meetup
October 19th, 2010
Come meet others from the Toronto Area who are interested in, using or (more...)
CiviCRM Toronto Meetup
November 16th, 2010
Come meet others from the Toronto Area who are interested in, using or (more...)
CiviCRM Components
Tools for engaging your supporters...
Intro to me and my adventures with CiviMail
- Not Just a Contact Database
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These optional components give you more power to connect and engage your supporters.
civiCONTRIBUTE
Online fundraising and donor management.
civiEVENT
Online event registration and participant tracking.
civiMEMBER
Online signup and membership management.
civiMAIL
Personalized email blasts and newsletters.
civiREPORT
Report generation and template management.
Hi CCRM Friends,
My name is Shane Hill. Some of you may have read my name in a few places or on some lists. This post is meant to introduce me and give some background. I am with the organization The Urban Alliance For Sustainability. http://www.uas.coop and we use CiviCRM to manage our constituency and send email blasts. At first, I was just a volunteer with UAS as I believed in their mission (now my mission) and I wanted to lend my experience to what they were (are) doing. Then in time I inherited their web operations which eventually led to having to deal with CiviMail. :)
When I say I had to deal with CiviMail, do not get me wrong. I love CiviMail and CCRM, it's just that CiviMail comes with a high technical bar to entry and at times I felt a bit like a pole-vaulter using a soda straw (bio-degradable plastic) to get over the bar. So I changed a few things about the CiviMail implementation that we had going and ended up with a very robust and stable newsletter system. So much so that UAS decide to offer our SMTP as a service to other users of CiviMail.
you can read about it here:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,908.0.html
and you can apply for the service here:
http://www.uas.coop/civismtp-application
please direct any and all questions to shane[at]uas.coop
And then because the CCRM dev team is quite supportive and open, I ended up having the opportunities to contribute to CiviMail and ended up making a number of changes and optimizations that I will talk about in other blog posts. One in particular gave email generation a nice order of magnitude speed up. That felt good to be fortunate enough to contribute in that way. I did not do anything hard-core, In fact, I did not even change the algorithm or architecture for email generation. it is quite good already, I just eliminated the need to do some regex scanning work. details later.
Going forward it is the intention of UAS to help make CiviMail enterprise grade and rock solid. I think we are pretty darn close to that. just a few more additions... more on that later as well. I have to get back to launching a CiviSMTP service. :)
peace,
-Shane
