Blog posts by AlanDixon

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December 10, 2021
By AlanDixonFiled under

Security for your CiviCRM install is important, especially this time of the year. Because of two recent, massively exploited vulnerabilities in Wordpress, I'm posting this with some simple advice for small organizations that might not think they can do anything about security, or that it might not affect them.

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June 29, 2020
By AlanDixon Filed under Hosting

My recent blog posts have talked about containers, Docker and why I think they're a good fit for hosting CiviCRM. Here's a deeper dive into two design ideas that are part of my Simuliidae open source hosting project.

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February 19, 2020
By AlanDixon Filed under Hosting, Tools

Let's share stories, ideas and code. Containers are good for sharing.

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January 29, 2020
By AlanDixon Filed under Tools

Like all interesting questions, this has three worthwhile answers: yes, no, and maybe. Let's explore them all.

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November 18, 2019
By AlanDixon Filed under Drupal 8, Tools, API, Architecture, Documentation, Drupal, Extensions, Tips

In 1992, there was a little known new thing called the world wide web. By 1995, it was a "thing". Now, what exactly do those quotes do to the word "thing"? And what does this have to do with "entities"? Cue my favorite programming joke.

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October 31, 2018
By AlanDixon Filed under CiviContribute, Case studies and user stories

This month, British Columbians (in Canada) will be voting on whether to adopt proportional representation (PR) when electing their provincial representatives. If they do, they'll be the first province in Canada to do so.

Fair Vote Canada has been advocating for proportional representation in Canada's voting systems for more than 10 years, and I've been working with them for almost as long, using CiviCRM. 

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July 24, 2018
By AlanDixon Filed under CiviContribute, Finance and Accounting

If you are a medium or large organization and use a payment processor with CiviCRM, and especially if your reporting needs are complex (e.g. political parties that need to report income rather carefully), then you will have run into the challenge of reconciling payment processor income in CiviCRM against your bookkeeping system and/or your bank account. 

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December 21, 2016
By AlanDixon Filed under CiviContribute

It's a time of year when machines and people get stressed, particularly in countries where tax laws and custom favour end-of-year donations. And if you've ever managed a CiviCRM installation, the last thing you probably want is to interrupt your end-of-year festivities with an issue of someone being unable to make a donation.

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January 18, 2016
By AlanDixon Filed under CiviContribute, Extensions

I've been working on a few larger CiviCRM migrations lately. Out of that work I've been adding some new pieces to the iATS payment processor extension as well as my more generic recurring payments extension, and here's my story.

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July 16, 2015
By AlanDixon Filed under CiviContribute, Extensions, Finance and Accounting

During the past year, I've been working with a number of medium and larger organizations using CiviCRM, and have found a few gaps in CiviCRM's CiviContribute functionality, particularly around the management of recurring donors, which are often a really important part of a larger organizations' donor base.

To this end, I'm happy to share a couple of extensions that I've been developing to fill these holes, detailed below.

Feedback and patches welcome, as usual. 

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