Blogs

Keep up-to-date with blogs from the core team, working groups, developers, users and champions worldwide. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates by email. We also have an RSS feed.
April 2, 2012
By John Derry Filed under CiviMember

Has a magazine ever thought CiviCRM could be adapted to manage subscriptions? Yes and yes. However, there does not seem to be a showcase project showing that it can be done.

 

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March 27, 2012
By pkeogan Filed under Meetups

Just a quick shout out to all those who attended the Philly CiviCRM meet up earlier this month.

I thought the session was excellent.  2 hours straight of Q&A with a host questions and a lot of excellent experience shared.  I think we all learned a lot and are looking forward to our next meetup.

Register for our Q2 Meet up here

 

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March 27, 2012
By totten Filed under API, Architecture, Extensions

Many CiviCRM customizations have been packaged and distributed as Drupal modules. This can be desirable when a customization delves into both the CMS and CRM functionality, but -- when a customization focuses only on CiviCRM -- Drupal modules are a drag: they need to be patched for CMS upgrades (D6/D7) as well as CRM upgrades (Civi 2.x/Civi 3.x), and they don't work with CiviCRM's other CMS's (Joomla and WordPress). This article introduces a proof-of-concept solution.

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March 26, 2012
By Eileen Filed under Architecture, Sprints

Last week I wrote a blog about technical debt (comparing it to keeping a kitchen in order). I got a lot of feedback - most of it constructive. I'm going to resist belabouring the whole metaphor & limit this blog to a quick summary of some of the discussion that came out of it.

 

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March 21, 2012
By markimus Filed under Finance and Accounting

My name is Mark, I run a small consulting Firm in Vancouver Canada. I have been working with CiviCRM since 2009 and have implemented customized solutions with it for 7+ clients. I have several clients who use CiviCRM and CiviContribute and at the end of each year there is always a moment where they mention their wish list to be able to generate a CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] compliant tax receipt for each of their Contributors.

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March 19, 2012
By Eileen Filed under Architecture

Do you like to whinge about CiviCRM code? Have you sat through others doing having a rant? I've certainly done both. Being in the drupal world people often like to compare CiviCRM code with drupal & CiviCRM usually comes up a bit short. I think that's like comparing my kitchen with Bill Gate's kitchen. There are a few good reasons why my kitchen is not as nice as his.

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March 13, 2012
By jcm55 Filed under Case studies and user stories

A wide variety of organizations make use of CiviCRM, especially in the areas managing contact/donor data, contact communication and receiving online donations. Performing arts organizations also have those needs, as well as some unique requirements around events (performances) and tickets. Over a series of upcoming blog posts, I hope to outline how our organization has used and adapted CiviCRM to meet our needs for those use cases.

 

About Our Organization

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March 12, 2012
By AllenShaw Filed under CiviCRM, Finance and Accounting, Interface and design

A member sends several separate payments to cover outstanding dues on a single purchase, like an expensive membership or a table at an event. How are you going to record this?

A conference participant selects “Pay Later” on several different event registrations, and later wants to pay them all in a single credit card transaction.  How are you going to support this?

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March 9, 2012
By jamie Filed under CiviCRM

Thanks to successful Make It Happen on consolidated cron jobs, we can set just one cron job per site.

As described in the docs, you can set this cron job using either an "URL" method or a "CLI" method.

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March 7, 2012
By Eileen Filed under API

Although the API changes in 4.1 are not as obvious as took place in 3.4/4.0 there have been quite a few changes under the hood. This is a fairly detailed explanation of what's going on inside the API wrapper.

  The way in which required fields & default values are set has been changed to be more consistent and to be self documenting.

 

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