The Web Content Management Systems July Meetup

At this meeting Paul Bohn and Rich Lysakowski will present and demonstrate Drupal, providing an overview to transfer knowledge gained by using this popular product thus far.

PLEASE NOTE that the MEETING DATE has CHANGED from Wednesday, JULY 18TH to Tuesday, July 24th !!

The location will be the same, 111 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215

We also want to have a brief discussion of the group, what we want to cover next month. Please come to learn and have your voice heard. Please come and have fun. We will all learn a lot!!

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Rich Lysakowski - Overview of Drupal
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~ 45-60 minutes including Q&A

I. What is Drupal?
II. Drupal's technical features and functions
III. Drupal's strengths and weaknesses
IV. Drupal Support Community
V. Some popular community sites using Drupal

Drupal is one of the two most popular open source CMS available today with very active developers and a very large support network. It has hundreds of extensions available and an active full-time product development support group.

Rich will cover the following things on Joomla as time permits, using a system the standard installation with a few customizations:

1) a brief overview of Joomla from a user's point of view, giving definitions and examples of content, sections, and categories; and how they relate to each other.

2) the main distinctions between Nodes, modules, and components, pointing out some of the most common modules and how they are used.

3) the administrator's interface, its standard menus, and what they control.

4) how "themes" (templates) work, and what's included in a theme. How to install and switch themes to get different appearances and behaviors.

5) menus and how to use them when designing a site; the one-to-one relationships between menus and pages within categories and sections.

8) a few resources for learning, for themes, for other addins, please mention them.

The meeting will in the conference room on the basement level of 111 Cummington Street.

The "core" Drupal V5.1 system components and modules, rather than customizations, will be emphasized. This will be an introductory talk to give people a good overview. If group members are so inclined a later meeting could cover development of new modules or components.

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Paul Bohn - CIVIC-CRM INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
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~ 45-60 minutes including Q&A

VII. Overview
a. What it CivicCRM?
b. Why CivicCRM is cool !
c. Community / proven design with well integrated features
d. Technical Requirements

VIII. User Demo
a. Basic User Interface
i. CiviCRM Home
ii. Find Contacts
iii. Manage Groups
b. Add New Contact Example
c. Search for New Contact
d. Brief explanation of some of the other CiviCRM Components

~ Extra time

IX. Admin Demo
a. Overview of Administer CiviCRM Panel
b. Setup
i. Global Settings
c. Configure
i. Demonstrate powerful customization

What is CivicCRM

CiviCRM is web-based, internationalized constituent relationship management software --- designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

Integration with both Drupal and Joomla content management systems gives you the tools to connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents.

CiviCRM: A Free and Open Source eCRM Solution

CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, open source, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of
advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

CiviCRM is a powerful contact, fundraising and eCRM system that allows you to record and manage information about your various constituents including volunteers, activists, donors, employees,
clients, vendors, etc. Track and execute donations, transactions, conversations, events or any type of correspondence with each constituent and store it all in one, easily accessible and manageable
source.

CiviCRM is created by an open source community coordinated by CiviCRM
LLC, and the 501c3 non-profit Social Source Foundation.
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Why use CiviCRM?

. Unified view of every constituent. Store information about individuals, organizations and households and your interactions with them.

. Seamless integration with web sites. CiviCRM integrates directly into popular open source CMS packages, including Drupal and Mambo. Registration and visitor interactions are logged directly into the
system, including end-user maintenance of their own addresses and custom fields.