The Joomla! Community Portal ™

Abstract

 The main goal of the project is to build a suite of module/plugins that focus on development of the CiviCRM Joomla! front end.This includes a number of  modules,plugins and a MVC front end component which will allow exposure of  CiviCRM APIs as well as allowing Joomla! users to interact with civiCRM.

Details 

civiCRM until now,has been primarily concentrated on the backend and administrative functionalities.With the release of civiCRM 2.2 , a part of it has been brough out to the front end.The project aims at bringing out civiCRM to the frontend entirely.This essentialy means that we need to establish a whole set of module and plugins to interact with all the sections of civiCRM as well as the end user. 

 The current installation is a quite problematic as mentioned above, novice users find it difficlut very difficult to install civiCRM.civiCRM is resource intensive and needs a server configuration,that isn't quite common.So users who fail to understand these fail at this very first step.So modyifying the installation such that,there the server configuration settings are checked and then appropriate instructions are provided to the users to make necessary changes and proceed with the installation. 

Frontend Views "

• Expose Profile and Events to the frontend.(improve)

• Expose Contribute and Pledge to frontend.(By this I mean to code frontend views similar to the existing profile and others.)

As of now we are able to display Profile and some details when searched.This improvement will display all the other details of the user such as, his group,his contributions,his events etc.

Events in the front end can be registered and displayed.I will develope a search specific which can be queried based on different parameters.Also the ability to be able to create new events from the front ent will be looked into.

Creating campaign and fund raisers from the front end would enable the users of a site to be able to have their personal campaigns.This is very vital and brings civi closer to the normal user.

Modules to:

• Display fundraisers/contributions,PCP. 

• Display list of donors/contributors 

• Generate graphical reports.

• Display configurable search results from(Profiles/Events/Groups) in the module position

• Plugin to build links in Joomla! articles to civiCRM.

Module to display contributions 
The amdin will be able to select a set of preset widgets using which he will be able to display contribution meters(and others)
and also link to pages.Also to be able to build custom widgets by selecting colors,borders etc.

Module to genereate graphical reports
Admin will be able to generate graphical display of data from contributions/payments etc.Admin can select a range of data from the contributions
and others and generate graphs,charts etc.Also being able to link them wouldbe great.
For example:Graph of number of people who attend the same event,at different places across the counrty.

Module to list donors
Module to display list of donor based on different parameters per campaign/fund raiser on the whole.Link the list to the donors profiles and more. 

Module to generate list 
Admin will be able to generate a list of Members/Events/Groups etc through searches and then display them in module,with appropriate linking.
For example:A list of upcoming events linked to theri registration pages.

Plugin to link Articles
Many a times users would like to link articles to civi pages,this plugin automatically resolves the links.

The above are as such confirmed to be developed in the summer.I'm still however looking to add a few more into this list and hopefully will ;)

What does this project mean to Joomla! and civiCRM?

civiCRM has traditionally focussed on the backend and in facilitating the administrator.Through the series of module that I have proposed aboveciviCRM would be servicing to the frontend Joomla! users as well.civiCRM will get much needed publicity because of its extensive use in the frontend Admin will be able to extend civiCRM with the help of a better Acccess Control List across different users.Admin will be able to generate the required reports and hence display results in a much better way in the frontend.As such civiCRM usability with Joomla! would increase multifold.