Blog Archive

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Part 1: Drupal + CiviCRM For Charity Sites

 

Are you still managing your data and communication using a myriad of tools such as Excel, Access, RaisersEdge, amongst others? If so, then you may not be realising just how much money you’re putting into waste, and how much you’re missing out on the available management tool to help your organisation operate effectively - that is, Drupal.

If you are already using Drupal, want integration and pondering on a CMS choice - then CiviCRM is definitely a good consideration. This is especially true if you are running advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organisations.

Drupal + CiviCRM - An Overview

By combining these two systems - Drupal and CiviCRM, you are able to leverage, respectively:

- The best of maintaining a fast, user-friendly and completely customisable dynamic website; alongside
- The convenience of having one centralised management solution to help improve the operations within your organisation.

Drupal has the compatible tools in connecting, communicating and activating your constituents and supporters; whilst CiviCRM is packed with features. You’ll then get a powerful solution for your non-profit organisation, out of the box!

There’s no need to update contacts in multiple places. You don’t even need to go through the hassle of keeping track of all your contributors. Drupal + CiviCRM is the integrated solution to provide the capabilities that your organisation needs. 

This is our two-article series on Drupal + CiviCRM Integrated - For Charity Sites. Read on for the Part 2.

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Why We Choose Drupal

 

Drupal is an extremely powerful framework to use not just as a Content Management System - but also as a CMS Construction Kit. As developers, we swiftly grew to like it. Many find it quite a challenge to overcome the learning curve of Drupal, though.

What makes this a good framework choice is its powerful add-on features and flexibility - making it highly customisable. This means adding newsletters, polls, news feeds, among others becomes simple and easy. From complex community portals to simple sites that work a bit more than a blog, we use Drupal as our basis.
 

What We Love About Drupal

It’s not massively advertised, but there are so many things about Drupal that we love. 

- FREE! It’s an open source software, which means you don’t need to spend on development costs and licensing fees.

- Search Engine Friendly. The standard-compliant design of Drupal’s content output helps boost your site’s search engine rankings.

- Reliable. You can count on the active and extensive community supporting Drupal.

- Secure. It is in constant development so you are assured that the Drupal programmers are constantly improving it and speeding it up. This makes Drupal even more secure to use.
 

How Drupal Comes In Handy To Our Clients

More than anything else, we choose Drupal because it generally allows our clients to:

- Keep the community or group of users in their site informed
- Easily make shopping carts and online product catalogues 
- Have several users to simultaneously update the site - while keeping track of the changes
- Update of the site with new information, articles or content

To find out more how we can help you build your next big website using this free CMS, contact us and discuss more.

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Drupal vs The World Of Joomla

 

We find open source content management systems very instrumental in building effective websites. They make it easier for us to create, edit and post HTML content. It’s not only us, but web developers all over the world - who depend on different CMSs to bring forth a website that can accomplish all that it should, in terms of converting visitors to clients.

Among the range of CMS to choose from - it’s Drupal we consider as one of the most celebrated open source CMSs. Free, easy to use and very functional - it currently powers a good number of websites we were able to build. It’s a favourite by our developers because it is backed by an active community - that is always after adding something new to the already effective system.

There are a lot of other content management systems, though, that generate as much interest as Drupal, such as Joomla. So, in this blog post, we shall pit this CMS against Drupal, so that we can have a better idea of which CMS is truly worthy of our support.

Drupal VS Joomla

Both based on the MySQL database and written in PHP programming language - Drupal and Joomla enable developers to easily create websites through template management; and include add-ons that are perfect for app features of websites.

Majority of developers initially go with Joomla because it’s considered more user-friendly and has an easier learning curve, compared to Drupal. It has a more intuitive admin user interface, while Drupal’s quite messy and the terminology is sort of hard to decipher. Joomla also has a bigger community than Drupal.

However, the ease of use tends to end there.

1. Joomla has a very rigid structure and makes it hard to integrate plug-ins with its core, unlike Drupal. Also, Joomla comes with URLs that are not very search engine-friendly.

2. Whereas Drupal supports a multi-site feature where developers can do one installation for many sites, Joomla has a one-site-per-installation rule.

3. Modules from Joomla are not free, but Drupal’s are.

4. Categories for Joomla can only go two-levels deep, while Drupal allows multiple levels of them.

5. And, where Drupal allows for easy configuration of user roles and permission, Joomla makes it tough.

That’s why whenever a client comes to us for a new website or to tweak an existing site - we don’t normally recommend Joomla. Joomla is a good CMS - it has its own set of advantages and downside. But weighing Joomla and Drupal together, Drupal has proven to be more effective for our clients.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you build a site using Drupal, please do contact us to discuss things.

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Facebook Works For A Cause - Gets Our "Like"

 

We at Ultro - have been big fans of Facebook in terms its usability and functionality for the Drupal sites we build. We’ve seen just how great the impact Facebook brings to providing social web presence for our clients.

The best part about Facebook is that it goes beyond its success in the business world, and actually pay it forward.

Facebook, arguably the most popular social networking website in the world, has decided to use its global influence for a noble purpose.

The site has launched a program that went live last Wednesday, 14th December 2011 - to provide emotional support and guidance to users who are stressed, depressed or suicidal by giving them the chance to chat with counsellors from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Through this program, people who see status updates or comments that hint at suicide from their friends can notify Facebook. Consequently, the website would email the person and advise him or her to speak with a ready crisis counsellor from the suicide prevention network.

Research suggests that somebody dies from suicide every 40 seconds, in the whole world. Facebook’s attempt to curb down the number of those who would attempt to orchestrate their own death definitely has Ultro's "Like".

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