CiviCrm News Registration for Joomla

Written by Nicholas Myrna Wednesday, 02 June 2010 11:51

Overview

Welcome and thanks for trying CiviCRM Newsletter Registration component and module. The purpose of this module and component is to:

  • Show the minimum fields for signing up for a CiviCRM newsletter in a module position on any Joomla page. This makes the signup substantially easier and promotes more newsletter registrations.
  • Optionally redirect the newly registered user to a Thank You page or to a page (generated via the component) that lets you thank the user and ask for more detailed contact information such as physical address and telephone number. Since this process is optional, it won't frighten people off from joining the newsletter, but lets those people who want closer contact with your organization to provide additional information.
  • Optionally redirect after providing more information to a final Thank You page.

All users who sign up via the CiviNews process are added to CiviCRM as a contact and associated with any group chosen in the module. 

Details of Building a CiviCRM Contact

Contacts are added to CiviCRM in two stages. First, the CiviNews module prompts as for a user's name and email information.  When these are supplied, and the user sucessfully answers the Spam Questions, the system creates a CiviCrrm contact and associates the contact with a CiviCRM group.  For e-Newsletter registration, special contact lists, certain events, etc. this is all that is required. If that is the case, the module can either return a successful registration message, or the user can be redirected to a Donate page, a Thank You page, or some other page of information. The Redirect Link is set individually for each instance of the CiviNews Module, allowing it to be used for different purposes with different CiviCRM Contact Groups.

Often non-profits and other kinds of organizations would like to try and capture the phone number and mailing address information when a user joins a contact group. To thank the user and ask for more (optional) information, build a menu link to the CiviNews Component, and paste that fully qualified URL into the CiviNews Module. When the user reaches the CiviNews Component page, he/she is already registered in the CiviNews Contact Group. If the user chooses to exit the page without providing any additional information, then you still have his or her name and email address. If the user adds more information, then after submitting the data, you can optionally redirect them to a final page which has more information. 

CiviNews Uses

CorFun created CiviNews because we have noticed a substantial drop in the eNewsletter registrations for customers that we migrated from Acajoom to CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a fantastic system, and does great newsletters, but the simple Acajoom Registration module would capture literally hundreds more registrations per month on our non-profit sites than the CiviCRM page. After researching what was happening, it became clear that users were clicking the "Get Newsletter" button, seeing the CiviCRM page, and then getting out without registering. The CiviNews module corrects this issue, and allows users to sign up in a module position.

While the module's primary function is for  eNewsletter registration, it can be used for anything. The module will prompt the user for his/her first name, optional last name and email address, which are the only fields necessary to create a Contact in CiviCRM. Contacts created by the module are added to any Contact Group desired. After getting the basics, you can even ask for more information if the purpose you are getting the information for requires more information. But above all, the module gets you the Name and Email address, helping you get contact with a new potential supporter or member.

CiviNews Setup 

CiviNews is Joomla 1.5 Native, and requires CiviCRM installed as a Joomla component.

Note: The component page only works when "redirected to" from the module. Do not attempt to use the component page by itself in a stand-alone process.

Setup Instructions

The module and component are bundled together in one zip file. You must unzip this file first into order to show the two installation files.

1) Install mod_civinews using the Joomla installer.

2) Enable mod_civinews using the Joomla installer.

3) Fill in the parameters for mod_civinews. These are explained below. The biggest decisions to make are what CiviCRM Contact Group to add the registrants to and what URL to redirect to after registration is complete (if desired).

4) Publish the module to the appropriate page/module position.

5) Install com_civinews

6) Fill in the parameters for com_civinews. Explained below

7) Create a menu link to the component (optional).

8) Update the parameters for mod_civinews with the menu link for the component if the component is to be used for additional registration.

9) Put the redirect URL field in com_civinews. This is the page users will go to after they have filled in the additional information requested on the CiviNews component page.

10) Unpublish the menu link for com_civinews. The Civinews component is not for use except as a redirect from the Civinews module. After you have copied and pasted the link for the Component into the Module as a redirect, you should unpublish the link to the component.

CiviNews Module Parameters

Below is a jpg of the civicrm paramters. All fields are defaulted at installation with the exception of the Redirect URL. Explanations of each field follow the screen capture.

Picture of the mod_civinews Parameters

  

All fields are initially defaulted to the values shown above.  Please remember if you want to redirect to a thank you page or redirect to the com_civinews component page to request address and phone number information you must fill in the URL of Thank you Page field.

 Below is a picture of the published CiviNews Module

 

The user is requested to register for the newsletter providing his/her first name, last name and email address.  The "Please Register" verbiage, all literal values used and the spam question and response are defined on the parameter along with all error messages.    Therefore this module can be used for any language simply by defining the values in the mod_civinews parameter.

This module creates a CiviCrm contact and will enroll the contact in the group defined on the  mod_civinews parameter. 

Remember it is the "URL of the Thank You Page" defined in the mod_civinews parameter that will redirect the user to either a thank you page (you must define it if desired) or to the component page that will prompt for the address and phone number. 

 If a redirect is not defined in the module parameters the page containing the registration will be redisplayed and a thank you within the module will be shown.

 

Below is a Picture of the com_civinews Parameters
(First Part)

Below is the Second Part of the com_civinews Parameter

The user can either enter the address and phone number information or can navigate from this page.  If you wish to redirect to a thank you or another landing page once the CiviCrrm information is entered, remember to use the Redirect URL Field.

Below is a picture of the com_civinews Registration Page

 

 All literals and messages are defined on the com_parameter during setup.  Remember to establish a menu link to the com_civinews component and to put the URL in mod_civinews for redirect here.  The contact id is passed over from mod_civinews.  Bypassing the module and going directly to the component will result in the contact not being found.

Information entered here will update the address and optionally the phone number of the contact established from the module.