CiviCRM is the CRM system designed for non-profits. Not only is it an Enterprise level bit of software, it’s also open-source and free to download and install. Investing in a CRM (constituent relationship management) for an organisation of any size is a major undertaking, as it will likely underpin all the actions that organisation takes in relation to its supporters.
Therefore it’s best to evaluate the shortlist of CRM software in as much detail as possible. One way of doing that with CiviCRM is to go along to a meetup – an informal gathering of people intersested in the software. Usually led by an expert, meetups can take different formats. Here we present a typical line-up at the London CiviCRM group.
“The meetups are designed for those looking to find out more about CiviCRM or considering it for their organisation. There are always a mix of experience levels represented and are a great forum for asking your questions or meeting current users, implementors or developers who can help with your project.”
Running Order
Introduction to CiviCRM
Case study (often presented by someone non-technical from a organisation using CiviCRM)
Community update
What’s new?
The London user group is especially lucky in that it is attended by several of the core development team of CiviCRM so it’s a fantastic opportunity to talk with them.
We at 2020Media have attended CiviCRM meetups and found them refreshingly non-techie, friendly to all skill levels, with many newcomers at every meeting (so there aren’t of those cliques of old hands who eye suspiciously any new face!). Many of the developers who are there especially like to talk with actual users and implementors (as do we, as a specialist CiviCRM Hosting Service Provider).
Billed as “Something for Everyone to Love”, Drupal 8 is now in Beta testing and we are expecting the release of a final version soon.
The new release clearly owes a lot to WordPress, and this is no bad thing. WordPress is rightly praised for its ease of use, and conversely the opposite always been the first thing people say when they start to use Drupal. So from a user perspective, the new design and associated features such as the mobile admin interface can only benefit the Drupal community.
Content Creation in D8
What has caused some controversy is the move to a completely different coding methodology (Drupal 7’s procedural code versus object-oriented programming (OOP) in Drupal 8). What’s the problem? It means developers have some work to do to migrate modules and themes to work in Drupal 8. Drupal is often used for enterprise and/or complex bespoke sites that have undergone a lot of customisation work (always one of the strengths of Drupal) and the coding change will result in a lot of work before an upgrade to the new version is possible.
However it is worth remembering that the previous major version change (from 6 to 7) was also a big jump (and has even resulted in many, many Drupal sites remaining on version 6). A similar effect can be found in Joomla, with Joomla 1.0, 1.5 and 2/3 being majorly different from each other, with no simple upgrade available. Only WordPress seems to have escaped this painful process so far. Perhaps WordPress benefiting from coming to the party later and learning from these other established CMS’s growing pains.
Key New Features in Drupal 8
Mobile in its DNA
Deploy content once and watch it display the way you want on any device.
Multilingual Capabilities
Translate anything in the system with built-in user interfaces.
New Configuration Management
Transport configuration changes and manage versions with ease.
Built-in Web Services
Build mobile apps with Drupal as the data source, or even post back to Drupal from the client.
Effortless Authoring
Use the WYSIWYG editor and in-place editing to quickly create formatted content and make changes on the fly.
Fun and Fast Theming
Build sites quickly with the fast, secure and flexible TWIG template engine.
Views, Out of the Box
Easily customize the front page, listing blocks, and more. Simply create custom admin pages, customize filters, actions, and more.
Field Power
Drupal 8 includes more field types in core, and lets you attach fields to more types of content like entity reference, link, date, e-mail, telephone, etc.
Better Markup with HTML 5
The page markup in Drupal 8 is now HTML 5-based. Each output template has simplified elements and classes with native input tools for mobile fields like date, email and phone.
Industry Standard Approach
Non-Drupal developers can embrace object oriented programming and proven technologies from the larger PHP community.
CMS Market Share – March 2014
Let’s take a look at the latest distribution of market share amongst the most popular website content management systems (all supported by 2020Media, natch!)
WordPress 60.2%
Joomla 8.7%
Drupal 5.4%
A year on year comparison shows why Drupal just might be making radical changes (click to enlarge slide):
Market share trends
Whilst WordPress continues to grow, Joomla more or less holds it position but Drupal is clearly losing share. Is the drop due to the uncertainty over what Drupal 8 would hold, or is it the end-users are switching to easier to use CMS systems and this downswing is temporary and the new look D8 will win them back?
2020Media will be watching developments and will keep you updated.
We make every effort to keep our hosting and network as fast as possible. We have multiple redundant links out to the rest of the internet and our network is entirely under our own control.
We recommend customers use third-party sites to test their websites as results from your own browser can be misleading (due to caching).
Website loading speed is mainly affected by the page design itself – one with a lot of large images is clearly going to take longer than a text only page.
However a customer recently responded to our annual survey and I happened to check his site against third-party testing site Pingdom.com. Have a look at these cool results:
Joomla 3.2 – 10 new features – An infographic by the team at 