Tendenci Blog

Check out our new Tendenci Navigation Editor

We are pleased to announce that the new Tendenci Navigation Editor has been released.  Rearranging your navigation has never been easier with our new drag and drop interface, and it even incorporates some new features.

What you can expect from the new Editor:

• Drag and Drop Interface for easy move, delete.
• Click any link to edit the link details.
• Easily make your links open in a new window
• CSS class field for those more HTML inclined
• Options to both save progress and publish.  Save your work as you go without worrying about your live site.
• Automatic page building!

How does automatic page building work?

When you publish your navigation, the editor will look for links to pages within your site that might not exist yet.  If you use our Clean URL system (ie. link to a page like /promotions/ instead of /en/cms/?123 to generate a URL of www.yourdomain.com/promotions/), then the navigation editor will automatically create these pages for you if they don't already exist.

The Navigation Editor will produce a list of the pages created and give you options to both Edit and Delete them.

These pages are NOT syndicated, because they will have no content until you put some content in, but don't forget to syndicate them once they are ready!

A peak at the new interface:

But I liked the old one

Never fear! The original navigation editor will still be available to you, linked from the top of the new editor.  While we make these edits in an attempt to make your life easier, we realize some people have a system that works perfectly well for them, so if the old editor really tickles your fancy, we understand.

A note to Internet Explorer 6 users

We are currently working on support for the new editor in deprecated browsers.  For the time being, the new editor is available only for IE 7+.  You can continue using the Tendenci Nav Editor classic until we can get all the bugs sorted out.

Greater control over your Tendenci site with Template Editor

Do you want more control over the template you see on your Tendenci site? Want to implement your own custom HTML code? The Tendenci template editor now puts the power in hands. Very similar to the style editor in both functionality and interface, the template editor allows you to tweak the layout of your website.

You may notice that the template and style editor both do not sit in the template of your website like most Tendenci modules do. We have moved these tools out of the template for 2 reasons:

1. You have more space to see your code, which should make it easier to edit.
2. We all make mistakes, so if you accidently publish a Template that causes some serious problems on your site, you can quickly return to the Template Editor and revert to a previous version!

You may be asking yourself, how to I know what areas are needed on the template? The template editor does some automatic checks when you click the save/publish buttons that will let you know of possible problems in the template.

You can find the templates editor in the Tendenci & Other Tools section of the console. Don't forget, if you have any questions please contact our wonderful support team!

Edit your Cascading Style sheets with our new Style Sheet Editor

Tendenci web site CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is now editable by site administrators. The new style sheet editor lets you edit, save, and publish your styles. It also remembers your previously saved styles (revisions) and allows you to restore them if you wish to revert to older styles. Here are some help files that can get you started:

1. How do I use the style sheet editor?
2. How do I save or publish a style sheet?
3. How do I open/restore a revision style sheet?

Tendenci and helpful tools

There is a new section on the Tendenci home page called "Tendenci & Other Tools" where you can find some novice to advanced tools that may help you while using the software. Some of these tools include a style sheet editor for your site and picnik (an online image editing tool).

View all Comments made on my Photo Album

Did you know you could easily see all the comments made to a photo album?

Whenever you’re viewing a photo album, you will always see the number of comments associated with that album. If the album has at least one comment you can click on the link and view a full list of all the comments made for this one album.

New Membership Reconcile Page for Admin

As a site administrator, sometimes you need to look at some data and run the membership reports. The membership reconcile page gives you a centralized place to quickly access to your membership data.

It lists the total members and users with links to a list of active members, pending members and expired members.

Besides the totals, It contains the links to  1) memberships reports, 2) members data, 3) exports.

For more information, please visit the help file What Can I Expect from the Membership Reconcile Page?,

A New Membership Add-on - Special Interest Groups

The special interest groups (SIGs) are user groups that requires payments. The module has been released recently. If you're using membership module, you can integrate it into your membership application and give members the options to join the special interest groups when they are applying memberships. It allows you to have the separate membership payment for regular membership and for special interest groups in one payment transaction.

Integrating SIG to membership is easy; it takes two steps: 1) Add special interest groups in the SIG module. 2) Add the SIG section to your membership application. For detailed information, visit the help file Special Interest Group with Membership.

Private Events

Tendenci now gives you the ability to create private events. Private events are the same as any regular old event -- with one added bonus -- it’s hidden. The only way to view the event details and have the ability to register for the event is if you know the exact URL .

Only administrators and the creator of the event have the ability to view the event within the calendar. I’d show you a screenshot, but it’s private … shhh.

Membership Expiration Update

If your site is currently using the memberships module and the corporate memberships module and has both members associated with corporate memberships and individual members not associated with a corporate membership, then this update applies to you. The expiration methods for individual and corporate members may now be set differently.

Here is an example of the old functionality:

The membership application has the ability to tie a member into a corporate membership:

• Membership A and B both expired on 11/1/2007
• The corporate membership C has an expiration of 11/1/2008
• Membership A is bound to a corporate membership C
• Membership B is not bound to a corporate membership

Both A and B  renewed on 1/1/2008. Assuming the grace period is 30 days, A's expiration date would be set to 11/1/2008 (the same as its associated corporate membership C's expiration date) and B's expiration date would be 1/1/2009 (one year from the renewal date)

Now you can choose the expiration method for the memberships that are not bound to the corporate memberships. For example, if you select to expire annually on November 1st, the expiration date of B would be 11/1/2008 (the next November 1st from the Renewal date).

To update your membership expiration method for the individual memberships not bound to corporate memberships, edit your Membership Application and on Step 4, set the individual expiration method to expire by the method you prefer. If you are unsure of whether or not you have a membership application that ties into corporate memberships then go to Step 2 and see if the Show check box is checked for Corporate Membership ID.

Please refer to the screen shots below:

On Step 4 - Setting the individual membership for memberships applications tied into corporate memberships

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On Step 2 - Checking to see if you are tying the membership application to a corporate membership

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Email (all, paid, or non-paid) Event Registrants

Tendenci now gives you the ability to email all, paid, or non-paid registrants for your event. Simply select the appropriate group and your registrants will receive your custom formatted email.

You can now merge usergroups in Tendenci

Good news Tendenci users!  You can now merge or append usergroups.

Merging usergroups allows you as an admin, to take users from one group and add them to another. You  have the option to delete the group entirely.

Append usergroups allows you to merge usergroups while keeping the source group.

You will need a site authentication string to do the merge.

Check out the help files.

1. Merging usergroups - http://www.tendenci.com/en/helpfiles/v/484     
2. Appending usergoups - http://www.tendenci.com/en/helpfiles/v/485     

Corporate Membership Module Added Renewal Process and Renewal Reminder

We have recently rolled out the corporate membership renewal process and renewal reminder. Although they are the basic functionalities in the corporate memberships module, for some reason, they didn't get included in the initial release. For those who were waiting for this process, we greatly thank you for your patience!

The corporate membership renewal process let you renew your corporate membership as well as the individual memberships under the corporate membership provided that the individual membership type is tied to the corporate membership. For more information on how to renew your corporate membership as an admin and as a dues rep, visit the help files How do I renew a Corporate Membership as an Admin? and How do I renew a Corporate Membership as a Dues Rep?

The renewal reminder will be sent to the dues representative certain days before or after the expiration date. The default setting is 7 days before the expiration date. To turn on or off the renewal reminder, and change its frequency on your site, simply go to http://www.yourdomain.com/en/corporatememberships/ and you'll find the links to do so. Certainly you must be a site admin.

Newsletter Images Are Now Displaying Properly

What happened?

The software update to help make our email compliant, caused a slight change in the way newsletters were created. This required one extra step to make all paths to your images absolute paths instead of relative paths.

If you have experienced trouble with your Newsletter images displaying this week, The programming team has fixed this for you. Yay! Thank you Programmers!

What did the Programming Team do?

A snippet of code has been added that will automatically turn your relative image paths into absolute image paths for you. This change is automatic so your Tendenci Newsletter images will now display properly in preview mode and in your inbox. The code was accidentally overlooked on the first update, so we apologize for any inconvenience that it may have caused.

What is the difference between the paths?

A relative path is a path to an image or a page that does not include your full website address. You will use relative paths when you are linking to images or pages that live within your Tendenci site. This is an example of a relative path to an image:

An absolute path is a path to an image or a page that does include your full web address. You will use an absolute path when you are linking to images or pages outside of your Tendenci site. This is an example of an absolute path to the same image:

 

For more information on uploading images and creating newsletters, please visit our Tendenci help files.

Importing users into Tendenci just got easier!

This update has been a long time coming!  We appreciate all of the patience and ideas on how to make importing users into Tendenci better and more user-friendly.

You can now rename the columns to fit your own needs. It does not have to be in the order of the import template. The header and the title rows can be left in the spreadsheet. Test it out.

Please visit the helps files on preparing a file for user import or learn how to import users into Tendenci.

Tendenci Enhancements Help Newsletters Reach More End Users

The Tendenci team works hard to keep your Web marketing efforts successful and effective.  In a recent effort to combat SPAM, we have implemented some changes in the way your Web site sends your emails, newsletters and notifications.

These changes not only make your site's email compliant with Internet rules and regulations of email delivery, but also increase your site's email deliverability.

When an Email notification, Contact Form Submission or Newsletter is sent from your Tendenci site, it will now have a sender address of DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net. This email address matches the address of the mail server that is being used to process and send your emails - which looks more legitimate to other mail servers, resulting in increased deliveries.

What are you talking about?

Old Way:
To a server, the following sample email header could look like Spam as it is sent with the sender's own email address from a Tendenci site's newsletter generator (@hotmail.com vs. @schipul.net):

Return-Path: mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com
Sender: mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com
From: "Mary Dinkleplotz" <mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com>
Subject: My organization's newsletter!

New and Improved Way:
By changing the 'Sender' path, your email will appear less suspicious as the sender address matches your Tendenci site's mail server that is being used to send the email (@schipul.net):

Return-Path: DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net
Sender: DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net
From: "Mary Dinkleplotz" <mdinkleplotz@hotmail.com>
Subject: My Organization's Newsletter

How does this affect me?

If I were sending a newsletter to you from the Tendenci website, you would receive my Newsletter in your inbox and the "Sender" would be DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net (this is generally not displayed by the email application).

The "From and/or Reply To” address will continue to have the email address of the user who was specified in the ReplyTo field pictured below:

You must be sure to include your correct address in the 'ReplyTo' field (see below) to ensure email replies are sent to your email address. Otherwise, they will be sent to the DO-NOT-REPLY-TENDENCI@schipul.net and will not make it to your inbox, which would be sad.

The Good News:

This mandatory update was made specifically to help improve your email deliverability.  It also makes your email compliant with regulations outlined here: http://www.openspf.org/Best_Practices/Webgenerated

Please Note!:

With this change, some of the Tendenci Newsletter bounce back features will be temporarily disabled. This means you will not be receiving your newsletter bounce backs until further notice.

Many Tendenci clients count on receiving their bouncebacks to remove or update email addresses on their mailing lists. We are aware that this temporary disruption may be a challenge for you, so we can offer a solution for you.

By editing your Site Variables, you can revert to the old email sender Return-Path, instead of utilizing the new, compliant sender email address. To make this change, you will need to edit the variable called:  SiteEmailNoReplyAddress

We strongly recommend that you do not change this variable as YOUR EMAIL DELIVERY RATES WILL DROP IF YOU REVERT BACK!

If you are still not sure if you like the change, this quote from Ed Schipul pretty much sums it all up:"Yes - it IS less convenient. But spammers make everything hell so we need to do this." - Ed Schipul, CEO

What Captcha?

Happy holidays Tendenci users! Before the new year begins we would like you to hear about an update on form captcha. Captcha is an image with a special code in it that appears on web forms in Tendenci and is used to prevent spam. It looks like this:

It can be very pesky to fill out for administrators and users so we have changed it to only show for anonymous users. This update will go live soon so keep those eyelids peeled.

Have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year!

Tendenci Membership Reports Update

We have updated a couple of membership reports recently. Not only do they have the new look and feel now, they also include the total active members. Under the Member Trends on the membership console page, click on Active Members YTD and Active Members YTD by Type, it will bring you to the updated reports. Certainly you have to be an admin to do so.

The active members YTD gives you a good visual of the trend of your membership growth at a glance.

You can also exclude the total active members and take a close look at the new members and renewing members.

This update can be found in the tendenci help file: How Can I View Members Over Time by Month?

Tendenci modifications that are pending financial resources

Good morning Tendenci lovers!  You should be aware of our vapor ware page that contains awesome core ideas for modification to the Tendenci software.

Here you will find lots of good ideas that are pending financial resources. If you are interested in funding in conjunction with another client. Please let us know.

You can email us at support@schipul.com or call at 281.497.6567 ext. 411. Ask for Kim. 

Seasons Greeting from your Team at Schipul.

Tendenci newsletters and Outlook 2007

As some of you now already Outlook 2007 does not read back ground images in newsletters.  Most of you Tendenci users probably have a Tendenci newsletter template that does not look well in Outlook 2007 because of the back ground graphic issue.

Tim Newton the creative director here at Schipul has created a lovely help file that explains how to design newsletters for Outlook 2007.

Check out the help file here:

If you need us to help you change these and make them viewable in 2007, contact support@schipul.com.

RSS feeds can be added to your home page of your Tendenci site

You can now keep the content of your home page fresh by adding RSS feeds to the home page of your Tendenci web site. Give your users/members the latest and greatest information by adding feeds to your home page.

Please content support@schipul.com if you are interested in taking advantage of the functionality. This addition of RSS to the home page only takes a short time but we at Schipul will need to do this for you.

User permissions allow for Admins rights to specific modules

Good news..Now your members/users can be an editor or an administrator of Content Management and Calendar Events Module.

If a user is an editor of Content Management or Calendar events they can make edits to the modules and they are sent to pending approval. An administrator  will get an email when an edit has been made and approve the change before the change goes live.

If a user is an admin of Content Management or Calendar events they can make edits to the module and the changes go live immediately.

This is just one way to give extra control to users while still monitoring content and not opening up complete access for edits to your site.

For more, visit the help files on how to set this up on your site.

 

• Help file for Content Management
• Help file for Calendar Events

User identities to show Online Social Connections

Did you know that from your Tendenci user profile you can add user identities to identify areas of social networks you are connected to?  Encourage your Tendenci users/members to add their identities to display social networks.  This is a great way to see who is socially connected to sites like Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Digg etc.

After have you added your user identities, there will be a visual display of icons on your user profile of identities you have added and are connected to.

I am pushing to integrate blog identities here also. Check back soon.

Tiny Updates for Photos and Comments

Photos and comments received some tiny updates worth mentioning.

You are now finally able to see the number of photos inside of a photo album.
Example: http://www.schipul.com/en/photos/

Comments have user icons next to them so that we can make fun of your mug while we read your comment.  It's the little things that make a difference.
Example: http://www.schipul.com/en/photos/v/132 

New features added in Tendenci (6/15/07)

Some new features have been added and updated in your Tendenci software.  Let us know what you think!

1. Self Registration - User self registration now needs to confirm email address. This will ensure the email addresses users entered are valid when they sign up to your site = increased security for your Web site. Click here for more info.
2. Rating - You are able to rate an article and view the rating results.
3. Favorites - You can add even more content to your Favorites - like articles, directories, jobs, events and more.  A great way to keep track of the best of your site!
4. Top contributors - As an admin, you can search the site top contributors by date time and by modules.
5. Membership multi renewal - Allows an admin to renew multiple members at the same time. For more visit its help here.
6. Ballots - an online voting module. It's a great way for organizations to elect office positions, or vote proposals and issues. For more info on how to start to use the ballot module, visit our help files.

May 18 Tendenci updates - cool new stuff!

We made some updates to your Tendenci software today.  As always, give us a ring with any questions:  (281) 497.6567.  Check these out:

1. Favorites - You can now 'favorite' articles on your Web site for easy access to content you like.  Mark your favorite as public or private, giving different access to site members who view your profile. ~ We will be adding favorites to many more modules within Tendenci - so stay tuned!
   
2. Improved membership search – If you, as a site administrator, are searching for a member (“Jones”) and are unable to find a membership record, Tendenci now looks at the user’s table and displays any records for "Jones" and prompts you to add from the user record.  Ask us for a demo - it will help simplify your life!
   
   
3. New Survey description fields –  New TopCMID and BottomCMID fields have been added to the Surveys module so you can add paragraphs and extra text to surveys.
   
   
4. External registration links on Calendar Events –  Offering registration to organization events other than your own?  Your calendar event pricing pages can now be linked to external  registration pages to keep things clean and simple for your members.

Simplify! Updated dashboard makes your life easier

Next week we'll be pushing out a Tendenci update that will change the look of your Tendenci dashboard.  This simplified interface is streamlining access to your Tendenci modules (like User search and Calendar) and giving you one central link for all new content addition.

Click on the module links like you usually would to access them or simply click on the shiny new 'Add Content' button to add new content to your site.

Here's the real beauty of the update:  You don't have to keep it!

If you prefer the look, feel and functionality of a different dashboard design, you can revert to the old dashboard version by following these Tendenci Help File directions.

Search User Relationships

Also included in yesterday's update is a new search page that allows you to search user relationships.  It includes a checkbox to search for users NOT in a group.  This is helpful to find users that have not subscribed to particular group, like your newsletter.

This item is linked as option D3 on the "Manage Users" page.

Thanks,
J

Prompt to update user profile

We posted a Tendenci update yesterday morning.  Included is a new prompt for users to update their profile if it hasn't been done in the past 90 days.  Here's a screen shot:

Thanks,
J

Updates are done - new functionality

Hey guys -

We finished the latest round of updates late yesterday afternoon.  Time got away from me so I'm just now getting a chance to create this post.

New features:

Collasable Form: So far we've only added this feature to the search pages in articles and users. When you view the page, it looks like normal.  When you enter search criteria and submit the form, the form fields are hidden.  This serves two purposes.  One, it shows an obvious result page, and two, it brings the content up on thep age.  See the Articles module on Schipul for an example, http://www.schipul.com/en/articles/search.asp

Here's a link that shows a submitted search for "marketing" articles.  Notice that the form fields do not display, http://www.schipul.com/en/articles/search.asp?category=&searchcriteria=body&searchtext=marketing&submit=Submit

WYSIWYG editor:  Many of you have noticed that this update includes a new WYSIWYG editor.  I know, you just got used to the other one, right?  Well, this one is a better product, or so they say.  We seem to think so but you'll be the ultimate judge.  More to come on specific details of the new editor in a separate post.

Thanks,
J

New updates are going out!

Hi everyone, Happy Monday!

We are posting new updates as we speak (read).  More details to come...

Thanks,
J

Tendenci updates went out today

Hi guys -

We posted a complete update today.  The biggest change involves CAPTCHA, "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart".  It is now available on the membership applications.  It's also easier to implement on other forms. 

Here's an example of CAPTCHA in use on our Tendenci contact form, http://www.tendenci.com/contact/.  If you're interested in using it on your site, go ahead and complete  the contact form. Be sure to let us know what site and which form you wanted it added to.

Other updates include minor formatting changes to reduce the load on the servers.

Thanks,
J

Catalogs Module now Tracks Shipping

Hey folks,

With the most recent round of Tendenci updates we added functionality to enter shipping information for the order.  Basically what it does is:

• Allows the admin to enter the shipping details of an order (it's status, date shipped, carrier, tracking number, and any additional notes).
  • If the carrier is DHL, FedEx, UPS, or USPS then we build the link to the carriers site to check the status of the shipment
• The shipping information is visible by the user who made the order, and is indicated and linked from the invoice search page, invoice view page, cart search page, and cart order review page

Thanks!
Kathryn

Calendar Event changes for sponsor and offline registrations

Two new updates for the Calendar Events module:

1. Sponsor - if the sponsor field is blank, the user group will be displayed on the event details page.  If the user group and sponsor are both blank, nothing will display.
2. Custom text for offline registration - that block that showed "No [site name] Online Registration for this Event" is now editable on the pricing page in an HTML enabled field called offline registration notice.  It it's blank, the default message will be displayed.

Thanks,
J

Polls module got a face lift!

Just released - the Tendenci Polls module with up to 10 answer options (instead of 5).  We also took the time to clean up the individual pages a bit.  No worries, the existing polls with less than 10 answers still work exactly as they did before. 

Thanks,
J

Latest update includes batch newsletters

Hi everyone!

We posted a Tendenci update this morning that includes a major revision for the newsletters.  It now processes pending newsletters in batches.  No more real-time send.  Why is this good?  It eliminates the web based limitations of session time outs and memory allocation.

How it works:

1. Generate the newsletter as normal
2. After agreeing to step 5, instead of seeing the scrolling list of names the newsletter is sent to you will instead see a message saying
   "Your newsletter has been scheduled to send within 10 minutes. You will receive an email notification when it's done. Please note that it may take several hours to complete the process depending on the size of your group."
3. The server will check for new newsletters to send every 10 minutes - if it finds one, then it will send each email accordingly.
4. Once the emails are sent the creator of the newsletter will receive a confirmation email indicating that everything sent successfully, who it was sent to, and a total count.

Other items to note - when searching for emails you now can more easily filter by status (/en/actions/search.asp):

• Open - still in build and has not yet been finally submitted (has not yet agreed to step 5)
• Submitted - agreed to step 5 and is awaiting being processes
• In Progress - the batch process has begun but is not yet complete
• Closed - the batch process has completed and all emails have been sent
• Cancelled - the email was deleted (cancelled)

New help files will be added soon, http://www.tendenci.com/en/help/.  If you can't find the answers you're looking for there, feel free to call us at 281.497.6567 or email your regular contact.

Thanks,
J

Directories Random Display

The latest update also included a mod for directories.  Some of our clients use "sponsors" and wanted a way to display them on the home page.  We created a display function that pulls directories for a specific category and randomly displays them.  The client can determine how many logos display and how the table should be set up (2 rows, 4 columns, etc).  Contact the Tendenci Production Team to implement this on your site!

Thanks,
J

Calendar Event Daily View got a facelift!

Since the implementation of the new mini calendar, we felt the daily view of the calendar event module was, well, boring.  So we gave it a face lift.  It now includes more details, links, and just looks a lot better!  Just one more reason to start using the mini calendar on your site!  Here's a screen shot.

Thanks,

J

Mini Calendar now available!

The latest Tendenci update includes a mini calendar that gives users a  birdseye view of your events!  Dates with events are highlighted in red.  Users can click on the date to see what is taking place that day.  The smaller version of the calendar fits neatly onto any page design.   

Contact the Tendenci Production Team about adding the mini calendar to your homepage!

Thanks,
J

Course Programs and Credits Released June 2006

Two new Tendenci modules were recently released - Course Programs and Course Credits - both are an extension of the existing Courses Module.

Course Programs
Course Programs allows the admin to designate requirements to complete a certain program or certification such as total credits to complete the program and expiration of the credits.

When adding or editing a course you can designate which program to attach the course to.

Course Credits
Course Credits allows the user to submit for credit for the course, without actually taking the course online.  This works well for credits that need to be captured that don't necessarily lend itself to an online exam such as whether or not the user has attended a seminar.

Thanks!
Kathryn

Tendenci Updates went out 04-May-2006

Tendenci updates went out on 04-May-2006 - the most notable updates:

1. Job Notifications
   • users can now subscribe to notifications for job categories (or just jobs in general).
   • once subscribed they will receive email notifications on jobs that were added since the last notification (the user can define the frequency of the emails, and the category to receive them on)
2. QuickBooks Export of Accounting Entries
   • Tendenci now exports accounting entries in iif format that is compatible with QuickBooks
3. Careers Module
   • users can now track their career history through Tendenci
4. New Reports in Memberships
   • some of these were rolled out some time ago but are worth mentioning
     
     • Pending Memberships
     • Current Member Roster
     • Export by Join/Renew Date
     • Export by Expiration Date

Thanks!
Kathryn

Tendenci software updated 4/25/2006

Tendenci sites were updated with minor revisions throughout all modules on April 25, 2006.

The most noteable change is richer RSS feeds with more content and photos.

Thanks,
J