Clients Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Tendenci Blog | Tendenci

2012-08-302013-06-10

Make Your NonProfit Website a Donor Magnet Part 1

Tendenci websites include all the tools your nonprofit organization needs to create a website that will attract donors, volunteers and members and make it easy for them to get involved.

According to a study published in the NonProfit Trends, 34.8% of last year’s online donations occurred after October, November and December. For most nonprofit organizations, the Holiday Season are when you generate the majority of your annual online revenue from donations, holiday gala fundraisers, and membership renewals coming due.

Is Your Website Ready for the Holiday Rush?

If your nonprofit’s online fundraising isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you aren’t alone. A recent Usability Study of nonprofit websites found that it is 7% harder, on average, for someone to make a donation than it is for them to make an e-commerce purchase.

In this two part blog post, I’m going to share the research on which elements are frustrating and driving away potential donors who come to your site and can’t find what they were looking for. The second post will give you 5 minor changes you can quickly make that will get your website ready well to attract new donors just in time for the holidays.

Nonprofit Site User Experience is Falling Behind

missing and outdated content — Over half of all NonProfit Websites have missing or outdated content.

The usability study, led by noted web usabilty expert Jakob Nielsen, tested common activities that a visitor to a nonprofit website might do and found some surprising results:

Making first-time and repeat monetary donations on nonprofit websites – on average, online donations tooks 7% longer than a typical e-commerce site’s shopping cart check-out. 17% of the nonprofit websites made it extremely difficult for visitors to even find the online donation option.
Donating tangible items like furniture, canned foods, and used clothing online – this received the lowest user experience rating of all the tested activities and in nearly all cases, site visitors went to multiple nonprofit websites before finally finding an organization with clear and complete information on how to go about donating.
Researching how to volunteer online – communicating Volunteer information was the one thing most nonprofit websites are getting right. The study gave this the highest user satisfaction ranking and reported that the one item most nonprofits forget on the volunteer pages is way to contact the organization.
Researching nonprofits on Facebook – the study found that people don’t like to donate on Facebook and that visitors except a nonprofit’s website to have far more content than your Facebook page does. The report explains that potential donors go to a nonprofit’s Facebook page to read the stories of the people who benefit from the nonprofit’s work.

The study showed that over 53% of the nonprofit websites had missing and outdated content and 47% of the websites were not designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. The report states that you could increase your online donations by 10% or more just by making some minor changes to your site’s usability and improving your content.

A 10% increase is almost $14,000 if you fall within the median online revenue earned from first time gifts*.

*The average online revenue earned from first time gifts in 2011 was about $136,625 according to Nonprofit Marketing Guide *

If your nonprofit site is chasing new donors away, this means you’re missing out on thousands of dollars in online donations.

Is Your Website a Donor Magnet?

If your nonprofit organization’s website is one of the roughly 50% that is unknowingly chasing off site visitors, then we’re going to fix that starting right now. You can use the study’s recommended best usability practices with your Tendenci website to give your site visitors a great online experience and increase your donations, memberships, and volunteer applications.

The key is to have content on your site that potential donors are looking for that is easy for visitors to find and tells the visitors how to donate and why they want to donate to your organization.

Crafting the elements within your site that will attract new donors requires time, research, and lots of creativity!

In Part Two of this series, I’ll give you 5 seemingly minor things that you can change on your site that will increase your online fundraising efforts and get you ready for the holiday fundraising rush.

2012-06-062014-11-02

Is Your Fundraising Platform Ready for My Generation?

Last week, I attended SURGE Day 2012, a day-long graduation celebration for 10 new Technology Start-ups that just graduated from the SURGE Accelerator incubator program.

Jason Dorsey, noted author of “My Reality Check Bounced” and expert on communicating across generations, was the morning keynote speaker. Jason shared his advice on how to gain a better perspective on how each of the other generations view the world.

SURGE Day 2012 Energy Technology Startups — Jason Dorsey, Keynote Speaker at SURGE Day 2012

StartUps and NonProfits

I often think that startups and nonprofits have a lot in common. In both cases, the founders are incredibly passionate about their ideas and missions, incredibly overworked, and spend a lot of time asking people to give them money for their organization.

At the heart of both startups and nonprofits, funding and passion are the keys to success.

As Jason talked about the best ways managers and executives in older generations could support and get along with the younger Gen Y crowd, I saw correlations beyond just the workplace.

A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation shared that more than 54% of Gen Y’s are either already entrepreneurs or plan to start their own company and one thing Gen Y definitely has in abundance is passion!

Gen Y’s Spending Power Now and in the Future

On the other hand, most Gen Y’s don’t have an abundance of money – something that’s been true for all generations when they’re still in their 20’s. Gen Y startups often seek outside funding from angel investors and VCs before seeking to bootstrap their ideas. As Jason explained this trait: “Most Gen Y’s are willing to take a substantial paycut just to get their idea off the ground – after all, their parents are still supporting them.”

Gen Y’s Catching Up Fast

Jason Dorsey’s company, The Center for Generational Kinetics has done a number of studies across generations to identify the key traits that distinguish each generation from the others. Gen Y is the fastest growing demographic in the energy, software, and marketplace and by 2017, Gen Y will be outspending Baby Boomers.

Until now, no other generation has matched Boomer spending. Boomer spending accounts for 94% of spending on consumer packaged goods, 80% of luxury travel spending, 62.5% of annual new car sales, and they even account for the majority of online spending according to a report by boomer marketing expert Nancy Padberg

Gen Y is going to have a significant economic impact in the U.S. in the coming years. There are some absolutely great tips on Jason’s blog “What the Gen” about Gen Y’s consumer purchasing habits and I encourage anyone selling something to check out the blog.

Capture Gen Y’s Attention

The key to reaching Gen Y’s to grab their attention and motivate them to spend money with your organization is to communicate with them in their space. Jason Dorsey shared Gen Y’s most preferred ways to communicate:

Gen Y’s most preferred method of communicating is text messaging
Gen Y’s 2^nd most preferred method of communicating is email
Gen Y’s LEAST preferred method of communication is talking on the phone

A really interesting fact about the my generation is that 51% of Gen Y’s are more likely to trust the opinions of a stranger who shares a review on a social media network than if their friends and family verbally make a suggestion. This is a significant difference from other generations, who tend to be more skeptical of the people they run into on the Web.

Generation Y trusts technology more than previous generations, and we trust the people who are using technology the same way that we are more than past generations would. Organizations that recognize this and customize their messages to Gen Y differently from their other constituents and donors will see better results from the next generation.

Here’s 5 Tips to Increase Donations from Gen Y

Schipul Company Christmas Party 2011 at Avant Garden — Capture Gen Y’s Attention and Their Passion for Your NonProfit

Even though NonProfit organizations aren’t specifically selling something, you are asking for money in exchange for the benefits you offer your donors and members. Give your fundraising a boost by using these tips to talk to Gen Y’s in their language this year.

1) Keep Donation Amounts Small and Flexible

Gen Y is cash-poor and we aren’t known to save money typically. A donation of even $50 is daunting to Gen Y’s so offer smaller donation amounts. You can also include a “Suggest a Donation” field and let us decide how much we want to give.

That’s one of the reasons that we included the option to allow your donors to suggest the payment amount on Custom donation forms in Tendenci.

2) Accept Credit Card Donations on Your Website

Most Gen Y’s have credit cards and a debit card. Most of us do not have a check handy and we really aren’t fans of having to pay with cash. Make it simple for us to give you money when we are ready and accept online donations via credit cards. The easier you make it for us to donate, the more likely we are to do so.

3) Share Your NonProfit’s Stories on Social Media

Studies show that people don’t like to go to their Facebook Wall or Twitter feed and see organizations asking them to donate. The most successful social media campaigns for nonprofits revolve around storytelling and sharing what you are doing to make the world a better place. Use your social media channels to highlight the kids you fed, the puppies you rescued, and the people who have a better life now because of your work.

Then, make it easy for them to find your website so they can donate and support your cause. Once they’ve donated, let your Gen Y supporter tweet or +1 or “Like” your organization and share that they donated to their network. Talk about others, and let others talk about you for greater results.

4) Don’t call Gen Y’s – Use Text and Email

Remember Jason Dorsey’s report saying Gen Y’s preferred text messaging, followed by email for communicating and save the personal phone calls for your boomer supporters. You’ll need to get permission before you text and email, and then you’ll have a far better chance of getting your message through to Gen Y’s.

In fact- give them a way to donate via text like Mobile Loaves and Fishes did in their campaign to fight homelessness.

5) Give Gen Y’s Non-Monetary Ways to Donate

Gen Y’s often just don’t have the financial resources to give money to a cause. Many of us are still finding our talents and way in life and if you believe one of your Gen Y supporters has skills that could help your organization, ask them to volunteer. We are always surprised and honored by requests to help and our time is something we usually have more of to give than our cash.

Gen Y’s are also more familiar with technology and can help with your email marketing, website, social media, and with text messaging. NonProfits often struggle to find the resources and funds to manage their technology, so find some Gen Y’s who are passionate about your cause and ask if they’ll donate tech and web support!

Tendenci Announcements

We have some exciting things happening over here. First, come check out this past week’s software updates for Version 5.0.78 and find out the latest features and functionality added to make it easier for you to manage your website.

Here’s the highlights from this week’s updates:

1) Sortable Fields for Reports – Reports now have sort options using the field headers.

2) Tendenci first will check if an email address is associated with an existing user before it creates a username using the available email address during a membership import

3) WYSIWYG Rich Text Editors have been added for Organizer, Location, and Speakers on the Event Add form

New Summer Training and Events

We are adding several new training webinars, workshops, and events to our Tendenci Training Calendar. We are always looking for suggestions so if you don’t see a topic on the calendar, leave a comment below or contact us with your suggestions!

2012-05-182014-11-02

Let’s Switch from Talking About the Elephant in the Room to Motivating the Elephant to Change

Tendenci is Always Changing!

The software technology industry is on constantly changing. Our application developers and programmers for the Tendenci CMS platform are always seeking innovative and more advanced ways to make your websites better for you to use.

Change, in our business, is necessary to stay competitive and provide a valuable product that people want to pay for. We realize that when we make changes with Tendenci, we are making changes in your website.

Change is Hard

This week, I had the opportunity to attend an Inc. Magazine Business Building Breakfast featuring keynote speaker Dan Heath, co-author of Switch. Switch is a book about how to make Change easier for yourself and your organization.

Dan describes the two different systems that control what a person does, like a rider on an elephant:

The “Rider” is Rational, Conscious, Deliberative

The “Elephant” is Emotional, Unconscious, Automatic

Using an analogy from The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt, Switch explains that each of us has these two different systems fighting each other inside – and it isn’t a fair fight. The Elephant in us often is more powerful and much bigger than the Rider.

Whereas your Rider-side may tell you that you need to pay attention in your meeting at work, for example, the elephant-side will be telling you to “keep playing angry birds”.

Dan also points out our Elephant-side also has enormous strengths – our passion, curiosity, and that voice inside our heads that sometimes wonders “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”

Dan wrote the book with his brother, Chip Heath, and they share the 3 surprises about change we need to know before we can lead others to embrace Change joyfully. I am looking forward to reading the book and want to just leap ahead a moment and tell you the 3 surprises of Change that Dan told us in his presentation:

1) Direct the Rider

This is where you determine what it is you want to accomplish and break it down into single, actionable items that you can do as part of a series. Instead of telling your team to go out and raise $100,000 in donations, give them one task that they can do to move towards your fundraising goals like call 10 people from the donor list everyday this week and ask them to donate.

2) Motivate the Elephant

The Elephant in us can be strong-willed and you need to motivate your Elephant towards adopting the change as well. A classic mistake I know I make all the time is thinking that giving people more information will motivate them to change. Dan explained this is not the case and that what motivates people to change, truly, is to See something that makes you Feel something and only then are you motivated to Change. People make changes based on emotions, not reason.

3) Shape the Path

The third part is where you look for ways to make it easier to Change. Give more specific directions, consider the environment and ask yourself and your staff what you can do better to make the path to Change easier. It’s also important to accept that people will fail when they first try something new and we should think more like parents when our child is learning to walk and encourage them to pick themselves up after each stumble.

How Can We Make Change Easier for You?

As I mentioned at the beginning, Tendenci is software and we are always updating it, making changes to the code and your user interface. We want to find out your ideas and suggestions on how we can make managing your website easier for you and your organization’s staff, volunteers, and members.

Our ultimate goal is to make innovative website software that’s really fun to use. Tell us how you’d like to see us change Tendenci.

Change is Fun

We are Updating Tendenci’s Brand Image

The Tendenci blog has been updated with our new colors. If you’ve been by Tendenci.org then you’ll have seen the new logo and we have been sprinkling other content with the new look as we’ve been moving forward – for example Tendenci Admin Navigation menu bars turned blue a couple of weeks ago.

That’s Not All We’re Changing…

We are in the process of redesigning all of our marketing collateral over the next few months, including Tendenci.com, our email newsletter templates, and our social media networks.

Most of these are cosmetic changes to our own website and marketing material and really won’t affect your Tendenci websites and day-to-day workflows.

Some of the changes, like when we changed the Admin Nav menu from maroon to blue, will affect your website. We hope you like the changes and for the most part, we make them based on our clients’ feedback and requests.

You Can Help Make Changes

We are planning on redesigning Tendenci’s Dashboard to provide more useful functionality and access to help files and reporting tools. This is something we’ve planned since early in the development of Tendenci version 5.0.

We are looking for your feedback on how we can make your Tendenci dashboard more useful. Tell us what you’d like to see in your site Dashboard and help us make some changes!

Some Recent Changes to Tendenci

Here are just a few of the changes we’ve made to all Tendenci websites in the past month. You can view all of our weekly updates in Tendenci’s Software Updates articles.

Tendenci weekly software updates will now go out on Tuesdays, instead of Thursdays.
Anonymous site visitors can now apply for corporate memberships without requiring account registration first.
Individual Membership Exports now include Financials on Membership Dues Paid, Balance Owed, and the Invoice ID number.
We’ve made several updates to the memberships module based on your feedback.
Site-wide searches now display active content on your website before expired content.

Really Big Changes We’ve Got Planned This Year

We have big ideas and we’re making big changes to make your experience setting up and using your website better. Here are a few really exciting changes you can expect to see coming to your Tendenci website throughout the year:

We’re going to change how Tendenci manages permissions settings at a People/User- level to make it easier for Site Admins to control and set-up access to site content and settings for your staff, members, and site users.
We’ll be adding new theme options for Tendenci websites to give you additional options to change the design and colors of your website.
We’ll be releasing more plugins that you’ll be able to opt to install on your site like we just did with the Videos plugin.
We’ll be adding additional documentation for Developers, Designers, and Interactive Agencies to support and grow our brand new open source community.

Tell us what you think! Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.

2012-05-072013-06-10

Grow Members and Donors with Photo Albums | Tendenci Feature Focus

A Photograph is Worth a Thousand Words

We’ve all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and this couldn’t be more applicable when we are talking about your nonprofit organization’s website.

Visual storytelling is key to engaging your donors, members, and community online. Last week, I wrote about how to use online video to tell your organization’s story. This week I want to talk about how to use Photographs and Tendenci’s Photo Album module to share your organization’s stories and events and engage with your online audience more effectively.

Photographs Say the Most Awesome Things!

Photos help you share your organization’s stories, people and mission. Your photos also make your website more visually appealing to new visitors. Here are some great ways to use a photograph to say something awesome about your nonprofit and examples of how some of our nonprofit clients are using their Tendenci Photo Album module.

Photos Convey the Human Perspective of Your Mission

Flip through the photos on the Houston Art Car Parade website where they show off their incredible art cars and, more importantly, how the organization introduces you to the people behind the automotive works of art.

Photos Introduce and Promote the People at Your Organization

Your staff, volunteers and Board members do so much and you can show your appreciation using photo albums to showcase their hard work and efforts. You’ll not only make your biggest supporters feel appreciated – you’ll also increase your online donations since studies show that potential Donors are more inclined to give if they can see what your nonprofit’s team is doing relevant to spending donations that effectively advance your mission.

See how the Children’s Assessment Center showcases their volunteers for their Christmas Toy Drive using Photo Albums.

Photos from Your Past Events Increase Registration for Your Upcoming Events

When you post photos from past event that show your members, sponsors, supporters, donors, and staff having a great time – you are showing new site visitors what they have been missing. This will increase attendance at future events.

Check out ThinkLA’s Event Photos as an example of promoting future event registration using past event photos!

Photos Show-Off Your Capabilities

Photos can be used to show what your organization is capable of and what your facilities are like to build trust and increase the chances that a new visitor will become a fan, participant, and donor. For example, Camp For All’s photo tourof their camp facilities shows parents and their children what they can expect during one of their camp programs and this increases both camp registrations plus support from donors.

Photos Bring More Press

The Media needs great visuals for their stories and they love free photos. Create a page on your website and link to your photo albums that are most news-worthy and about your organization’s mission. Tendenci photo albums even include easy copy and paste html code for each photo you upload to an album that allows you to embed the photos in other places on your website. Share the code with your press releases and make it easy for journalists to pick your story and photo.

Miller Outdoor Theatre has a great example of how to make a photo landing page for the Press.

Flip Through Tendenci’s Photo Albums

Come learn about all the features included with Tendenci’s Photos Module in this Video Tour!

Video Training for Tendenci Photos

We also have a 2 Part Video Training Series on how to upload photos to your Tendenci website and edit them to create great looking photo albums on your nonprofit’s website:

Tendenci Photo Album Training Part 1

Tendenci Photo Album Training Part 2

Free Beautiful Stock Photos for NonProfits

We’ve uploaded one hundred gorgeous photographs that you can share and add to your website, free!

Photos Are Great for SEO!

I wanted to leave you with one last reason photo albums rock out your website and that’s search engine optimization. Make sure when you are adding your photos that you use the title, description, and tag fields to boost your rankings and attract new visitors. Learn more about optimizing your photos and other content on your Tendenci website in this great article at The SEM Blog on Optimizing Your Tendenci Website for SEO.

Got Questions and Comments?

Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.

2012-05-012013-06-10

Tendenci Admin Navigation Gets a New Look Plus Learn When to Upgrade Your Website

We’ve been busy little Web Bees the past week and you’ll find a bunch of new features and updates to your Tendenci websites. To highlight a few of our recent updates:

updated custom forms with the ability to simply drag and drop to rearrange your fields
added additional permissions settings to job boards, directories, and memberships
opened up our plugin app manager to give Site Admins the ability to manage and add new plugins. (The first plugin we’ve released for free is our Videos Plugin – Here’s How to Install it!)

Check out all of the latest updates on our Software Updates page, updated weekly.

New Blue Tendenci Admin Navigation Menus!

Last week we surprised our Tendenci Enterprise and Tendenci Community site admins with new Admin Nav Menu colors. Why? We are working to make it easier for our clients to know what version of the software you are using and your feedback was that the blue was a better color for your websites than the previous red color.

What Does it Mean?

If your Top Bar Admin Nav Menu is a solid dark blue and looks like this:

… then you are on the Tendenci Enterprise version of our software. Tendenci Enterprise websites have a custom theme and your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.

If you have a light blue admin bar that looks like this:

… then you are on the Tendenci Community version of our software. Tendenci Community websites are virtually identical to Tendenci Enterprise in their software codebase. The primary difference is that Tendenci Community websites use a template theme instead of a custom theme. Your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by us.

If you do not have a top bar Admin menu at all, and when you login you see a dashboard that looks like this:

… then you are on our previous version of Tendenci (Tendenci 4.0). We released the newest version of Tendenci (Tendenci 5.0) about 18 months ago and we recommend you begin planning to migrate your Tendenci 4.0 website as soon as possible. We’ve talked about this before in other blog posts and we 100% understand that costs and other factors make the migration a challenge for some of our clients.

To help you with your decision of when to migrate and how to budget for it, we’re offering a free report with personalized details about the costs and timeline involved with migration for your website and organization. We’ll also include free recommendations on ways you can improve your web marketing now with your current website.

You can learn more about the process of upgrading your website CMS to the latest software version in the recent news article: Tendenci Offers Free Report to Help Answer the Question “Is It Time to Update Your Website?.

What New Changes are on the Horizon?

Great question! We are always looking at ways to add new features, more functionality, and improve the user accessibility of our Tendenci CMS. Here are just a few of the awesome updates our programming team has planned this summer to make Tendenci work better for you:

Easier application process for your site visitors applying to become Corporate Members
Updates to Custom Forms to make this module even more versatile
Increased Functionality for Tendenci Community to auto-complete site settings during creation based on sign-up information
More ways to manage and organize online invoices and payments made through your Tendenci website payment gateway
More Print and Export to PDF options for content on the site like Pages and Membership applications

Want Something Not on the List?

Our products are customer-driven and we keep a priority queue for development based entirely on the features and modules with the most client requests. Send us your feature suggestions and help us make Tendenci the perfect CMS platform for your organization’s website!

Questions and Comments?

We love to hear from you so please leave your comments below or contact us with your questions!

For our Tendenci 4 clients: I encourage you to complete our Is It Time to Migrate? form if you are wondering whether or not you can afford to upgrade your website or should start setting aside the budget for a new website soon.

Come check out our latest Training Videos on Tendenci’s Memberships Module, Corporate Memberships, and Tendenci Community set-up.

2012-04-032014-11-02

To Our Clients: We Love You! (And with Open Source We Love You More!)

To our Tendenci clients –

Today, we released the Tendenci CMS open source (view the Tendenci GitHub Repository here). Tendenci CMS, or Content Management System, is the software that powers your website. We value you, and all our clients, tremendously and want to make sure we reach out to answer some questions you may have about this announcement and how it affects you.

What Does “Open Source” Mean?

Open Source means that the Tendenci code will be available from Schipul for anyone to download and install on a server to create a Tendenci website. The code is free, but it does require a specific hosting environment and programming knowledge to deploy a site. Open Source also means that other developers outside of our programming team can contribute to the code – build plugins, make changes to the interface, etc. The Tendenci “committers” (lead programmers) will remain gatekeepers of the core code, and incorporate the work of these outside developers as we see the benefit to clients.

What Does Open Source Tendenci Mean for Current Tendenci Clients?

In the short term, you probably won’t notice a difference. Your hosting won’t change, your cost won’t change, and your site won’t appear or operate differently.

Long term – The goal in going open source is to develop a larger ecosystem of developers who can update, add on to, and create websites with Tendenci (outside of the Schipul team). For you, this means more features available in Tendenci that aren’t currently, and the ability to customize your site to your specific needs. This also means that if you decide to, you can host your website internally or have another developer host or make updates to your website without Schipul’s involvement. We will do our best to keep our pricing competitive and maintain excellent customer service to continue providing the most value to those hosting with us.

What About Tendenci 4.0 Websites?

If your dashboard looks like the screenshot to the right, your website is currently powered by Tendenci 4.0 – the previous version of the Tendenci software, written in the programming language .ASP.

Since 2009 we have been rewriting Tendenci – Tendenci 5.0 – in the programming language Python, a more advanced programming language that gives us greater flexibility.

All Tendenci 4.0 clients have the same set of modules and features. In the past if a client requested a custom feature, we had to either find a way to roll it out to all client sites, or say no. Several features (for instance a searchable database of Attorneys) are not applicable to all clients, but exist on every Tendenci 4.0 site. The latest version of Tendenci works in a different way. Tendenci 5.0 has a Core that include pages, forms, users, events, etc. that apply to virtually all clients. From there we install additional features that are custom to each client using Plugins. For instance, a client may want a Staff module, Video Gallery, or Locations Module depending on the organization’s needs. Things like workflow, interface, and design can be custom to your organization.

Tendenci 5 is the version of Tendenci that we will be taking Open Source.

I Have a Tendenci 4 Site. Should I Upgrade to Tendenci 5?

Web technology changes frequently. We recommend clients consider revamping their website about every 5 years – so you are utilizing the latest technology and your website reflects your brand in the most current light. That being said, upgrading a website is a process and represents a cost, so for some organizations we understand that budget constraints mean a website redesign may not be at the top of your priority list. We aren’t going to stop supporting Tendenci 4, yet long term all of our clients will need to upgrade to keep up with the latest technology. We hope that the additional features of Tendenci 5 & the lower hosting cost as a result of new efficiencies is compelling to upgrade.

The caveat here is that while Tendenci 5 is far advanced beyond Tendenci 4.0 in many ways, there are specific features that are not yet available in Tendenci 5. For a list of Modules that have changed in the new version, visit this help file.

If you are interested in learning more about upgrading to Tendenci 5, please contact our Business Development team at 281.497.6567 ext 700

How Can I Learn More About Tendenci Open Source?

The details of Tendenci Open Source CMS are available at tendenci.org.

Also follow us online to keep up to date with the latest Tendenci Open Source details:

Twitter – @Tendenci
Facebook – facebook.com/tendenci
The Tendenci Blog – blog.tendenci.com

Additional Questions, Comments, Concerns, etc. please don’t hesitate to email us at opensource @ tendenci.org, or post them in the comments below.

Thank you for being a client!

2012-01-202013-06-10

Tendenci Updates January 19th, 2012

Maintenance Announcement | Planned Website Outage to Upgrade Your Tendenci Database

Sunday January 22nd, 2011 Between 1:00AM and 2:00AM CST:

Some Tendenci Sites will experience a 10 to 15min downtime early this Sunday morning while we upgrade Tendenci 5.0 MySQL Database on client websites. Please contact us at support@tendenci.com if you have any questions.

Check out all of our awesome updates this week on your Tendenci software for association website management!

This update is so big that you might have to clear and refresh your web browser before you can see the changes on your Tendenci website. We’ve got a great help file from the Schipul website on how to clear your web browser for you: https://www.tendenci.com/help-files/how-clear-or-bypass-your-browser-cache-5-seconds/.

Our biggest update this week is our addition of the physical location application – enabling your site visitors to search for the nearest physical location of your organization on your website!

Global Settings and Content Management

Searches using the Global Search or File Search now include results from PDF documents stored on your website
The Directory “Add” link is now visible by anyone with a login account on your website
You now have the option to preset tags when adding a story via query string
Updated the stories search page to be translation compatible

Custom Forms Module Updates

Increased Custom Form titles from 50 characters to now allow 100 characters for titles

Membership Module Updates

You can now paginate through subscribers on the group page
Graceful degrading when associating a subscriber with an existing account during import.

Physical Locations Module Added to Tendenci 5.0!

Tendenci 5.0 now has the physical locations module
Site visitors can search your locations by distance located at, all locations, or nearest location
Find the “location” application on your Tendenci admin bar to add, edit, and manage your physical locations
When a location is added or edited, the latitude and longitude are auto-saved

Tendenci Template and Design Updates

All new Tendenci sites now include a default custom contact form
Updated styles for Tendenci tabs
Created Modal style updates for spaces and logo edit forms

Tendenci Email Newsletter Marketing Dashboard

Your Campaign Monitor subscriber lists now automatically sync when subscribers are imported into a group

Click Here to learn how to improve your email marketing using Tendenci’s Newsletter Marketing Dashboard integrated with Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software and find other resources for email marketing success!

Not using Tendenci for your website CMS?

Find out all the awesome things Tendenci can do for your Association with our 30-Day FREE Trial. Then – show us what you can do with your Tendenci website!

Questions about these Updates?

Hit us up in the comments or over on Get Satisfaction and try out our newest self sign-up version of the Tendenci Software FREE for 30 days!

2012-01-142013-06-10

Tendenci Updates January 12th, 2012

We made some new updates to our Tendenci software for association website management this week.

Check out all the awesome things Tendenci can do for your Association with our 30-Day FREE Trial. Then – show us what you can do with your Tendenci website!

Global Settings and Content Management

Added Payment Method as a Field Label on custom forms.
Added Two new search filters for user profile search, allowing administrators to search users to view all users with a specific level of permissions and view all users capped at a specific level of permissions.
Updated some of the base template code to prevent page display errors when admins forget to upload media to custom page templates.

Membership Module Updates

Updated the corporate membership module to allow more design option in custom template designs for corporate memberships.
Updated membership entry approval email that goes to administrators with more links to the membership applicant data.
Added more information on corporate membership renewal notification.
Improved credit card payment verification process for corporate memberships.
All memberships now require a membership type at the database level to ensure content validity.
Moved the Corporate Memberships Tendenci Navigation Tab to the Membership Entry Application Page, replacing the News Tab.
Administrators will now see the Total Number of Memberships when they search Membership Entries.
Added a balance to membership entries, which links to the member’s invoice. This will help administrators better manage their association’s finances and account receivables.

Career Management Module Updates

Updated the Jobs Module to prevent duplicate URL slugs from new job postings that are very similar to previous job postings.
Improved indexing for the Jobs Module to increase relevancy of Job Board search results.
Add two new search filters for jobs search to allow you to search job postings by their Category and Subcategory.

Tendenci Self Sign-Up Trial Updates

Added a new email notification that will send trial/self sign-up customers an email notification 1 week prior to their trial expiration period to inform them their trial period is ending.
Currently – trial/self sign-up customers will not have their site disabled when their 30-day trial is over. We will receive a notice and send them an email the day their site has expired and will update them when the Beta testing has ended at least 2 weeks before we would disable their trial website.

Tendenci Email Newsletter Marketing Dashboard

Questions about these Updates?

Hit us up in the comments or over on Get Satisfaction and try out our newest self sign-up version of the Tendenci Software FREE for 30 days!

2011-12-202011-12-20

Heads Up – Some Tendenci Sites Are Having Content Display Issues

UPDATE: All Tendenci Sites are Back to Normal – Content is Displaying Correctly

As of 12:45 PM Central, Tendenci sites are displaying all current content once again. If you have any questions, please contact our Support team at support@tendenci.com or call 281-497-6567 ext 411.

Don’t Worry – Your Site Will Return to Normal Before Lunchtime

Newer Tendenci websites are hosted with Amazon Web Services and last night, Amazon updated their servers. As a result, our index servers did not successfully come back online last night.

What This Means to You

Your website may not show current information and in some cases, you may not see recently added content when you log on to your website this morning.

No Data is Missing

Your data is safe and sound in the database, it may not be displaying correctly on your website.

We are restarting the production index servers and your website is re-indexing as I write this.

Our estimated timeline for all Tendenci websites to be back to normal is approximately 2 hours.

If you have any questions or concerns about something – please contact our Support team at support@tendenci.com or call 281-497-6567 ext 411.

2011-11-222013-06-10

Find Answers Faster with Tendenci’s New Support Menu

The next time you are looking for support for your website – Look Up. We moved the support menu from your website footer up to the admin navigation bar that sits at the top of each page of your website. The new Support drop down menu lists all the helpful links you need to learn to use your website, contact our Support team when you have a problem, search our Help Files, and make a payment.

What is This Tendenci Guide?

We also added a new Support tool to the menu – a Tendenci Guide. This walk-through tutorial shows you how to use the different features and tools included with your Tendenci online membership management software. This nifty guide is a mini-version of your website and is designed to quickly and easily show you how to add new pages and articles, update your home page, create photo albums and more with your association’s Tendenci website.

Easily Update Your Home Page Content!

Find Tips that Will Drive New Visitors and Revenue to Your Website!

Looking for More Tendenci Training and Support Resources?

We will be continuing to add new tips and pages to the guide and would love your help. Send us your questions and suggestions on what You would like included in the Getting Started Guide. You can also come search our Tendenci Help Files for additional help and join our newsletter to receive updates on Tendenci Training, software changes, and web marketing tips to grow your nonprofit or professional association’s membership community directly in your email box.