Installation, documentation and tips

How it works? ///////////////////

This module showing on groups page will allow a project holder to create a group in Jomsocial or Groupjive, to set a goal amount for funds to reach and a time table in days to reach the goal amount. The module will then display on the group (project) page: charts for funding completion and a time countdown. It also shows a simple one field form to let visitors donate UserPoints to the project and latest donation and best donators tabs and pie charts.

When time is over and funding period is finished:

• If amount goal is reached , project is successfull and group's points are forwarded to the group owner's points account (minus a percentage fee).
• If required amount is not reached, project fails, every donators get their Userpoints refunded and project will be unpublished automatically after few days

This is basiacally how it works, but keep on reading to find out all the great options and features we provide.

Requirements:

1. Joomla 2.5 or 3 
2. Jomsocial with groups enabled or Community Builder and Groupjive
3. AlphaUserPoints for the insite virtual currency

Recommended:

• 'Buy points with Paypal' rule for AUP to allow members to get credits (commercial software: $20.00)
• Userpoints2Paypal module for AUP to allow successfull project holders to withdraw funds (Commercial software: 9,00€)

 

Inside the Groups Crowdfunding Suite package:

1. mod_groups_crowdfunding.zip
   This is the main module to show on groups pages and to turn groups into Crowdfunding projects.
2. mod_activeprojects.zip
   This module is to promote projects on other pages, You can show instances of it on the same page to use its various sorting options.
3. AUP rules to be installed via the AUP rule installer of AlphaUserPoints component. This relues manage the virtual currency transactions between donators, group(project) and group owner.

 

Screenshots /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 

Installation and options /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Install mod_groups_crowdfunding.zip just like any other module, using the regular Joomla installer. Open its parameters page, enable it and set it to your groups pages menu item. It will only show on group pages (and not on groups categories). If you use Jomsocial, the recommended module position would be js_groups_side_top. 

Let's now see the options.
We will only mention here the options that are not self explanatory

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Module parameters explained

Basic Options

- Category Filter: this lets you decide if the Crowdfunding module should appear on every or only some group categories. You can include or exclude categories IDs

- Ratio: Our crowdfunding suite uses AlphaUserPoints as a virtual currency for transactions between donators and projects owners. Value for one point. For eg: 1 means 1 points are required for one euro or one dollar etc...

- Points Name: The way you call your points. Default: Points...

- Currency symbol position: Before or after the amount ($3 or 10€)

- Fee Percentage: Set here a percentage for the fee site admin will get when a project creator will earn the successfull project points amount.

- Alternative Fee Percentage: You can set if required, a different fee percentage on some categories listed in the next fiel, coma separated. You can have some projects gategories where the site will take 5% on succesffull funds

- Alt Fee on Featured: (Jomsocial only) Apply alternative fee to succcessfull projects if group is featured

- Minimum and Maximum Goal Allowed: Project holder will decide what funds are required for the project, but you can set here a range of allowable amounts

- Date format:  Default is d/m/Y H:1:s . you can customize the date format with the help of this page: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php. This parameter doesn't affect the count down, only the display of project start, project end and donation dates.

- Unpublish After success: When project time is over and successfull, how many days before it is automatically unpublished. Default is 60. Leave empty or zero to keep published

- Unpublish After failure: When project time is over and failed, how many days before it is automatically unpublished. Default is 3. Leave empty or zero to keep published

- Jomsocial Activity Stream: The module can announce new projects, donations and project success in the stream.

Paging options

-  H tags: This module uses a mootools accordion to display the different tabs (Project info, latest donations, best donators, donation form etc..) Depending on your Joomla/Jomsocial template, you'll like the accordion toggler to be a h2 or h3 tag.

- Show time countdown: Show a javascript time countdown till project time over. The background of the counter is a Chart from the google chart API, that shows graphically how much time is left before project is over. The Google chart color will evolve according to the time left. It will start from blue the go green, yelow orange and red.

- Show Funds chart: Charts are managed by the Google charts API. We allo 2 charts types: Classic Pie chart and GoogleOmeter.

- Show BUY Points button: This shows a link from the donation form, to purchase AUP points if the user needs some. It is crucial that you fill in the correct Item ID below for that page, for the link and the 'Buy Points' form to work properly.

- Show Latest Donations: Show a tab in the accordion with latest donations.

- Show Best contributors: show a pie chart and a table with best contributors (still as an accordion tab).

- Show donation form: This tab is also part of the accordion, but never closes. It's set to always be visible. This shows the donation form and processes the forms results. That means you can duplicate the module and only enable some parts at different module positions, but you must have at least 1 and only 1 occurance of this module with 'Show donation form enabled.

Notifications

- Projects RSS: a file with latest submitted projects is located at : joomlaroot/media/latestprojects.rss . You are responsible for displaying the RSS anywhere you want. But it will not show on module.

- Project donations RSS: For every projects, a latest donations RSS feed will be generated. This is triggered at first donation and updated each time a donation is made. If you do not want to use this, set it to zero or empty. Feed path is media,projects_rss,[groupID].rss. RSS Icon will show in the latest donations tab table if enabled.

- Notification emails options for: donations, project success, project failure to nobody, project creator, site admin, group members, donators, Facebook wall, Email2Twitter service.

- Finalize Reminder: The Crowdfunding project creation is in 2 steps: regular group creation via Jomsocial or Groupjive and then viewing the group page, group owner must fillin project amount and delay. If for a reason a user creates a group and stops without finalizing filling amount required and delay, you can enable the this reminder to make every visitor of the non finalized project group page send creator an automatic email to remind him to finish the project page. (1 email per day per user, using a 1day cookie).

Share

Basic share features including Twitter, Google Buzz and PlusOne,  LinkedIn share and Facebook Like iframe or XFBML(recommended) and Tinyurl short url service (Server's file_get_content php setting must be enabled).

Advanced

Check Database: This checks if your database has been mofified correctly to use the groups crowdfunding feaure. As soon as you have had at least one project running, you can disable this to slightly improve performance.

 

 

AUP Rules /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This module comes with 3 AlphaUserPoints XML rules. They must be installed and enabled in the AUP component via the AUP rules manger/installer! AlphaUserPoints component MUST be installed, setup and running for the groups Crowdfunding module to work.

These rules manage to:

• deduct points from donator's account when crediting the project (group) account
• withdraw the project account funds to project creator's account when project is successfull
• refund donators when project fails when time over.

 

Usefull hack /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

One little problem remains: if a project owner deletes the group, donators loose their donations and won't be refunded. We need to prevent project owner from deleting own group. This can be done by hiding the button to group owner:

- In Jomsocial, open  your jomsocial template's groups.viewgroup.php and look for:
class="group-delete"
and make sure the condition before is not 
if( $isCommunityAdmin || ($isMine))
anymore but
if( $isCommunityAdmin )
only!

- in Groupjive
//// to do