CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

[If this has been answered elsewhere, please shoot me a link.  I spent over two hours reading and playing around and testing before posting this...]

Our high school parent-teacher group would like to electronically collect information to create a printed student telephone directory.  Info example:  Student's Name, Address, Phone #, Grade, Parent/guardian name(s), E-mail address

I thought of using a Google Docs form/spreadsheet, but that has the major disadvantage of being a very limited functionality data collector -- users can resubmit the form, but there is no way for them to edit their info at some future time (meaning that we'd have to sort records by student name and form submission timestamp, remove duplicates and resolve conflicting info -- about 2,000 entries to process).

Professional applications like QuickBase would work (I think) -- but we would incur a yearly fee.  We're not an especially affluent group, unfortunately.  So, perhaps I can put my computer science degrees to good use...

Here's what I was thinking (please ignore and tell me your idea if you have a better way):

--Install CiviCRM, either standalone or in conjunction w/ Joomla or Drupal.  [I have already installed Joomla and Drupal on my Go Daddy host to play with.]

--Allow parents to create an account for each student (or, if easy to set up, a family account that handles multiple students).

--After some cutoff date, we could then dump the database to an Excel spreadsheet and print the directory.

Am I dreaming, or is this something that CiviCRM can help me do?  I was hoping that a CiviCRM expert could weigh in before I jump right in... 

Thank you!

     Mike

Thanks, lobo.  Will the standalone do me, or do I need a CMS?  I just installed the standalone and will play w/ it tomorrow. 

From what I read, I expected setting civiCRM up on Go Daddy (aka GoDaddy) to be very difficult.  It was a piece of cake.  I think I'll add a FAQ to the forum.

Thanks again.  I played w/ the standalone a bit today to get an idea of how to make  things work.  I'll now blow away my test Drupal and civiCRM standalone installations and start over from scratch w/ a clean Drupal and civiCRM for Drupal install....

I searched everywhere for a basic dummies guide ("How to get started post-install").  Is there a doc or screencast that walks the novice user through a simple setup like the one I'm contemplating?  All I found were individual pieces of documentation, non-techie 20,000 foot views, and examples of completed systems (e.g. Amnesty Int'l).  If no such doc exists, I'll take some notes and make one.