Wild Apricot Blog : Wild Apricot Updates


	This blog is for volunteers, webmasters and administrators of associations, clubs, charities, communities and other groups. We discuss issues and trends in modern web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. This blog is sponsored by Wild Apricot membership software: a set of tools for membership administration, event registration, website management, online fundraising - with friendly and knowledgeable tech support. See for yourself how affordable and easy it is to use: - Take a tour!

Wild Apricot Updates - June 2008

On June 26th, we released our regular update — Wild Apricot version 2.34.

The biggest enhancement is what we refer to as the Integrated credit card payment option — yes, we have been working on that one for a while!

PayPal is still the payment processor, but now people will be able to pay right on our servers without having to go through PayPal's website. We're excited to be able to offer you a way to circumvent the PayPal site, as many of you have encountered problems and glitches in that process. See Setting up payment options and Payments by credit cards and PayPal.

Note that Paypal requires a special service option to use this, called WebSitePaymentsPro (US). This option does not fully support recurring payments yet.

The good news is that with all the preparatory work for this payment option, we have also made it much easier to add new payment options in the future. In fact, we plan to add Authorize.Net as a payment option soon. We also plan to roll out recurring payment capability for the integrated credit card payment - once PayPal finalizes it.

Email notifications about forum updates. Your members can now subscribe to receive daily or weekly email notifications from a particular topic in the forum — or from the whole forum. See Forum subscriptions by email.

Print version for webpages. You can now properly print Wild Apricot webpages (administration or public/member pages). See Printing Web Pages.

Firefox 3 compatibility. We have revised Wild Apricot code to be compatible with the newest Firefox version 3.0.

Self-service to change Membership level. Prior to this release, members could only upgrade from a free to paid membership. Now members can change from any level to any other level subject to administrator settings. See Member — renew or change level.

Predefined search fields in Member Directory. You can now preset search fields in Member directory page Advanced search mode. See Member directory, Advanced search settings section.

Advanced search by renewal date. You can now search by last renewal date and last level changed date.

Membership level descriptions. You can now add descriptions to each membership level — these are shown on the level selection pages.

There were many other improvements and bug fixes included, so we are quite excited to bring you this update! For more details, see Release history.

Wild Apricot Roadmap and Crowdsourcing

Since the Wild Apricot Roadmap was published in mid-May, we have been receiving a steady inflow of comments and votes. We really appreciate that, and as we wrap up things already in the pipeline, we will start moving on the top-voted items (batching them by functional area).

On another note, huge thanks to everyone who filled out our June client survey. We had excellent response — over 12% of our clients took time to provide feedback. I have personally studied each response and replied to every person. Now our whole team is reviewing and using your comments to adjust our business processes and development priorities to serve you better.

Your ongoing feedback is the key factor in our development priorities (a.k.a. "crowdsourcing" — using the "wisdom of crowds" to help shape Wild Apricot's future). Please keep it coming!

See our online discussion forums: Wishlist (candidates for future enhancements) and Roadmap (things that have been selected for future development and, based on your comments and votes, are placed into detailed analysis, design and development pipeline).

Coming up next

Wild Apricot's next update is scheduled for early August. Here's what we've got planned:

Initiate work on a proper invoicing / payment workflow, starting with membership applications
Website menu/page management function to make it easier to move pages around — and to prepare for adding horizontal menu options
Revising HTML code of many functional pages to make them easier to customize
Authorize.Net payment option
Forum categories
Multiple member applications pages so that you can create a separate page for sponsor applications, another one for students and so on.

We also have lots of plans and ideas based on your input on our Roadmap and client survey — so we have already started thinking about the next few releases.

Published Thursday, June 26, 2008 7:18 PM by Chief_Apricot

Filed under: Non-profit technology, Wild Apricot, nptech

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Comments

	Reg said: Where can i find and tracking information on what is planned for upcoming releases? July 4, 2008 9:40 PM
	Chief_Apricot said: We do not publish specific plan of upcoming releases as it changes often based on the feedback we receive and usage patterns we observe. Overall, check out this: http://www.wildapricot.com/forums/22/ShowForum.aspx July 4, 2008 10:06 PM
	HippoTraining said: Fantastic updates. Thank you very much. July 8, 2008 10:02 PM

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We write on web technology and social media tools for non-profits - charities, associations, clubs and other organizations

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You will also see occasional posts about Wild Apricot product but we strive to be unbiased and helpful and focus on broader issues of interest to member-based, charitable and community organizations - so they can use web technology more efficiently.

About me - 'Curious Apricot'

I'm Rebecca Leaman, and it's my pleasure to join the Wild Apricot blog team in exploring how to use the internet and web 2.0 tools more effectively. Currently I am the primary blog writer. I work with Bonasource's Wild Apricot marketing team.

Please feel free to contribute non-profit technology tips and ideas by commenting on blog entries.