Create a Dolibarr local community

This page is a guide line to help local user groups to build their own community around Dolibarr project.

= Things required to start = All following things are required to start to manage a local Dolibarr users' group or community. Please do all of this, in same order than provided here. If you want to work into an international project, you must also accept rules, and this order is one of this stupid rule (but not so stupid for us):

Prerequisites
0) Check a community for the couple (country/language) you plan to create does not already exists. If it does, try to join the existing community instead.

1) You must be a local foundation, or group of friends knowing open source softwares, or a local company, speaking english to be able to exchange with international foundation.

2) Ask an account onto this wiki (ask to contact@dolibarr.org providing your login, lastname, firstname and email). Then login to create a page specific with page name that is your personal name (firstname lastname, not your company or foundation name).

For this, once login on this wiki, go on page Firstname Lastname and change URL with your own firstname and lastname, and click on button "Create" after submitting new URL. Then, you can make a copy and paste of content of page Firstname Lastname and replace content with your own personal information. Fill paragraph "Other information / Autres informations / Otra información" to tell what you did or plan to do for Dolibarr. The goal of this is to have a card inside this wiki whose goal is to provide information on all Dolibarr actors. It's also the first time you provide structured and public information to main Dolibarr team (the Dolibarr foundation board team) to let us know you exists.

Also, submit a photo of yourself as a png file from a file that must be named "Firstname Lastname.png" (submit link is link "Upload file" on left menu of this wiki).

(Note: if you receive an antispam message about your web url, add a space between your hostname and first level domain name).

3) If you are a company or a foundation using Dolibarr: Add your company name to the following pages List of Dolibarr users

(Note: if you receive an antispam message about your web url, add a space between your hostname and first level domain name).

4) If you are a company: Add your name into the category "Other partners" for your country (or into category Preferred Partners if you are already a Preferred Partner), on the page: List of Dolibarr partners and providers (send a mail to contact@dolibarr.org if page for your country does not exists).

5) Check translation for the language of your country is completed and accurate. If not, this is the next step to work on. See page Translator documentation to know how to fix/submit Dolibarr translation language files).

6) Next step is to check the default setup provided by last version of Dolibarr is complete for your country (list of vat rates, list of states). If not, send us SQL requests to have setup complete into Dolibarr sources installer (See all files into htdocs\install\mysql\data, complete them for your country and send modified files to contact@dolibarr.org).

7) Take a look at the wikipedia project for your language. If no page exists for Dolibarr project, try to add it. Just cut, paste and translate content of english page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolibarr) into a new page of wikipedia for your language. If a page already exists, try to complete content to match english page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolibarr) and fix typo/translation errors.

Create the community portal
Once all prerequisites are ok, first step is to create a portal for the couple country/language you plan to animate.

1) Create a portal with a CMS

Now, you can create a dedicated web site for your country called the "Dolibarr XXX portal" where XXX is your country. You can use tool of your choice for that. We recommend however Joomla as it is CMS used for other existing Dolibarr portals. This might be an important work. Also, if using Joomla, you will be able to reuse the same template than dolibarr.org portal. Joomla template for Joomla 1.5.* is available into GIT repository: (into dir "joomla").

2) Use a logo that show your country

The logo used on your web portal must match the logo found on dolibarr.org except it must includes the name of the country/community under it. For example, for France, logo should contains France under it, like found into http://www.dolibarr.fr Having a logo showing "Dolibarr TheCountry", is a way to say customer it's not another different project with same name, but the same, just declined for "TheCountry". However, it's not enough, and experience shows that web site that does not comply with dolibarr.org skin, are just web sites discarded by users, journalists, and rest of community. See next chapter to solve this. Also, the Dolibarr foundation will NOT pay for Google adwords campaigns to promote your web site if it uses a too different logo (just because we know this is against productive for you and project).

3) Put flags to other communities

Put on top of your "Dolibarr XXX portal", a link with flags to others majors communities (for the moment, link to international web site http://www.dolibarr.org, french portal http://www.dolibarr.fr and spanish portal http://www.dolibarr.es). Links must appears on TOP of Home page and be visible by visitor with no need to move and scrollbar. If main links are at bottom, of you page, just add visible flags at top. Also, the Dolibarr foundation will NOT pay for Google adwords campaigns to promote your web site if this rule is not applied (today users trust only international solution, and we know that not doing this is a a marketing error making everybody waste its time).

4) Your portal MUST provide a demo area.

40% of visitors coming home page goes then onto the demo link. So you MUST have a link to a demo. If you don't plan to provide it, just link to http://demo.dolibarr.org.

If you offer a commercial hosting solution with possible demo, you must show, onto same page, both links to your commercial solution and link to a free shared online demo http://demo.dolibarr.org if you don't have yours). Also links to your commercial solution must point to another page than the demo page and prices must appears only on this second page, not on main demo page. Just take a look at page used on dolibarr.org to see how it must be: http://www.dolibarr.org/onlinedemo Goal is to keep a separation between OpenSource project and commercial offers. Don't think this rule will slow down your business, our experience show it is the opposite. Users don't trusts a project that start to show prices (they just do not enter into demo. Trust us, everybody wins to match this rule). Also, the Dolibarr foundation will NOT pay for Google AdWords campaigns to promote your web site if this rule is not applied (just because we know a portal without a demo link or with a too important "commercial look" is a waste of time).

5) Your portal SHOULD share a common look

Having too many different Dolibarr, with different looks create a threat for customers, thinking your web site is a "parallel" different project. So try to avoid this, it deserve your goal and users will not trust your web site. So try to keep same skin (colors) and same entries into horizontal menu than dolibarr.org. Also, the Dolibarr foundation MAY not pay for Google AdWords campaigns to promote your web site if it uses a too different look. The foundation board will decide if look is enough compliant or not to found Google AdWords campaigns using the Dolibarr foundation.

6) Put links to social networks

If you don't plan to animate a dedicated social networks, add, on front page of your portal web site, links to official (english) Dolibarr social Networks. You will find list of links on page FAQ How to be informed on news about Dolibarr project ?. Using a box "Social Networks" like the one found on http://www.dolibarr.org is a good thing. If you want to animate your own local social Networks, you can replace international links with yours, but try to always keep a link at least for "Facebook", "Twitter" and "Google+" (use links for english social networks available onto dolibarr.org if you don't cover them for your language).

Some countries may need to use other social networks than occidental one (like China with Weibo or QQ).

The Dolibarr foundation will also edit the dolibarr.org portal to add link of your web site into "local communities" box.

But if you create/animate your own social networks, you must check that you are not the only owner of social network. Goal is to be sure that the network the community invest on, will not be lost if someting happen to you (we don't hope so, but we must be secured). For Facebook, Google+ you can add the account of a member of the Dolibarr board team (http://wiki.dolibarr.org/index.php/Office_and_Board_Members#Members_of_Board). For other social Networks, you can create an account for us too and send us credential.

7) Your portal MUST provide a forum or link to external forum

If you don't plan to animate a dedicated forum (it is better having no forum than having a forum you don't answer), you must add a link to another existing forum:
 * If a forum exists for your language animated by a community of another country, add a link to this one.
 * If no forum exists on other portal for your language, add a link to official (english) Dolibarr forum (http://dolibarr.org/forum) with text "Forum (english only)".

8) Include the foundation Google Analytics tag

Add a google analytics tag into all of your portal pages. Then add the dolibarr foundation email (assodolibarr@gmail.com) to be allowed to have read only access on Google analytics views or setup your Google analytics to send monthly reports to the foundation Google analytics account (assodolibarr@gmail.com). Note: To share a readonly access to statistics of a site, go onto home statistics page of this site into google analytics, then click onto the link "Admin" on top bar on the left. Then click on tab "Users" and add assodolibarr@gmail.com as a new user.

Let us know by email to contact@dolibarr.org at which step you are (Note: sending us email more frequently to show us where you are is better). We will check your online site, and if the foundation owns the TLD domain dolibarr.xx for your country, we will make (if all previous steps are ok) a redirected for the domain name to your web site. If domain name for your country is not owned by foundation yet, you can buy it by yourself. If domain is already owned by someone else, the foundation can provide you a domain like xxx.dolibarr.org with xx as your country code.

= Animate your community =

Once all previous steps are done, you are then free to animate your community like you want.

Do all actions you want to do in the way you want. This is some ideas : => This is the most efficient way to promote Dolibarr !! Because then, you will get Open Source technical guys that will promote it for you. For social networks animation, we recommend to use Hootsuite to publish to all social networks at once. If you preferred to link to international social networks, you can still send your news by email to contact@dolibarr.org.
 * Man stands into congress (For example: french community presents Dolibarr into Salon_Solution_Linux_2010, Salon_Solution_Linux_2011, Salon_Solution_Linux_2012).
 * Organize BarCamp or Devcamp (See index page http://wiki.dolibarr.org/index.php/Category:DevCamps for example of already past devcamps).
 * Publish news onto your portal home page.
 * Create social networks groups, promote them and publish news/articles on them.

To help you for such tasks, you can use all materials provided by the Dolibarr foundation and available at GitHub repository

You will find rollups, flyers, logos, business cards, etc, you can translate/reuse.

= Things recommanded =

You are free to animate your community like you want. But following this list of advices is recommanded to have your community growing.


 * Translate all resources you can find into the foundation GIT repository, like SVG files used to create logos, rollups or business cards for your language. You can then use them into congress, forums, trade show or put them into show rooms or your web site.

This is the two most important point to have a big community :


 * Post a lot of news onto local web sites, magazines for your country: the more you promote Dolibarr, the more you will get new users, new partners (or new customers if you are a company). When such news appears on a major media, tell us (contact@dolibarr.org).


 * Man a stand into Opensource congress or forums: This is a very good way to have fun and to make Dolibarr growing into your country. If you do so (it's one of the most interesting and efficient thing to do), please create a page into this wiki with photo (example: Salon_Solution_Linux_2010). Report page into this wiki should be in English but if you host your own report page, with photos, into your language, send us a link (we will add a link at appropriate place into Dolibarr web sites).

Note:

When all things into chapter "Things required" are completed, if you are a company you may also apply to be a Preferred Partner. See Dolibarr Preferred Partner. It will also be a good thing if you are yourself a member of internationnal Dolibarr foundation. See page Subscribe.

= Things allowed = This chapter describes explicit things you can do when you are a community manager of a local community:
 * Use Dolibarr logo on your web site (However, it is recommanded to add the name of the country under the logo to clearly show your are a local community affiliated to internationnal one).
 * Use any materials provided by Dolibarr foundation and available into GitHub repository . You will find rollups, flyers, guides, logos, templates, etc. You can translate or use them for your need.
 * Use any other tools of your choice to animate your community (video, wiki, etc...)
 * Add your own Google Adwords tags (but ads must be limited to 2 by pages). All gains are yours. The more you promote Dolibarr (see previous chapter, the more you will increase traffic and the more you may earn).
 * Add links to any other Dolibarr web site (local or international) like the download central page: http://www.dolibarr.org/download/, forum or any other pages
 * Post news (english language only) onto official Dolibarr mailing-lists (user, dev) to annouce availability of your community.
 * Represent Dolibarr into congress, show rooms with no need to ask anything to the Dolibarr foundation.
 * Create and sells goodies. Revenues are yours.
 * Use your community tools to promote some commercial services (such services must however all be related to Dolibarr), except SaaS/Cloud hosting services (there is always official SaaS/Cloud international hosting services so no need to add more/yours).
 * Drink beers with all Dolibarr friends (but not too much).

= Things forbidden = This chapter describes explicit things you can't do when you are a community manager of a local community:


 * A community portal content must be into main language of your community and only main language (you can build a multi-language portal if your country has several dialect, what is important is not provide a couple (language/country) already covered by another portal). If you want to offer visibility to another couple (country/language), you must instead refer to links to existing portal that manage this couple.
 * You can't use more than 2 ads on a Dolibarr local community portal page.
 * You can't publish news (on online or press newspaper) into English that point to your local web site: If you publish a news into English, you can, but link must point to www.dolibarr.org. To publish news that link to your web site, you must publish a content that is in same language than your web site.
 * You can't use local community portal to promote exclusively your own private services in a way other can't do. This is what this means: If you are a company with your own services, description and prices of such services must be on a different portal, with a different name. Don't forget that a community portal serve project, not directly your business (even if it helps, it should just help), and this are two different things. So, you can have links from your commercial web site to reach the community portal, but links from community portal must never link exclusively toward your commercial web site/services. To do so, you must choose between:
 * A link to a neutral page. For example, for a SaaS/Cloud hosting service, you can link to official wiki page Cloud_Solutions and ask to include your company or product page into this page. Another example, for a specialized module: You can make a link to the official wiki documentation of external modules http://wiki.dolibarr.org/index.php/Category:Complementary_modules and add your product.
 * Or, if you really want to stay into the community portal (with no external links, for example because you promote something really specific for your local business, not interesting for rest of the world), you can have a dedicated area into the portal to present a short description of service/product with a link to the site of your company (so a different web site not affiliated with the foundation) with more complete information like long description and prices. If there is competitor for the service/product in same language than portal, then, into the dedicated area of community portal, you must offer competitors a way to request to add also their own link to their version of product page (but you can define that there is a sort criteria by age, so yours will be at top if you are the one that creates the community/portal). Never show any prices directly into any pages of the community portal.

What happens if prerequisites are no more covered, or if forbidden things are done ?

Dolibarr is free, everybody too, so you can still decide to discard pre-requistes or do forbidden things. We will not fight against your freedom, but keep in mind: Dolibarr project is promoted by local communities like local portals are promoted by all others, including the Dolibarr foundation and all Dolibarr tools (the main international portal, the wiki documentation, the official dolistore.com market place, the doliforge.org external module development forge) but also by some pages inside software itself, or from a lot of other resources. If you deserve the project, the foundation may remove all backlinks toward your portal, to promote instead another team/community that does not deserve project. Local communities are strong when project is strong and project is strong when local communities are too, so every body sharing same destiny, this should never happen.
 * The trademark "Dolibarr" is a registered trademark, registered to protect the project. Do not use it to deserve project.
 * Dolibarr local communities are attractive because they are legitimated by all others: