Create a Dolibarr local community

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the Dolibarr foundation

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


Service formation.png 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, list of companies type, ...). 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.

0) Tell contact@dolibarr.org you plan to create a community with domain name you want to use. The foundation will buy it and manage DNS to point to your server. This is a new requirement for all communities starting after january 2014. From this date, the foundation must keep control of all DNS name.

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: Git links available on page https://github.com/DolibarrFoundation/foundation (into dir "joomla").

2a) Main name of web site must be "Dolibarr, Country name".

The main "visible" title of your web site must be "Dolibarr". Logo used to show this must match the logo found on dolibarr.org (except if it match too mutch an already registered trademark in your country). Also it MUST includes the name of the country/community under it. See examples from dolibarr.fr, dolibarr.gr, dolibarr.it, dolibarr.es... Having a logo showing "Dolibarr TheCountry", is a way to say customer that 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).

2b) Main "visible" description of web site mus present Dolibarr in few words.

The first visible thing a visitor may notice when reaching home page of community portal is to have a small description to describe what is Dolibarr ERP CRM. It must show that it is:

  • An Open-Source project.
  • Free to download and use.
  • Works on a web server.

See for example section "Que es Dolibarr" of dolibarr.es, or "first paragraph" into dolibarr.fr, dolibarr.gr.


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 solutions, and we know that not doing this is a a marketing error making everybody waste its time). Curently flags must be provided for France: dolibarr.fr, Spain: dolibarr.es, Italy; dolibarr.it, Greece: dolibarr.gr, Germany: dolibarr.de

4a) Your portal MUST provide a demo area (and not exlusively your service if this demo is your Cloud service)

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. An entry page "demo" or "try it" must be visible into home page with such link. Links can also be links to your own Cloud hosting system to provide demo, but check next point is ok too.

4b) If you still present your commercial hosting solution (Saas) with online subscription link directly on a page into the community portal domain name (that can be used as a demo or not), check that:

  • The link to your commercial solution must point to another page on your own company web site and any prices must appears ONLY on this second page that is your company page, not on the page of the community portal. No prices should appears on a community domain name because any commercial services are provided by a company not by the community.
  • On the community portal page, if linking to your company solution, you must also provide links at same place of at least 2 other competitors (goal is to show community project is available on several providers. It's not a problem if your offer is shown first but visibility must be equals). Just take a look, to see how it must be on french community portal http://www.dolibarr.fr/demo-en-ligne or english http://www.dolibarr.org/onlinedemo). If you don't want to maintain a list of "ready to use" demo services, you can replace all links (yours and the 2 other competitors) by just one link to: partners.dolibarr.org (choose what is best for you). Alternative is to provide no link at all (nor yours, nor any other services).

Goal of this rule 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 and exclusive "commercial look" scares visitor so 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 fund Google AdWords campaigns using the Dolibarr foundation money.

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 something 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.

Conclusion:

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.

Humour.png 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.

To help you for such tasks, you can use all materials provided by the Dolibarr foundation and available at GitHub repository (Git links available on page https://github.com/DolibarrFoundation/foundation)

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

Astuces.png 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 (Git links available on page https://github.com/DolibarrFoundation/foundation), 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.

Road sign green.png 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 (Git links available on page https://github.com/DolibarrFoundation/foundation). 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).

Road sign red.png 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. This is what this means: If you are a company with your own services, then description and prices of such services must be on a different portal, with a different name. Don't forget that a community portal is brand of community project, not a direct home page of your business (even if it helps, it should just help), and community project and company portal 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. If you really need to include such links, you must choose between:
    • A link to a "neutral page" opened to competitors or that show that you are not the only provider of solution, but just one of the most "engaged" company. 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. Or you can change are that present things like this "This is example of cloud services provided by company xxx" (meaning other companies may also provide such services). Another example, for a specialized module: You can add description of your module onto official wiki documentation of external modules http://wiki.dolibarr.org/index.php/Category:Complementary_modules and add a link to this page, or you can have your own page for you plugin but adding a link to say "This module is developped by xxx, for other modules developed by other companies, take a look at [link to wiki page].
    • Or, if you really need to but specific content 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 without prices, with a link to the site of your company (so a different web site not affiliated with the Dolibarr foundation) with more complete information, like long description and prices. If there is competitors 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 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 p
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