Manual Installation

Currently as ChurchCRM is still in development an install script is not yet available. ChurchCRM can run on a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) or a Shared Hosting account through a manual installation.

Check your server

[Upload] (https://github.com/ChurchCRM/Check) check.php to your web server's document root, and then visit check.php in a web browser.

This page should tell you everything that you need to know about if you can run ChurchCRM or not.

[More at our check repo] (https://github.com/ChurchCRM/Check)

How Do I Install ChurchCRM?

  1. [Download the latest release] (https://github.com/ChurchCRM/CRM/releases/latest)

  2. The downloaded zip file contains a directory called "churchcrm" Extract the files and place the contents into a directory in the document root of your Web server or via FTP to a shared hosting account

  3. Create a Church CRM blank db and user that have full permissions on the db.

  4. For shared hosting accounts you must create a database within your hosting control panel

  5. For LAMP servers, log onto your database server under the root account (or other account allowed to create databases), create a database for ChurchCRM.

For example:

mysqladmin -u [user] -p create [database-name]

  1. You should be able to access ChurchCRM at "http://[servername]/churchcrm". and a setup page will help with the next steps

  2. the setup will create a file called Config.php in Include Dir.

  3. the $sRootPath option properly as described in Config.php.

The database script will have set up an initial user called "Admin" with a password of "changeme" (passwords are case insensitive). You will be prompted to change this password upon login. Once you have created other user accounts, you may delete or rename this default account. Just make sure that you always have a user with administrative privledges.

Configuring ChurchCRM

General Settings

At the top right of the page select the gear icon ⚙ then select >>Edit General Settings

  • You might want to change thesDefaultPass to something for your organization.
    This is the default password that all new accounts are assigned until they log in and set their own
  • Set sDefaultCity to the location for your organization
  • Set sDefaultState (This must be a the two letter abbreviation)
Email Settings
  • Set sToEmailAddress to the default email you want request to come to (ie. webmaster@domain.com)
  • Set sSMTPHost This would be information you set up with the domain host or ISP for the email above
  • Set sSMTPUser This would be information you set up with the domain host or ISP for the email above
  • Set SMTPPass This would be information you set up with the domain host or ISP for the email above
Other Settings
  • Set sChurchLatitude (You can find this information at http://www.latlong.net/)
  • Set sChurchLongitude (You can find this information at http://www.latlong.net/)
  • Set sHeader You can add a custom header to ChurchCRM by entering the HTML for the custom header Example: If you enter <H2>My Church</H2>, ChurchCRM will display "My Church" in large, bold letters at the top of each page.
  • Set mailChimpApiKey Mail Chimp is a web service that help you manage your emails better. If you do not have an account you can create a free one here. http://mailchimp.com/signup Once you have an account you create and API Key at http://kb.mailchimp.com/accounts/management/about-api-keys then enter that value here.

Report Settings

At the top right of the page select the gear icon ⚙ then select >>Edit Report Settings The information in this section is used for giving statements and reports generated by the system

Church Information
  • Set sChurchName
  • Set sChurchAddress
  • Set sChurchCity
  • Set sChurchState
  • Set sChurchZip
  • Set sChurchPhone
  • Set sChurchEmail
  • Set sHomeAreaCode
Signature Information

These are the different signatures used on your financial reports

  • Set sTaxSigner
  • Set sReminderSigner
  • Set sConfirmSigner
Letter Head Graphic
  • Set bDirLetterHead

Register your copy

At the top right of the page select the gear icon ⚙ then select >>Update Registration This information is used to inform you of updates to the system.

Other Technical Information

  • You may need to change the default TrueType font path for the included JPGraph library used for the daily donation report. To do this, you must edit line 38 of the file Include/jpgraph-1.13/src/jpgraph.php. If you have JPGraph and FPDF elsewhere on your server, you can specify where in the general settings page.

Security Considerations:

  • If you are using the database backup utility, you need to make sure that the churchcrm/SQL directory is not accessible to your users! Otherwise, with the right timing, anybody can download the temporary files used in creating database backups and thus read the entire contents of the database! Different web servers have different means of access control. In Apache, for example, you might add a section something like this to your httpd.conf:

Order deny,allow Deny from all

Please see your web server's documentation if you need further help.