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I know that "standalone" civicrm is not supported, but I'd still like to get rid of the wordpress side menu, and just see the civicrm top menu. i'd also like to have pretty bookmarkable urls like foo.org/contacts/98234 or at least foo.org/civicrm/contacts/9823 And if i go to foo.org, all that would be there is a simple login page for either contacts or staff to use. I'm sure i'm not the first to consider the cms-crm combo to be somewhat a fish-bicycle combo? thanks.
-mda
If you don't want or need a CMS, Drupal works a little better than WordPress for this. WordPress wants to make it as easy as possible to run a blog, so it makes decisions for you that can work against having a minimalist framework.
On the other hand, you can easily disable a ton of Drupal's functionality and even make CiviCRM the homepage. Direct URLs to CiviCRM contacts aren't quite as pretty as you like, but they're much more concise than WordPress or Joomla: foo.org/civicrm/contact/view?cid=1234&reset=1 brings up contact 1234.
Working with Drupal also gives you a lot more flexibility in your page layout: you can use any theme, and there are a number of blocks (widgets in WP parlance), unavailable in WordPress, for CiviCRM admins that let you view the most recent contacts, quickly add new activities/contacts/etc., and more.
A friend mocks Drupal by saying that it's like going to the car dealer and being asked, "Would you like a steering wheel with that? How about a brake pedal?" WordPress makes it easy to build a basic website because it makes a lot of assumptions. However, if you just want a stripped-down framework to render CiviCRM and let people log in, Drupal's lack of assumptions will make it a lot easier.
First of all, I am a non-developer, non-web server guy. But I do know a lot about application systems. I have been using CiviCRM on WordPress for about a year and it has helped our organization greatly.
I am sure there is a much better to do what you ask but I have a solution;
I used a plugin called Adminimize. This plugin allows you to remove WordPress admin items from the display based on type of user. I removed all the stuff on the left side for all users except Administrators.
I created a home page for my site and just put a logon feature. I am just using the wordpress logon widget that is with my theme. I also created a menu item that appears after logon and when clicks takes the user to the CiviCRM dashboard. You could probably also have a redirect to the dashboard upon login.
I only have about 10 users so I have not looked for a better solution. However, I will be expanding within 6 months and would like to know if there is a more appropriate solution.
