ARCS Website
ARCS National supports ARCS Chapters with website infrastructure that includes public facing pages for National and each chapter and a private contact management system that includes event management, emailing, contact tracking, etc. This portal provides information and links for using and maintaining the website.
NOTE: This format for website help is new and is currently still under construction. Don't be surprised by empty pages! If you are looking for something specific that isn't available yet, contact is.help@arcsfoundation.org.
Organization, Structure and Uses
ARCS website consists of two separate software systems, one for managing content (Drupal) and one for managing contact information (CiviCRM). The website also provides a file system for storing information that can be accessed by members (Document Library). ARCS website is a "multi-site" implementation which means that we have one overall implementation but each chapter (including National) has their own individual site. The National site public facing pages can be reached using the URL "arcsfoundation.org". Each chapter has their own designation and own landing page <chapter>.arcsfoundation.org, e.g. atlanta.arcsfoundation.org. This allows each chapter to maintain their own identity, their own contact databases, manage their own events, etc. but still allow for central support and for required national reporting across all chapters.
Public VS Private Information
The website pages accessible using "arcsfoundation.org" or "<chapter>.arcsfoundation.org are public pages. Anyone on the internet can access these pages and they are important for marketing our organization and providing information for our members, scholars and donors. At the top of each page is a "Log In" link used to access the secure or private side of our website. Only members and scholars who have been provided log-in credentials have access to the secure pages of the ARCS website. In the secure part of the ARCS website members have access to their own contact information for updating, to built-in reports of member information, private chapter records, etc. Scholars logged into the secure site can update their contact information and see built-in reports of other scholar's information.
Privacy and Security
ARCS website member and scholar data is considered confidential and all users agree to use the information only for ARCS Foundation business and activites. Our vendor, CiviDesk, performs regular backups and does regular security updates to help prevent unauthorized access to our data. The Document Library is the perfect place to keep copies of all your chapter records as it is on-line, regularly backed up and secure.
Using the ARCS® Foundation Style Guide
ARCS Foundation Style Guide (located in the National Document Library under National Media Library/ARCS Foundation Style Guide) contains all the information chapters need to use ARCS branding including information on logos, fonts and colors.
Getting Help
- Check out the documents and videos in this portal.
- Contact your local Website Administrator.
- Send an email to is.help@arcsfoundation.org. The IS Committee has a volunteer each month to field questions. Expect a response within 24 hours.
- CiviDesk provides low cost training courses on all aspects of CiviCRM. See the training courses here.
- Search on-line for your question prefaced with "CiviCRM". For example "CiviCRM how do I merge contacts" results in several references to on-line resources including a YouTube video.