New to UNA - templates? Where to start?

I am very used to WordPress but dealing with so many plugins that don't all work together is a bit of a challenge. I am running a volleyball club and need basic membership and simple events. We're all volunteers so there isn't a lot of money to pay for development and tweaking. Basically, I'm the developer and tweaker. The other CMS/membership base I've considered is Elgg. So, here's the base site: northcoastvolleyball.org on WordPress. I have yet to add the membership function to it and the calendar was pretty simple. I'd like to do the same thing with una<dot>northcoastvolleyball<dot>org but get a simplified membership system going with a very simple RSVP for events system too. If I can get it going on my test subdomain, I'd move the whole thing over. Can someone point me in the right direction? Can Una use themes like WP? Are their low cost or free ones?

Thanks,

Tom the total newbie

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      Install the Events plugin.  You'll have the ability to post a visible calendar, which will populate as you enter more events. 

      • Hey Geldner I was in your shoes once upon time, I decided to say goodbye to all the junk out there, and switch to UNA. I am an IT myself, I've tried them all, some of the junk out there including Wordpress brought down my dedicated server few times due to the viruses that come with their plugins. I've had enough. Then I started using Dolphin which was great for a while, but UNA took Dolphin to another level. One of the greatest features I love about UNA is the fact I don't need to babysit my site & keep updating the patches all the time. Now, I can focus on my business & get couple of high school volunteers to Admin my site. Every feature I wanted to have on my site, UNA already has it, not to mention the support I get on this Forum is great.  You are welcome to visit my site, take a look:  MoroccoMaroc.com  which is still in beta while I am working to migrate about 20K users from Dolphin site. So far I can't complain.. This was one of the best decisions I made..  My Hat's off to Boonex Team.. All the best !

        • Hello, it's very important that you always create a backup of your site before making any changes to your site. You also need to go to "your keys" here in UNA to create keys, without generating a key you will not be able to go to the market store. Once you generate key, you will be able to go to the app market to download what you need. Goodluck!

          • Thanks. Nice looking site. My other challenge is going to be figuring out how to make the una site look like my wordpress site.

            • Yes I generated the keys and have them tucked away in my password vault.

              • Yes I generated the keys and have them tucked away in my password vault.

                Ok, the other important step is try not to forget to make a backup always before making changes, good luck!

                • To save yourself lots of headaches, do what I did, hire this guy =>  UNA Themes  & thank me later..  I am also knew to UNA and I also wanted to make my site looks somewhat similar to my old Dolphin site. I spent over a week trying to figure things out, but after I bought UNA Themes Template from UNA Themes - this guy not only he installed it & configured it for me, he also spent over an hour with me online tweaking my site the way I wanted it.. I was so pleased with his patience & his technical expertise. I actually took the initiatives to send him few dollars extra to show my appreciation. These are the type of people we need in this great community & we ought to support them as well because at the end of the day, everyone wins..
                  Cheers,   

                  • So after looking Una over, there seems to be no way in the default setup to add fields to profiles like basic stuff (address, city, state, zip, phone, mobile phone, etc.) unless I'm missing something. Also, it seems a great deal of functionality is lurking in the "apps" most of which require recurring yearly license payments. I'm running a low-budget non-profit club and Una would quickly chew up most of our budget for this sort of thing. Then on top of all that, templates seem to just be mash-ups of the basic Protean theme and again, they cost money. 

                    Heck I can't even figure out how to change the default "membership" levels to something more descriptive than "standard" etc. OR figure out exactly what they do. 

                    I'm beginning to think this is a hardcore coders-only platform. Convince me I'm wrong about this.

                    • So after looking Una over, there seems to be no way in the default setup to add fields to profiles like basic stuff (address, city, state, zip, phone, mobile phone, etc.) unless I'm missing something. Also, it seems a great deal of functionality is lurking in the "apps" most of which require recurring yearly license payments. I'm running a low-budget non-profit club and Una would quickly chew up most of our budget for this sort of thing. Then on top of all that, templates seem to just be mash-ups of the basic Protean theme and again, they cost money. 

                      Heck I can't even figure out how to change the default "membership" levels to something more descriptive than "standard" etc. OR figure out exactly what they do. 

                      I'm beginning to think this is a hardcore coders-only platform. Convince me I'm wrong about this.

                      Definitely wrong bro. When you setup your basics, in the studio you see the "Form Module" open then where you see All Module, click to expand the drop-down, the select your Person Module.

                      You will see about 7 forms related to Person Profile from Adding to Viewing.

                      Select Add Person and begin to create your additional fields. Very easy but pay attention to knowing how every feature you see works as it will be useful in many other areas. Hope this helps

                      • OK, I reinstalled an UNA testbed on our site. Lots of questions. We are basically trying to make UNA replace Meetup<dot>com as our communications and membership platform.

                        1. So "Full Name" is used in the Persons "Add" form. Does that get parsed by UNA as FIRST LAST? Is there a way of doing that? Can Full Name be left unused or deleted and replaced by two new fields, FIRST & LAST?

                        2. I noticed there is pre-defined field "Skills" as "nested form". Where does it get it's data from? I didn't see it listed anywhere else like in Data Lists. We definitely would use a "skills" field for player levels.

                        3. Where do "themes" live or is Protean the only one available? Is it even a theme? Not sure I understand the philosophy of UNA on this. For sure I need to make the top header larger and edit a few colors.

                        4. Is there a way to require admin approval for membership?

                        Thanks, Tom

                        • Hello Tom Geldner !

                          1) No, full name is used completely. So you may change the title of full name to "Frist" via the Polyglot app and add the new field like "Last", but make it searchable via according to this manual https://github.com/unaio/una/wiki/Search-Forms

                          2) It's the input data from the own form (See it in the Forms->Persons area).

                          3) By default, the Protean template app is the only available. But you may work with your own mixes likes described here https://github.com/unaio/una/wiki/Protean

                          4) No, with the proper setup payment method it is changed automatically.

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