SociWeb documentation

Everything you need to go from a freshly installed Joomla to a working association: requirements, installation, setup and importing your members.

Requirements

You need	Details
Joomla 6	A clean or existing installation. It does not have to be empty.
PHP 8.1 or later	With the usual Joomla extensions, plus GD for resizing photos.
MySQL or MariaDB database	The database user needs permission to create tables.
Hosting with HTTPS	Personal data and bank accounts are involved. This is not optional.

Card payments and the mobile wallet card are optional and require your own Stripe and Google accounts. Without them, everything else works just the same.

Installation

Sign in to your Joomla administrator.
Go to System → Install Extensions.
On the Upload Package File tab, upload the template ZIP first and the component ZIP second. The order matters: the template sets up the styles the component uses.
Go to System → Site Template Styles and set the SociWeb template as the default.

If the installation ends with a warning that the database is incomplete, the message tells you which table and why. The usual cause is a database user without permission to create tables. Fix that and install the same ZIP again: repeating it is safe and does not touch any table that already holds data.

Setup in five steps

1. Your association's identity

Under Components → Membership Management → Options, the Identity tab: name, town, logo and contact email. This appears on the PDFs, the emails and the letterheads, so it is worth doing first.

2. The setup wizard

Under Components → Membership Management → Setup wizard. Press the buttons in this order:

Create the menus — builds the whole members' area structure in one go, which is the most laborious part to set up by hand.
Repair access levels — creates the area's access level and assigns it to the menu items.
Create the menu module — publishes the menu where members can see it.
Run the health check — reviews the installation and warns about anything missing. Every warning comes with its fix.

All four can be run as many times as needed: whatever already exists is left alone and never duplicated.

3. The committees

Under Committees, create one for each area of the board (Treasury, Secretary, Uniforms and so on). Each one generates its user group, its access level and its document category in one go. You then decide which management modules it has enabled: those are the only ones it will see.

4. The fee rates

Under Fee rates, set how much each section pays and for which financial year. Fees are generated from these, so without rates there are no fees.

5. Your members

Under Import CSV. The importer works in two stages: first it analyses the file without touching the database and shows you a report of what would go in and the errors to fix. With a single error, nothing is imported. Download the CSV template from the toolbar, fill it in from the spreadsheet you already keep, and upload it.

Before importing for real, take a backup. It is boring advice and it is the only advice that really matters.

The members' area

Each member signs in and finds their own record, their fees, their documents, the diary, their notices and their digital membership card. They can edit their own details, upload their photograph and those of any minors in their care, and choose how they prefer to pay their fee if you allow it.

Committees manage their own area from the committee panel, also on the public site: they never need to enter the Joomla administrator or hold permissions over the rest of the site.

Updates

They come through on their own. The new version appears under System → Update → Extensions and installs with one click.

The first time, and only the first time, the ZIP has to be installed by hand: Joomla registers the update channel at install time, and a version older than that channel does not have it registered.

Data protection

SociWeb stores the data on your hosting and in your database. There is no copy on any server of ours, and nothing is sent to third parties unless you switch on card payments or the mobile wallet card yourself.

Bank account numbers are stored encrypted.
A member leaving is handled by irreversible anonymisation, keeping only the financial records the law requires you to hold.
Activation and email-correction links are single-use and expire.
The component generates a draft record of processing activities (GDPR article 30) from your own configuration.
Internal messaging purges itself once the period you configure has passed.

That record is a working draft, not legal advice: review it with whoever looks after data protection for your association.

If something does not work

Before writing to us, try Setup wizard → Run the health check: it covers most cases and every warning says what to do.

What you see	What it usually is
The member cannot see their area's menu	The menu module or the access level is missing. Setup wizard → Repair access levels and Create the menu module.
“Licence not active” with the key in place	The key belongs to another domain, or the domain was entered with www. Press Setup wizard → Check the licence now.
A screen says a table is missing	The installation was left half done. Install the ZIP again: repeating it is safe.
An option does not appear	Old version. Update from System → Update.

Support

Write to info@sociweb.es telling us what you expected to happen, what happened instead, and on which screen. If there is an error message, copy the whole thing: that is what lets us go straight to the problem instead of guessing.

Every licence includes twelve months of support and updates.