I’ve had a bit of time to finally pursue some open source initiatives that I’ve had cooking in the back of my mind. I’m really excited to release this project I’ve been working on because it showcases work in both PHP and Ruby on Rails. I’ve created a plugin written in PHP that integrates into any Wordpress site. I’ve also updated and modified a Ruby on Rails project called Fat Free CRM.
I really hope this adds a ton of value to new or established businesses looking for more efficiencies in their web-contact-to-deal-close processes.
The plugin installs just like any other Wordpress plugin. It should be pretty intuitive to anyone that has even limited experience administrating a Wordpress site. The plugin can be downloaded from Wordpress or at my repo on github.
Fat Free CRM is a great customer relationship manager (CRM) I’ve been using for a little while now instead of Highrise. I used Highrise for a little while before I grew frustrated by its hosting costs and lack of features. The guys at 37signals don’t seem to update it very often either.
For the rails project, I forked the repository and made a few minor changes like adding access via an API key. I also added a few usability options in the view codes to make integration with the plugin seamless.
For new businesses that are just implementing a CRM solution, I’d be happy to host the CRM application on my servers for a nominal cost. Feel free to contact me for more details. (hint, the contact form is an example of the plugin in action 
)
To use the plugin and CRM together, just follow these simple instructions:
- Download or clone the CRM from my github repo. Install on my servers (contact me for pricing) or on your own
- Download and install the fat-free-crm-lead plugin either from Wordpress or my github repo
- Configure the plugin with the URL of your CRM and an API token (details are provided in the admin interface of the plugin)
- Watch the leads come rolling in and enjoy not having to copy and paste from emails any longer
Hopefully, this is really easy. If you run into any problems or have feature requests, please feel free to contact me.
====UPDATE====
The plugin has been accepted into the WP plugin directory. Take a look at the fat-free-crm-lead-form at Wordpress.
Tags: Git, open source, php, plugins, Ruby on Rails, web service consumption, web service creation, Wordpress
Works great, thank you