Wild Apricot Setup Guide

This document will help you get familiar with key Wild Apricot features so that you can quickly setup and personalize your account and evaluate membership management, event registration, website content management and other functions provided.

Trial Account

When you open a new Wild Apricot account, you are automatically provided with a free 30-day trial account. It provides you with full access to Wild Apricot functionality except some minor limitations necessary to prevent abuse by spammers (for example, you can not send a newsletter to more than 50 contacts). At any moment during this 30-day trial you can upgrade to a billable plan and process your credit card information. If you do not upgrade or delete your trial account, it will be automatically converted into a free account after 30 days - all your data will stay intact.
See more at Trial account

Getting Started Checklist

After you login into your account, you will see the dashboard page, which shows you tabs for each set of functions (Web pages, Members, Events, Donations) and Settings.

On the right-hand side, there is a Getting Started checklist. You don't need to follow these links in exact order (or even to do them all) so feel free to experiment. This checklist does not cover all functions, we list some other important functions to review at the end of this article.

1. Review and Update Organization Details

Review and change (if required) your organization's information - partly pre-filled with what you entered during sign-up.

2. Select Visual Theme (template)

Choose from one of our professionally designed templates (See 1. Website customization - themes). To apply a theme, select the one you want and then click "Apply Theme" button. You can switch from one theme to another at any time - all your webpages will stay intact, so you are not locked in to your initial choice.

You can also utilize CSS Customization to further customize the look and feel of your website. See 5. CSS Customization and CSS customization - change colors

There are also services available from ourselves and our partners if you need help with customization - or would like a custom template designed for your organization. Contact us at sales@wildapricot.com

3. Customize Page Header

The page header is the top part of the website and is displayed on all webpages (also known as masthead). You can access the header customization function from any web page - and it will be updated for the whole website.
When your Wild Apricot account is set-up, a generic page header which includes your organization's name is created. It can be edited any time.
For editing instructions, please refer to 2. Page header customization

4. Customize Page Footer

The page footer is the bottom part of each webpage. For example, you can insert your copyright or contact information. Use the tools in the toolbar to edit the footer - it works in the similar way as 2. Page header customization (though it does not currently use absolute positioning of elements (so you can not drag and drop them, you have to use other formatting functions or edit page footer HTML directly).

5. Add New Page

This feature allows you to create as many pages as needed. See How to add web pages
When you open a Wild Apricot account, we generate a number of pages for you based on the template you have selected ('Professional and trade association' etc.) You can edit these sample pages as you want - change page titles, the content, insert pictures, create subpages, hide or delete them. Some pages are automatically generated and used by the Wild Apricot system to provide interactive functionality. See Content pages vs. functional pages.

If you have an existing website, you can copy/paste the text from your old website. However, your pictures will have to be uploaded and re-inserted on your Wild Apricot site and all links re-checked. When copy-pasting information, we recommend to use Clean up HTML button on the toolbar to automatically remove extraneous formatting codes which can mess up your Wild Apricot webpage. If you do not do this, your page might look messy or not display properly on some computers.

6. Edit Payment Settings

Wild Apricot integrates with the PayPal payment processing system so people can use credit cards to pay online for event registration fees, membership dues and donations. If you do not have a Paypal account yet, you can sign up for free at PayPal. (Again, your users can pay with a credit card. PayPal is just a payment processing system for you to accept these payments.) See Setting up payment options
You can chose to accept online payments, manual payments (e.g. by check) - or both
See Payment settings

7. Customize Member Database Fields

By default, Wild Apricot is setup to track several pieces of information about your contacts/members (e-mail, name, phone etc.) and here you can add new information fields, rename or move existing ones. See Customizing your member database

8. Customize Membership Levels (aka Member types or Membership categories)

Different membership levels can be used to define membership fees (if applicable), different event fees, renewal cycle and to control access to member-specific content and member directory options.
For detailed instructions see Member levels

9. Add Member

There are three ways to add records to your database: via an online application form, manually by administrator and through import.
See the following articles for detailed instructions:

10. Import Members (and export at any time!)

You can easily import your existing list of members and other contacts. See Import Guide for a detailed description
Note that you can "Export" your member database file (or results of any particular search query on your member list) - also in Excel format. See Export members list

11. Add Event

With Wild Apricot you can create an unlimited number of events, customize registration form for each one, have people register and pay online, send automatic event notices, reminders and registration confirmations.

Your new events will be automatically available on the Events list webpage on your website (which also includes an RSS feed)
Wild Apricot can take care of automatically emailing your contact database to notify about new events
People can register and pay online and you will have an up-to-date list of registered attendees and their payment status. With one click, you can export this list (e.g. to print badges) or email them.
See Adding new events for detailed instructions on adding events