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 and fraudsters (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 site and Free Billing plan

Getting Started

After opening a new account you are directed to your new website and you are automatically logged in as an admin. The first screen you see shows your new website address and an initial password - you can change your password at this stage. Next you are taken to the basic visual setup wizard where you can select the theme, header, logo and title of your site.

1. Complete basic visual setup wizard (template)

When you set up your account, our Basic Visual Setup Wizard will help you define the look and feel of your site.

• You can change these settings later on as needed - 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 CSS Customization

  There are also services available from our partners if you need help with customization - or would like a custom template designed for your organization. See Partner directory

2. Review and Update Organization Details

Review and change (if required) your organization's information via Settings > Your account > Organization details.

3. Add New Page

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.

You can add as many new pages as needed - see How to add web 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.

4. Edit Payment Settings

Wild Apricot allows you to accept online payments as well as manual payments (e.g. by check). See Payment settings

5. Customize Contact and 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 contact database fields and Customizing your member database

6. Set up your Membership Levels

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. Each membership level also defines email templates sent upon member application etc.
For detailed instructions see Membership levels

7. Import your Contacts

There are three ways to add records to your database: via an online application form, manually by administrator and through import.
Assuming that you already have a list of contacts and members, see Import Guide on how to import it into Wild Apricot

• Note that you can "Export" your members and contacts - also in Excel format. See Exporting members and other contacts

8. 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

See also

• Authorization required message
• Organization details
• Web browser requirements
• Import Guide
• XML Spreadsheet Format