What If WordPress Could Be a CRM?

WordPress is one of the most ideal open source projects in the history of the web. It’s licensed under the GPL and it’s community is full of people truly dedicated to contributing code and advancing the app. It’s lightweight, easy to use, and simple to customize by adding additional functionality. What if this could be a CRM? We already know of the many other ways WordPress can be used. A CRM seems logical.

The Open Source WP-CRM Slick Theme for WordPress

This theme is a free theme for WordPress that turns a WordPress CMS into a simple, easy to use CRM or customer relationship manager. It was developed by SlipFire and then re-skinned by me. I must say that most of the credit goes to SlipFire for putting this theme together, as well as the instructions for putting it together. I just made it look better. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like.

The homepage lists your most recently added contacts. Just like your blog would list your most recent blog posts. Categories are “Companies” and your contacts are assigned to them. You can also add tags to each contact like “web designer‚ big jerk”.

The Add Contact page utilizes the TDO Mini Forms plugin for WordPress which allows you to create the fields necessary for your contact. You can see in this screenshot a preview of what the Add Contact page looks like.

Once added, the contact’s page looks like this. The right sidebar lists all of his contact and other detailed information. Then the Comment Form in WordPress is utilized to add “Notes” to the contacts history such as “had a meeting with Billy today…it went terrible! The guy is a complete jerk. He’s no longer my friend.”

Get Your WordPress CRM Started!

** Download the WP-CRM Slick theme here.

** Follow the detailed installation instructions from SlipFire here.

** Be sure to check the “Members Only” option under Settings >> Members Only in your admin panel to password protect your entire WordPress CRM.

I have released the WP-CRM Slick theme under the GPL so feel free to contribute to it. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated to help make this theme better. Enjoy!

Update: October 14, 2010

SlipFire made an official project out of their WP-CRM theme and called it RoloPress. It’s still in Beta but it’s a project that is growing and has some potential. For more up-to-date functionality refer there for download and usage instructions.