Hi guys, I’ve been using CI for almost a year now to develop my own websites, and I’m loving it - so I was wondering:

1. Is EE built on CI? If I enjoy programming with CI, will I enjoy programming in EE?

2. Is it possible to get a SEO module for the forum that will make the links like this /pre-sales-questions/some-questions…293.html instead of todays /viewtopic/345 ?

3. Will I be allowed to create modules for EE and sell them?

4. What is defined as a ‘commercial’ website. I currently have no ads on my site, but if I decide to add AdSense, will it become commercial and need a commercial license?

5. I’d like to be able to manually promote “special content” on a box on my front page - this can be anything from a user comment, a forum message or a blogpost excerpt. Can you think of a way to do this, or would it be easily implemented as a module?

6. Is there a simple way to convert an existing SimpleMachines forum to the EE forum?

Thanks!

1. No, although they share some of the code.
2. No SEO module necessary, really. Using .html would reaquire some mod_rewrite, I suppose, everything else should be pretty much out of the box.
3. Yes, no problem at all
4. Adsense is considered fine. Usually, if the intent of your site is to make money (not counting a little re-financing of your hosting cost) or is in support of a commercial venture, it is considered commercial.
5. Easy, any number of ways: Custom status, category, sticky entry ...

Cracks knuckles- Derek and John are major CI folks, so hopefully they’ll chime in as well.  I’ve dabbled a bit and found CI easy to pick up, no doubt due to the shared brains behind both.  I’m not sure how it would be coming from CI to EE, but I’m betting it would be fairly easy.  Still, it took a logic shift for me, so that may be the case for you as well.  Just don’t make assumptions and do read over the docs.  You should be fine (you might take a look at the developer docs- bottom of the linked page- good way to get a quick feel for the logic behind the code).

2.  There isn’t an existing module/plugin to give you that url structure for the forum.  In truth, I’m not recalling much discussion of it around here.  A quick search turned up this post and I vaguely recall one more.  But the short answer is, you might need to build this one yourself (or hire it done).

3.  Yes- see the developer FAQ and license for details.

4.  Simply having adsense/amazon links/affiliate links/etc isn’t a problem and doesn’t prevent you from using a personal license.  If the main point of the website is to support a business, either directly or indirectly?  Then you need a commercial license.  You can always check with sales if you’re uncertain which license is appropriate.

5.  Depends on how you want to do it, and if forum posts, wiki entries, article entries, comments- etc- are all going to be mixed together and have one ‘trigger’ for inclusion.  That might take a bit of custom coding- but it really depends on what you’re wanting to pull out.  If none of the types of content are going to require the addition of fields that don’t exist, then the query module is a highly flexible way to pull in specific data.  So short answer- it depends.

6.  No, there isn’t an existing importer.  However, the EE wiki has a nice rundown of a manual PHPBB Import that might be useful.  And I do know folks have imported other types of forum- but it’s going to take some manual work and a fair knowledge of both databases to do it.

Does that hit the basics?

Thank you for the informative answers, both of you.

A final question - is it possible for me to download a trial of EE + the forum to experiment with these things? I see you have a hosted trial for $10, but that won’t allow me to get a feeling on how much work it will take to customize it for my needs (specifically converting from SMF and creating the SEO module).

You can play with EE Core, that can be downloaded for free. The forum is only available for the full version, however.

Unfortunately not.  The forum won’t run on the free-to-download Core version (nor is a free test version available for download).  The hosted trial allows you to check out the forum- but you wouldn’t be able to play with the backend code.

You might could check out the database structure- and the forum shares the same membership tables as the Core/Pro versions.  But- I don’t know if it gets you close enough to judge the difficulty of an import.  And I know I couldn’t judge the difficulty of the module without taking a look at the backend files- though that could just be me.

ok - I’m convinced and I’m buying a license

Of course, I’d prefer being able to try it first, but from reading the forums and looking at the documentation for a week now almost - I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to create an SMF importer and making the forum even more SE friendly.

Seems like you have a good community going here, and I look forward to taking part in it

- bjorn

The community alone is worth the price of admission!  Well, it comes close, anyway.  Welcome aboard- we’ll see you around the forums!