Hi all!
A new client, a local non-profit group, asked me to redesign their website. They are still using static html files (believe it or not) and managing member registrations with an MS Access database and a lot of goodwill.

PM Pro matches almost perfectly their list of requirements but there are a few things I’m not sure if they’re possible to accomplish, except in EE.
Here’s the list of things that I’m still unsure of.
Please keep in mind that they are a non-profit club so any $$$ saved is highly appreciated.

- Members (several issues)
They want to start managing their members through the site.
- Does EE has a similar or better feature than pM Pro’s “Post Office”?

They need new fields in the member profiles.
- Can this be done in pM Pro?
- In EE, can we create usergroups or mailing lists based on profile attributes? Like “all members from New York” for example.
- In EE, is it possible to use the SQL Manager to create custom pages with custom mysql queries to manage some aspects of members?

- Multiple category posts within a 3 level tree
They have a series of items they have to place online. These items must belong to 1, 2 or 3 subcategories shared by several categories.
For example: “apple” (entry) belongs simultaneously to “round shape” and “color red” (subcategories) within “fruit” (category) in opposition of having 2 apple entries for each one of the subcategories. “Round shape” and “color red” are also subcategories of “vegetables” in opposition of duplicating these subcategories in each category. Hope that makes sense =)
This is impossible to do in pM Pro but seems rather feasible in EE with category nesting. Is that so or am I wrong?

- Glossary section
Instead of creating a category for each letter, can I link to a search result of all posts within the glossary section beginning with the letter A? I saw something like this in the EE forums.

- Weblog entries and forum posts/threads email notifications
There aren’t many members in the group and they aren’t also very active so all the nifty email notifications pM Pro sents on comments and replies are essential. Does EE share this feature with his “little brother”?

- Calendar
The calendar in EE has the same features as the one in pM Pro?

Last but not least, I would like to know if you pM still issues security updates for pM Pro although it’s no longer being developed.
Thanks a lot for your time! =)

Ricardo

rbl - 06 December 2005 09:15 AM

PM Pro matches almost perfectly their list of requirements but there are a few things I’m not sure if they’re possible to accomplish, except in EE.
Here’s the list of things that I’m still unsure of.
Please keep in mind that they are a non-profit club so any $$$ saved is highly appreciated.

Here’s my two cents on this. You are not going to be saving the non-profit money by developing on a platform that is no longer being updated. Let’s say you develop the site on pM Pro and a year from now they want functionality that is not available in pM Pro. There is zero chance that it will become available. The cost of migrating a completed site in pM Pro to ExpressionEngine (or anything else) is going to be considerably more than the $99 saved up front.

- Members (several issues)
They want to start managing their members through the site.
- Does EE has a similar or better feature than pM Pro’s “Post Office”?

ExpressionEngine supports multiple mailing lists like the pM Pro Post Office. The overall membership system in ExpressionEngine is much better than pM Pro and will provide a lot more flexibility.

They need new fields in the member profiles.
- Can this be done in pM Pro?

Doing this is much easier in ExpressionEngine.

- In EE, can we create usergroups or mailing lists based on profile attributes? Like “all members from New York” for example.

There isn’t an automatic way to do this. But a custom plugin or module could probably be developed to handle this.

- In EE, is it possible to use the SQL Manager to create custom pages with custom mysql queries to manage some aspects of members?

Yes, you can do this. The Query module allows you to pull just about anything from the database, format it, and display it however you want. It really helps if you’re comfortable with SQL statements. Assuming that’s the case, this is pretty straightforward to do.

- Multiple category posts within a 3 level tree
They have a series of items they have to place online. These items must belong to 1, 2 or 3 subcategories shared by several categories.
For example: “apple” (entry) belongs simultaneously to “round shape” and “color red” (subcategories) within “fruit” (category) in opposition of having 2 apple entries for each one of the subcategories. “Round shape” and “color red” are also subcategories of “vegetables” in opposition of duplicating these subcategories in each category. Hope that makes sense =)
This is impossible to do in pM Pro but seems rather feasible in EE with category nesting. Is that so or am I wrong?

You should be able to accomplish this in ExpressionEngine since it supports multiple categories per entry and supports nested category trees.

- Glossary section
Instead of creating a category for each letter, can I link to a search result of all posts within the glossary section beginning with the letter A? I saw something like this in the EE forums.

Yes, this is possible. See this forum post for details.

- Weblog entries and forum posts/threads email notifications
There aren’t many members in the group and they aren’t also very active so all the nifty email notifications pM Pro sents on comments and replies are essential. Does EE share this feature with his “little brother”?

Yes, it sure does.

- Calendar
The calendar in EE has the same features as the one in pM Pro?

The calendar in EE is not exactly the same. There is no default events calendar, but a weblog can be configured to act like a basic events calendar, showing future and past entries.

Last but not least, I would like to know if you pM still issues security updates for pM Pro although it’s no longer being developed.

Any reported security issues for pM Pro will be addressed. But this does not include improved anti-spam (comment, trackback, referral) tools.

Leslie Camacho - 06 December 2005 12:29 PM

Here’s my two cents on this. You are not going to be saving the non-profit money by developing on a platform that is no longer being updated. Let’s say you develop the site on pM Pro and a year from now they want functionality that is not available in pM Pro. There is zero chance that it will become available. The cost of migrating a completed site in pM Pro to ExpressionEngine (or anything else) is going to be considerably more than the $99 saved up front.

I’m aware of that and I can give you at least 20 more reasons not to do it but it’s not my call.
I just stated that because sometimes some folks forget that $200 is a ton of money to some people.
Btw, they are not registered as a non-profit (I don’t think they are registered at all) so it’s EE + Forum module non-commercial licenses

Doing this is much easier in ExpressionEngine. 

What’s the option in pM Pro? Editing the members table in phpMyAdmin and dig through a gazzilion php files to add those fields to the forms and functions?

There isn’t an automatic way to do this. But a custom plugin or module could probably be developed to handle this.

What’s the level of know-how needed for this?

Thanks for your help Leslie!! =)

The level of know how to write functions for pMachine is slightly higher than for EE.

For the time it would take you to figure out how to do what you are looking to do with pMachine, you’re better off convincing your client to go with EE.

For one thing, you’re already going to have to take the existing Access database and port the entries into either pMachine or EE.

You could map some of the existing fields in pMachine to work with the fields from the database, but it’s a lot harder to write the routines in pMachine.

What happens if someone registers on the site? You’d have to allow them acess to the same fields, and modify the code to allow writing to the right database fields.

Once your client decides to upgrade to EE (and they probably will—you changed the pMachine table structure, so importing into EE is going to be a pain again.

I spent over a year working on a client site adding all kinds of functionality to pMachine. But we never got it to go to EE.

You’re also not going to find very many people to help you write pMachine custom code. I can think of maybe 5 people who could still do it.

Importing their Access membership database into EE is certainly doable. So is putting the info into pMachine tables—but again, you’re going to run into the same problem—lack of fields.

Besides, pMachine is not going to be worked on again. What you learn won’t be helpful to many or any other pMachine projects.

The MS Access db won’t be used after the data is successively imported into the site. With their profiles online, members can just update their records on their own.

I know there’s nowhere to go from pM Pro. With the pM Pro forums here almost deserted, any situation I might have will be solved if and when someone remembers how to do it =)

I don’t know if they would want to upgrade to EE. Their needs are mainly the membership management, occasional mailing list/newsletter sent to members, forums and a couple of news per month. EE is totally overkill for them. If it wasn’t for the news and forums, I would go for a list management script.

In that case, good luck with your endevor.

Your first task is going to be getting the membership data using an import script.

You’ve got serveral fields you can reuse:

icq varchar(50)   
aol_im varchar(50)   
yahoo_im varchar(50) 
msn_im varchar(50)

as well as

location, url, interests, bio, plus the birthday stuff.

I’d suggest using Access to create a tab delimted file - easier than working with a comma delimited one.

pMachine uses md5 for password encryption, just so you know.

Thanks Sue!
Hope to see you soon on the EE forums =)