Hello:

I like what I see of pMachine so far and wonder about its suitability for a community journalism project.  An outline of the requirements is below.  Thanks in advance/Dave

Requirements:

The software would be used to operate a network of community-news websites for a region.  Professional journalists will create some original top-line content, but the community will contribute most of it.

The home page will be moderated by the editors, to present the best content from throughout the region.  The content architecture is approximately as follows:

Home Page (moderated by editors, culled from all content submitted)
—Entries by community:
——Community 1
——Community 2
——Community 3 etc
—Regional Content Types (appears as subsections of all community sections)
——Obituaries
——Police/Fire Logs
——Sports
——etc
—Personal blogs (which can be general, or can be assigned to Communities or Content Types)

Content would be posted to the appropriate section(s) and subsection(s), depending on the nature of the content.

Four site user types:

1.  Site administrator (all rights)
2.  Content Editor (can add/modify/delete all content; can designate Trusted Outside User)
3.  Trusted outside user (can add/modify/NOT delete own content; can post to site without pre-moderation)
4.  Outside user (can add content to site, but content does not appear without editor’s pre-moderation, at which time it becomes the editor’s to modify/delete)

First two are paid staff; second two are non-staff contributors.

Outside users must be able to:

1.  Post comments to stories, with option of site admin moderation
2.  Submit text, images, video, Flash objects.

System must work with third-party ad-serving software and services:

phpAdsnew (serving locally-produced advertising)
Google (AdSense ads)
Fastclick (pop-unders and other ad styles)

System must allow for separate templates for sections and subsections, as needed.

Couple of questions:

How easy is it to insert into a template special elements?  Any restrictions on the types of elements that can be inserted?  How are special elements handled and how must they be constructed?

How does the system support podcasting?

Hi Dave,

based on your write up ExpressionEngine should meet your needs just fine.

fdnews - 20 June 2006 06:27 PM

Couple of questions:
How easy is it to insert into a template special elements?

I think by “special elements” you mean things like Flash, audio, video, etc… The answer is that you insert these into the templates in the exact same way you insert into a normal static html site. The same html works in the templates.

  Any restrictions on the types of elements that can be inserted?

At the template level you can insert anything you want. At the weblog level you can restrict file types if you want.

How are special elements handled and how must they be constructed?
How does the system support podcasting?

They can be constructed just like a normal html page. The benefit is that you can add ExpressionEngine tags so that the correct file is played. The Video tutorials, for example, are done with a single template. The template holds the html that inserts the Quicktime player and then the EE tag inserts the correct file based on the URL.

There are several forum threads on different approaches to this for different situations and there are some plugins that can help as well.

And yes, ExpressionEngine and podcasting play together quite nicely.

Leslie—

Thanks for your note.  I appreciate the followup.

Next question:

We’re currently using ezPublish and are having a devil of a time with with size of the database and the system’s need to cache content.

We publish upwards of 10,000 pieces of content a year, so our database is huge. (And adding reader contents will just add to the load)  Our server will log as many as 20 incoming hits per second, though 4 to 5 a second is more in the normal range.

Are there any issues related to the size of the database(s) backing pMachine?

How does pMachine create its content? Is the content rendered to static pages at pre-set intervals, or is it totally dynamic, generating each page on the fly at 5 to 20 requests per second enter the system?

Thanks again—love the answers so far…

-Dave

ExpressionEngine is a dynamic system so the content is delivered on the fly. However, you can set a number of caches that really optimize the system. For example, you can cache templates and database calls plus you can “turn off” un-needed database calls for certain common functions. This makes for a highly efficient system even in high-traffic scenarios.

how do we set up the cache ? the lower the number , the faster it will be ? i dont know programmuing so..

No, Leslie refers to turning on EE’s built-in caching methods (template caching, query caching, and so on) and disabling other, non-needed functionality.

yes, if we turn on the EE caching systems , it will be faster ? we setup lower number ?

What lower number are you talking about? Yes, turning on caching will usually speed up the performance of your site — this is the point, after all.

i saw somewhere in the documentation , theres a box with ” 0 ” number in it. are we supposed to do something with it ? in the caching area

Here is a good overview on how caching works with EE. Don’t worry too much about it.