I’m a content person. I want a feature-rich program that will accomplish what I need, but in looking at the forums, it appears as if I need to be a developer to use these programs. I’m having trouble figuring out which one will suit my purpose best, and while reasonably adept at technical stuff (I can administer a network and would describe myself as an advanced intermediate computer person), the discussions lead me to believe that EE and pMpro are best suited for developers, and don’t have the sort of extremely friendly user-interface I need. Is this just a false impression I’m getting because I’m looking at the forums (and not the programs themselves), or is this correct?

It’s a false impression. Much of what you are seeing on the forums are people who want to expand on the original code.

What sort of project are you looking to use with EE or pMPro?

*nods* I agree with Sue.  You have to bear in mind that on any forum (not just EE or even technical forums) you’re going to get people that come because they have a problem or questions.  They do not, generally speaking, represent the community at large.

But for both packages you can download and install a trial package - that is the best way to get a feel for the interface and discover if it can do what you want within the boundaries of your knowledge.

and the forums are always here for questions. =)

I can see how one could come to the conclusion you did, but it’s an inaccurate conclusion.  EE is hands-down the easiest CMS I’ve ever used.  It’s straight-forward, easy to setup and maintain.

That said, if you want to customize the templates for your site, then it would greatly help if you knew at least a little bit about HTML and CSS.  Otherwise, you can choose a design from a list of themes that ship with EE.

And like Lisa said, if you ever have any questions, feel free to post them here on the forums.

Sue,

1) I want to replace a community website/newsletter/forum that currently uses a lot of manual and disconnected software (Dreamweaver for site, Ikonboard for forum, custom mailer for emails) to accomplish it’s goals, which include: publishing content on the web, PUSHing that content via email or email digest or mere link to subscribers who prefer to get it that way, and providing forum for discussion.

2) Management of a community-built playground project. We will have numerous committees that need to share information and ideas and communicate with one another, follow strict timetables, send out email alerts, collaborate on documents, etc. We will have various levels of management/participation, from top managers who need access to everything, to workers who might belong to one or more committees, to just members of the general public who want to stay up to date on the progress of the project and perhaps donate money.

cm

cmb,

There is no forum module for EE yet. It’s on the to-do list, but not available yet. I never bother with Dreamweaver, but the ability to use it with EE is available in 1.1 which is in beta right now. There is a mailing list, but not the ability to automagically send out email digests.

RSS is available, and I have created templates that can be used to make html messages.

Using built in membership levels, you can collaberate on documents, but there isn’t an audit trail built into it.

There isn’t an ecommerce module out yet. It is also on the to-do list.

So in other words, some of what you want to accomplish is possible with EE, some is coming (no timetable) and some would be harder to accomplish.

The password scheme for EE is different than that used by InvisionBoard and PHPBB, but I did find a forum package that uses the same scheme, PunBB

Inside the Communicate section of the EE control panel, you can send out mail to member groups.

So do I think EE will meet your needs? It will meet some of them now, and some in the future.

I think that the Simple Digest Module can handle the email digests.  Have a look at it.

LisaJill, I was just reading up on that on Joe’s site. It’s not an automatic solution, but a great start.