Thread

First off I love EE, its simple, easy to use for both programmer and client and extremely versatile, when I first found it I knew my prayers had been answered. Saying that there are a couple of things I don’t like, some of the administrative functionality is so buried it takes forever to find and the file management in 1.x could definitely be better.

Anyway I am just about to embark on creating a vacation rental website and I can’t work out if its the right tool for the job or I should start from scratch and code it myself using CodeIgniter or CakePHP. I’d love some thoughts from the community here before I make a move one way or the other.

Part of what is attracting me is obviously the out of the box functionality (user management, access levels, messaging, publising etc) and the fact that there are constraints, I’ll have to program a certain way and that will keep me honest.

However I’ve never written a plugin or module for EE so I have no first hand experience of how easy this really is. I’ve read up on the documentation and it seems fairly straight forward but you never know until your roll your sleeves up.

Would this be the right tool to let potentially hundreds / thousands of individuals manage one or several entries (properties)?
How easy would it be for individuals to manage their own events calendar (bookings)?
How could I track the amount of credit each user has?
Is it easy to set up a private messaging tool where renters and home owners could interact?

I’d love some general feedback and ideas.

Thanks.

Hi koala kid,

You can bend EE almost any way you like and it is certainly up to the task of handling huge load (Exhibit A).

If you’re going to be handling that much users, I’d certainly take a quick peek at the User module over at Solspace or EEMember by Invanto (though their pricing model is a bit different from most EE add-ons). Private messaging is already built into EE, but for a more advanced expirience you could try Friends, also by Solspace. It ties right into and works beautifully with User.

Out of the box you can restrict editing of entries by the user that has submitted it in the first place, so that shouldn’t be a problem. The same goes for the events (those could be simple entries in a weblog).

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought.

Greetz,
Wouter

Thanks for the great info, I’m pretty much decided to run with EE. Would you have an opinion on v1.6.x over v 2.0? Obviously EE 2 is meant to be an improvement in many regards but have 3rd parties been porting their add-ons?  I also like the idea that EE2 is based on CodeIgniter and should be easier to modify / provide add-ons.

I think I just found the answer to my question, definitely rolling with EE2, thanks for the tips. http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/ee2/

It all depends on what the timeframe is for this project… As it stands now, a lot of the major add-ons you’ll be needing aren’t available yet for EE2. And to be honest, EE2 ís still in beta—even though that means nothing for products from EllisLab.

So if you ask me, go with 1.6.x… Or if you can postpone the project to wait for a RC of 2.0 and the needed add-ons, do that… (note: there are no guarantees that add-ons will be ported in time)

Greetz,
Wouter

How easy will it be to upgrade later to EE2 and any idea if this means re-buying licences for add-ons?