Thread

Hi there,

Has anyone successfully created an intranet using ExpressionEngine? My client wants to add on to their existing EE site and provide a secure area for their clients to download documents and review other information. Each one of their clients would receive an unique login. Some information would be available to more than one client, while other information would be specific to an individual client.

I spent some time creating a partially workable solution using a plugin for secure file downloads, and categories to handle who sees what information, but it was a kludge and would require too much manual editing by my client. I’m wondering if anyone has done something like this successfully, or whether I just need to create something from scratch. Based on my experimentation, I think I need to go the scratch-built route, but I’d prefer to build on the existing EE site if possible.

Thanks,
Doug

I’ve done one for my family, and have built Extranets for clients.

EE has all the member group & permission-based viewing that you’d need, it seems.

I’ve done a few private/intranet type sites - some are totally private, others are extensions to public sites that are only accessible for certain member groups. As Mike said, member groups and permissions are what you need to control who sees what.

Thanks for the responses. I’ll take another look at the permissions area and see if I can improve what I have. Mike, I did check out your screencast on membership sites—that was helpful. I created something that partially worked, but the flow from both the user and admin standpoints was not very good. I forgot to mention one requirement, which is email notifications when a new document is posted. I did not find a solution for that, other than using the communications panel which is another step for the admins.

Is each new document an entry in a channel? 

If so there is a notification config you can use.

Yes, the docs are channel entries. That’s a good idea. I see the notification recipient list. In this case, it would have to go to all members of a particular group. For example, a member group might be a particular company, with individual members. When a doc is posted for that company, everyone in the company (member group) gets notified. There has to be a way to automate things, including adding people to the notification list, otherwise it will be too many steps for the site administrator. If feels like this is almost there, but not quite…

http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/mx-notify-control maybe?

Oh nice, that might do it. I’ll try it out! Thanks for the suggestion.