Thread

Hello all,
I am working on a new project that I would love to use EE for but I am not certain if it would be the best solution for my needs. Any help or suggestions that can be offered would be greatly appreciated. Here is a high level scope:

The purpose of the site is to display events based on regions. A user would start with a search query of their area (zip code / town / county / state ..etc.) and will then be presented with events related to that area.  The results will include date stamped events (like a calendar) as well as general things to do in close location to the area they entered. Users can then view an event and add a comment or review on it.

So far - no biggie - but here are my concerns about EE:

2. Can you filter search results. For example, if a user is viewing events close to their location can they expand the distance and get deeper results?

1. The site content is populated by members. Each event or general things to do would be added by a community member. The member list needs to be able to grow. It might start with 100 members and grow to 10,000 - can EE handle this functionality and capacity? Is there a limit to member groups? For instance one group might be from zip code 12345 and another from 67890 with each group containing possibly thousands of members.

2. No member will need to be presented with a control panel to perform these tasks. All member input fields should be editable within the site itself. Any member preferences should be editable within the site itself. Is this possible with EE?

3. Certain members might be commercial. In this case they would be aloud to not only post events but also paid ads in relation to their events. Is it possible to have them tag these ads with keywords that would then allow these ads to rotate dynamically on certain pages that might be associated with these tags or appear on search results? Example: ad tagged “food” and “wine” then a user lands on an event for “Wine and cheese tasting” and this ad dynamically appears based on association.

4. Lastly if all this is possible with EE (and I am already assuming it is) with this type of set-up (member driven / content creation) would you say EE is the recommended platform or just that EE can be configured to make it work?

Thanks!

Hi c-pawl

At first glance there’s nothing in your list that can’t be done with EE.

1. Site content

You’d likely use Safecracker to allow members to add content (events) - http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/modules/safecracker/index.html - you can then set up your Events channel with all the custom fields you need

For member account management you’d probably need an addon to allow your members to maintain their profiles and preferences, eg http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/user or http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/zoo-visitor

There’s no limit to the number of member groups, but having granular groups for postal code areas isn’t the way to go. Member groups are best as more general in scope such as Bronze members. Silver members, Gol members etc.

As far as number of members goes, there are EE sites with many many 10’s of thousands members so unless you get into really huge numbers it shouldn’t be an problem.

2. Filtering searches

Yes you could use addons such as http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/low-search or http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/super-search to handle initial searching, filtering etc.

For “nearby” listings there are some addons that can help:
http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/geofinder can find info withing a radius of any given address (like a store locator), see more similar addons at http://devot-ee.com/search/results?keywords=store+locator&addon_version_support=ee2

3. “Commercial” members

This is where member groups come into play. You could have two members groups - “Normal” for ordinary members, and “Commercial” for those special members! You can the use the member groups to allow access to post ads, or even additional info to events that isn’t available to ordinary members.

Displaying ads created by commercial members is do-able, you could use tags association, categories etc to associate an ad with a page view.

It’s all easily possible with EE, the biggest part is in how you plan and implement it - EE allows you to build in virtually any way you want.