Thread

I volunteer for a non-profit organisation.  We produce a free quarterly magazine about our local area, usually about youth issues and showcasing local work.

We have been looking to update our website to a CMS, I have some experience with Drupal but was thinking about EE since it looks like it might be a bit more user friendly.

1) Part of our website is a “showcase” section where we feature a local person’s work.  Can EE handle audio, video (can it auto generate video thumbnails? and embed video both hosted on the website, and linked from youtube) and images?  Ideally this page would have some introduction text and then a series of thumbnails which you clicked to open the video/image/audio (ideally using AJAX rather than a separate page).

2) I am worried the showcase section of the site might break the license rules.  I assume if the staff setup the showcase page it doesn’t break the license.  What if we allow the showcased person to administer that page too so they can update their work/details? Currently there is a “judging process” but if we decided to allow any user to create a showcase page I’m guessing that would definitely break the license?

3) is it possible to setup magazine issues, so you click on an issue and then have all the issues only for that magazine available?

4) About the yearly update subscription; if I skipped a year would I still be able to buy the update subscription another year or would I need to then buy a new license?

Thanks

Good morning, Joobs—

1) Part of our website is a “showcase” section where we feature a local person’s work.  Can EE handle audio, video (can it auto generate video thumbnails? and embed video both hosted on the website, and linked from youtube) and images?  Ideally this page would have some introduction text and then a series of thumbnails which you clicked to open the video/image/audio (ideally using AJAX rather than a separate page).

EE has no built in video thumbnailing system, but you might be able to do something with an extension, or even a program like phpThumb but for video (phpThumb itself may do video, I’m not sure as I don’t personally use it - it’s just popular on these forums).  You can certainly embed video both from Youtube and hosted on your site.  We have quite a few sites that do that and there’s even a plugin to make it easier: FLV Player.  You might also search for Monoslideshow and SlideShowPro for some of the series you might want to do - any AJAX is certainly possible but is something you would build yourself in your templates.

I did a search on “Video” in the site intros forum and found some great sites using video - one was Obviously.ca (and their intro thread which you should read - discusses some of the issues).  There were other hits, this one really stood out in view of your post, though.

2) I am worried the showcase section of the site might break the license rules.  I assume if the staff setup the showcase page it doesn’t break the license.  What if we allow the showcased person to administer that page too so they can update their work/details? Currently there is a “judging process” but if we decided to allow any user to create a showcase page I’m guessing that would definitely break the license?

You might like to look at this post from Rick which might help clarify the distinction for you.  If you would like to discuss it in further detail, then please email sales with some more details of what you imagine happening with the showcase.

3) is it possible to setup magazine issues, so you click on an issue and then have all the issues only for that magazine available?

Absolutely.  Check out jambor-ee.com to see a great implementation of this. I believe they have a tutorial for it on their site, as well.

4) About the yearly update subscription; if I skipped a year would I still be able to buy the update subscription another year or would I need to then buy a new license?

You would still be allowed to renew, you would not need to purchase at the full price.  That said - I would highly recommend against waiting a year for updates with any script or site - and our releases our spectacular. *grins*