Thread

Hi 😊

Direct EE questions…
Can the admin split threads in the forums?

Can a blog post automatically create a forum post to continue the topic as a conversation?

Is there a wysiwyg plugin-module for use with forum posting?

General questiona on my project and if EE will work for this…

Building a community site for a niche hobby.

Site will have news posts on home page and a couple other topic pages. (newspaper style)

Site will have a few blogs for “reporters”.

Site will have a community forum.

Site will have photo/video gallery for users to upload their content to share.

Site will need to integrate with a Classifieds script somehow.

Site/blogs/forum/gallery will be free to basic users. However, a premium membership will be charged monthly or annually for Premium access to some news areas and forums. Can the ecommerce function of EE handle the payment and membership management in this case?
Or is something like amember needed here (especially if I later want to integrate the classifieds into the membership structure)?

My other consideration is whether to use the EE forum of somehow tie into vBulletin. I know EE has thousands of members on this forum. What is the most members ever online at one time? Anyone else running an EE forum that can speak for or against how robust it is in terms of functionality and performance? All feedback greatly appreciated!

Thanks. 😊

Howdy 😉

*EE admins can split threads- I would know from much experience!

*When you publish a blog entry, you have the option to create a forum thread at that time- generally you’ll enter the text you want to show in the forum thread- though there’s an extension around that will grab the text from one of your custom fields and handle that for you- see the docs for an overview.

*WYSIWYG in the forums?  Not by default- there are extensions that allow several editors to be used in the weblog publish page, but I’m not spotting a way to do it with forums.  I’ll do a bit more looking- but found myself being distracted reading old threads!  Short answer is ‘not out of the box’.  I’m not sure how difficult it would be to integrate at the moment.

*Community hobby site?  Sounds fun- no reason EE wouldn’t work.  Ditto the newspaper style- EE’s very flexibly on how you break up and present the content.

*Blogs for individual reporters- no problem.  In truth, I’d likely put all their entries in the same blog rather than doing one for each author- you can limit it so they only see their own posts in the cp.  You could then break things out by username.  However, creating a weblog for each is also easily doable.  Just make sure you aren’t edging over into being a ‘hosted blogging service’.  Doesn’t sound like you are at this point.

*Forum- no problem.

*Video and image sharing…  Is that for all members or just staff writers?  With large files, I prefer to use ftp to upload.  The images would be no problem either way, but I’d make sure to have plenty of php memory before considering video uploads.  So- this is doable, but how do you need it to work?

*I’ve integrated with a couple- just depends on the system.  Do you have one in mind?  Should be no problem, though.

*If it’s a monthly charge to maintain premium access?  You’d need to go a custom route.  aMember is the one I know folks have used successfully.

*The stats are showing the most online on this forum at one time @ 1149.  I’ll see if I can dig up some other large forums.  But in general- EE’s forum is very well optimized and designed to handle the load.  I’ve never seen a direct comparison with vBulletin though.  But one of the nicest bits about the EE Forum compared to tying in other options is the full member integration.  That tends to be a real pain otherwise.

Have you tried out EE?  If not- I’d recommend taking it for a spin to get a feel for how it works.

Hi Robin,

Thanks for the excellent answers!

On the Video and image sharing, I’d like it to be for all members. Can you point me to a site that would show a good example of how this works in EE? How much memory would you think is needed for video uploads? Is it possible to set the images/videos to be uploaded to and served from a separate server from where EE resides?

For classifieds and integration, I’ve reviewed a few, but have not decided on anything yet. I’m wide open for suggestions though if you have any you’d like to point out and share. 😊

On the recurring monthly/annual charge for premium access, is is possible in EE to use PayPal with IPN and subscriptions to automatically upgrade and downgrade memberships? PayPal sends IPN notifications when a subscription starts, and again sends an IPN notification when the subscription ends. Would EE recognize this and upgrade/downgrade the membership? This would be a perfect way to manage memberships subscriptions in EE.

THanks so much for your help Robin!

😊

Let me ask around on the videos.  In theory, they could work exactly like image uploads do.  However, you’ll notice most vid sharing sites- aka youtube- actually transform the video into flash for display.  That?  Would take custom coding.  But to just allow them to upload video, you’d just tweak the allowed file types to allow whatever you want to allow and let them upload.  Which will take a while with a big file.

But- since I don’t like that idea (prefer the flash approach), I’ve personally gone with only allowing folks to embed vids from elsewhere- let them deal with the hassle and bandwidth.  Unless it’s vids uploaded by admins- in which case we have a standardized format and still show them via a flash player- and they ftp them up.

But like I say- it’s a good question.  I’ll check with the crew and may fire off a post in ‘General Discussion’ because I’m curious as to how other folks are handling.

As to the subscription issue- the simple commerce module can’t quite handle it, because it won’t delist them.  And- they have to already be a member for it to recognize the return IPN data.  Now- if they are already a member and they buy a subscription, simple commerce CAN automatically change their member level.  But- it would take some custom work to kick them back to the old member level at a set amount of time.  And if I were building something to do that, I’d probably build in some email notification to remind them their subscription was almost up.  And then you’d need to make sure that if they ‘re-up’ the time for the new sub gets added on at the end of the prior subscription.

Er- which is a long way of saying, I think it could be custom coded without killing yourself, but it would definitely take some custom work to do it.  Make sense?

Where can I find some examples of sites where EE is used for members sharing images (and/or videos)? Gallery style or otherwise.

Thanks.

Hi, Vanguard, you can peruse our Showcase =)

At this point I’d prefer to use the built-in forum instead fo going the vBulletin route. I saw a post around here saying subforums were not possible though. Is this accurate? No subforums?

If this is not possible, is it being developed? Or is this not going to happen.

I notice Magento Commerce is running their site/forum on EE. They updated their EE forum a few days ago to make subforums possible. 😊 Will we see this? 😊

Sub-forums are not a current feature of ExpressionEngine; and we don’t discuss what may be coming or when.  However, that looks like a custom extension or some such; have you considered asking them how they implemented it?