Thread

I am developing a site for a customer and I was wondering if EE has a file management system - a team of 16 people need a place to securely store and share word, excel, pdf and powerpoint files. This would involve letting users upload files, browse files, tag files with metadata, search for files, and download files.

Can this be done using EE?

Thanks!

I’d suggesting trying a trial version to get a feel and discover for certain if EE will do the trick in this particular case.

It is possible- but there are a variety of ways to set it up, and depend in part on how ‘locked down’ files need to be.

I would lean toward entering uploads as weblog entries- members with permission to publish to a weblog and who have been granted access to an upload destination can upload images/files/etc when they publish.  You can then title and add meta data in custom fields and display the information and a download link (or what have you) on a template just like any other entry.

All that is standard.  If you need to protect the files?  A low level of protection is to simply limit access to the templates so that only logged in folks with proper permissions can view the entries and links.  It wouldn’t prevent someone from going directly to a file if they have the link, and to do that would require some customization.  So- depends a bit on what you need to say how well a standard install will handle things.

There are some other ways to approach this, including some third party modules.  But this is likely the approach I’d take based on your description.  It is something you might want to play with a bit to get a feel for how it might work.

That make sense?

Thanks for the info.

I don’t think that approach would work for us. They want some sort of folder structure for the files, and I think that security is important so it would have to be more secure than the approach you described.

Can you please mention some of the 3rd part applications that might help with this?

For example, can something like Knowledge Tree be integrated into an EE site?

Robin,

I also need to be able to restrict viewing of uploaded files and images so that only logged-in members can see them.

Security through obscurity is not an option. An anonymous user must not be able to view a list of the upload directory’s contents, and they must not be able to view or download the file, even if they know the URL.

Can you go into detail on what customization and/or what third-party modules would be required?

Thanks!

I hadn’t checked out Knowledge Tree before- and while I did browser it, can’t say for sure how easy it would be to integrate.  And it would likely depend on how integrated you need it to be.  Looks interesting, though.

Honestly- it’s doable via EE alone, but I’m not dead sure EE is the best choice.  What do you need to do besides the file repository?  Is that a single element of a larger project?  If so, then it would be worth digging into how EE can handle it.  If Knowledge Tree does everything you need ‘out of the box’- in other words, you don’t so much need a CMS as just Knowledge Tree functionality?  Then it may be you don’t need EE for this particular project.

Let me know on the above- we can talk integration and custom modules/code to get EE working for what you need.  But if there’s already a perfect solution, then the best option is to go with that, IMO.

Is that making sense?

My situation is different from that of the person who started this thread.

I have already spent a lot of time building an EE site for the charter school that my kids go to. I realized late in the project that the control I had over what posts members and non-members would be able to see did not extend to the files and images that were uploaded along with the posts. If I can’t restrict that access, then I’ve wasted a huge amount of both my time and the school’s.

I realize that a pre-sales forum is not the best place for this, but I was having a hard time finding any information on the subject, and when I ran across this thread it seemed to apply directly to my needs.

Can you please fill me in on the details of how to accomplish the access restrictions that I so desperately need, or can you pass me to someone who can?

Thanks!
-Hilary