An organization where I consult has an online product with “smart search.” Registered users pay to set up an automated query of a database that is updated at least weekly and sometimes daily with tens of thousands of listings.
When the database is updated with listings containing keywords that they have submitted during the registration process, a daily automated query notes the listings and sends them an email with links back to those listings.
A vendor built this product from scratch, but the organization is unhappy with the vendor for some good reasons. It appears possible to build such a product in PHP/MySQL, but I would like to see if it can be built in EE.
EE has modules for registration, ecommerce, query and email. I’m famililar with all four because of one small site I manage, but I’m not an expert programmer. I don’t have hard, specific questions yet because I’m just starting to research this. I’ll just start with, does anyone know of a similar product that has been built in EE? Can EE provide the kind of automated querying and emailing that we need without extensive PHP coding?