Thread

Basic Premise:  Website for a car club that needs event and article management, discussion forum and a photo gallery as the 3 basic core items.  There needs to be “member only” content and other content as this will be a technical resource for other enthusiasts.

My experience comes from being an admin on a vBulletin powered forum and I was very impressed with its flexibility, security measures, and customization for user groups.  I don’t have any PHP knowledge, have a graphic design background and am familiar with other coding languages, but rusty.  So I feel confident in getting over the initial learning curve, I just want to make sure I can cut out a lot of the garbage that comes with an open source system and focus primarily on content and customization.

After reading the features and searching around, I’m still a little unsure if EE will fit all my needs, so if you can help me out here, it’d be much appreciated!

Usergroups and Integration
I need a single logon for everything.  That doesn’t seem to be a problem with EE, but I want to be able to setup different levels of security based on user groups.  My experience with vB is that you can assign multiple user groups to a person as necessary.  So I’d want people who are “members” of the club to have access to certain areas, while “registered” users have limited access and guests have little to no rights.  But there might be people who are “members” that I don’t want to be “writers” for articles and vice-versa.  Does EE’s usergroup management have that kind of flexibility?

Basically I envision 4 tiers across the site.  Guests, registered users, clubs members, administrators.  Then under each core area, I’d have additional securities assigned of writers / editors for the weblog management amd moderators for the discussion forum.  These would ideally be extra privileges assigned to people as necessary.  Overall, I need to focus on “members only” content while making people register so I can restrict bandwidth and access to bots and guests.  I see the member module in add-ons, just trying to clear up that it will do all of this.

Article Management
I want to restrict access based on usergroups.  Ex. admins / writers have full reign, club members can read all articles, registered users can read certain articles and guest can read the first portion of an article, but would have to register to read the full article.  I’m still a little tricky on the terminology here, but I can treat weblogs like categories and create articles under them, then have sub-categories under a weblog?  Ex… If I want a section of my site dedicated to DIY guides, can I have sub-sections for audio, engine, etc…?

In regards to the other features, with the article pagination, does that support usergroups?  Ideally, I’d like guests to see part or the first page of the article, and only registered users to see the rest.  For the submission status, writers submit an article, automatically goes to a queue for review, then I or another person could review before approving and publishing to the site?  I feel pretty confident about EE’s ability to deliver the article and site content I want, just trying to make sure it’ll do the bells and whistles.

Discussion Forum
I’m pretty intimate with vB, so the discussion forum is probably my biggest question mark here with EE.  My big thing is the usergroup access.  I want different levels of forum accessibility and features.  For PM’s, can I add / restrict the number available based on usergroup?  Also, can I have different sub-forums that are visible and hidden based off usergroups?  I’d want things only for display to guests, no searching capabilities and no posting capabilities.  Registered users could see most sub-forums, have limited PM capabilities, no attachment capabilities and searches once every 15-30 seconds, while members could see private forums, unlimited PM capabilities, etc…  At the moment, my forum needs are small, but I need to make sure its capable of supporting the traffic and usage as more people join.

Photo Gallery
Pretty simple, but not necessarily easy!  I want to have individual galleries for each member that is only accessible to be viewed by other members and a master gallery that only the admins can use, but is viewable by all.  If I can automate creation of the member galleries, that’s perfect, but I can create those manually.  Registered users wouldn’t get a gallery, but could view the master one.

EDIT: One last final question.  The themes, do they apply to all modules of EE?  If I create a theme for my core site, will that automatically apply to my forum and photo gallery?  Or do I have to create a theme for each individual module?

I think that covers a lot of what is on my mind.  Thanks in advance for any insight you can offer!

Usergroups and Integration
I need a single logon for everything.  That doesn’t seem to be a problem with EE, but I want to be able to setup different levels of security based on user groups.  My experience with vB is that you can assign multiple user groups to a person as necessary.  So I’d want people who are “members” of the club to have access to certain areas, while “registered” users have limited access and guests have little to no rights.  But there might be people who are “members” that I don’t want to be “writers” for articles and vice-versa.  Does EE’s usergroup management have that kind of flexibility?

 

Well the single logon is no problem, of course.

In ExpressionEngine, a single user can belong to only a single group.  So if you are going to have many permutations you may have some difficulties there.  The flip side to this is that there are now 3 methods of restricting content based on member group.  One is solspace.com’s Permission Module which allows you to set up “Permission Points” and a user can be in any number of such points.  This is only good for front-end information, but would free up your member groups for use solely for writing / editing priveleges.

There is another, similar Module here: Custom Member Groups.

And one solely for entries: Restrict Entries by Group.

Basically I envision 4 tiers across the site.  Guests, registered users, clubs members, administrators.  Then under each core area, I’d have additional securities assigned of writers / editors for the weblog management amd moderators for the discussion forum.  These would ideally be extra privileges assigned to people as necessary.  Overall, I need to focus on “members only” content while making people register so I can restrict bandwidth and access to bots and guests.  I see the member module in add-ons, just trying to clear up that it will do all of this.

Well by making content logged-in only it will manage bots and guests by default.  I think with a combination of one of the above solutions and EE’s built-in member groups you could realize this, though it would take some planning.

Article Management
I want to restrict access based on usergroups.  Ex. admins / writers have full reign, club members can read all articles, registered users can read certain articles and guest can read the first portion of an article, but would have to register to read the full article.  I’m still a little tricky on the terminology here, but I can treat weblogs like categories and create articles under them, then have sub-categories under a weblog?  Ex… If I want a section of my site dedicated to DIY guides, can I have sub-sections for audio, engine, etc…?

Absolutely.  And category vs. weblog is a tricky question, you can read some of what comes into that decision here.

In regards to the other features, with the article pagination, does that support usergroups?  Ideally, I’d like guests to see part or the first page of the article, and only registered users to see the rest.

This is all templated so yes, you can do this.

For the submission status, writers submit an article, automatically goes to a queue for review, then I or another person could review before approving and publishing to the site?  I feel pretty confident about EE’s ability to deliver the article and site content I want, just trying to make sure it’ll do the bells and whistles.

Yes, you can set up this type of workflow

Discussion Forum
I’m pretty intimate with vB, so the discussion forum is probably my biggest question mark here with EE.  My big thing is the usergroup access.  I want different levels of forum accessibility and features.  For PM’s, can I add / restrict the number available based on usergroup?  Also, can I have different sub-forums that are visible and hidden based off usergroups?  I’d want things only for display to guests, no searching capabilities and no posting capabilities.  Registered users could see most sub-forums, have limited PM capabilities, no attachment capabilities and searches once every 15-30 seconds, while members could see private forums, unlimited PM capabilities, etc…  At the moment, my forum needs are small, but I need to make sure its capable of supporting the traffic and usage as more people join.

Private Message preferences are, indeed, handled per member group.  That includes maximum in one day, maximim in inbox, attachments, and sending them at all.

Yes, each forum has its own discrete set of permissions.  You can change searching, posting, replying, attachments, etc - per forum, per member group.

So all of the things that you ask here are possible in ExpressionEngine.

Photo Gallery
Pretty simple, but not necessarily easy!  I want to have individual galleries for each member that is only accessible to be viewed by other members and a master gallery that only the admins can use, but is viewable by all.  If I can automate creation of the member galleries, that’s perfect, but I can create those manually.  Registered users wouldn’t get a gallery, but could view the master one.

I’m not quite following what you want here, but this sounds a bit like a hosted blog service.  The gallery module is fairly simple, but you could set up a gallery using a weblog and, within the license, allow authors to post to a community gallery. 

[cont.]

EDIT: One last final question.  The themes, do they apply to all modules of EE?  If I create a theme for my core site, will that automatically apply to my forum and photo gallery?  Or do I have to create a theme for each individual module?

ExpressionEngine is entirely templated.  The forums use a separate templating system from the main template engine, but the gallery and weblog share the templating system.  So it’s not per module, but you would have to do some separate customizations for the forum and for hte main template engine.

Lisa, thanks for getting back to me.  I apologize if I ask the obvious, been comparing several different CMS packages over the last week and its hard to keep straight sometimes who offers what!

In ExpressionEngine, a single user can belong to only a single group.  So if you are going to have many permutations you may have some difficulties there.  The flip side to this is that there are now 3 methods of restricting content based on member group.  One is solspace.com’s Permission Module which allows you to set up “Permission Points” and a user can be in any number of such points.  This is only good for front-end information, but would free up your member groups for use solely for writing / editing priveleges.

There is another, similar Module here: Custom Member Groups.

And one solely for entries: Restrict Entries by Group.

Well by making content logged-in only it will manage bots and guests by default.  I think with a combination of one of the above solutions and EE’s built-in member groups you could realize this, though it would take some planning.

Gotcha, that’s probably the one thing about EE that worries me because a huge part of my planned design circles around usergroup and subgroup access rights.  I see how I could try make it work, but part of me would feel a lot more comfortable if the core of the system I’m using works around what I need, rather than me working around what the system needs.  Because I’m so familiar with vBulletin and really know how to make the use out of its features, I’m still kind of leaning towards going with that for my forum management and integrating another program like Subdreamer that uses its user database and adds the basic article features I’m looking for. :\

I’ll have to look at those mods more and think about a plan.  Are usergroups easily changeable even though a person can’t be a member of more than one?  Ex, if I had a schema of specific usergroups that had the access I wanted.

Guest
RegUser
RegUser_Writer
RegUser_Moderator
ClubMember
ClubMember_Writer
ClubMemeber_Moderator
Admin
and so on…

That could potentially work as well, just thinking of the best kind of organization because this initial planning is really what will help to make my site successful!

Absolutely.  And category vs. weblog is a tricky question, you can read some of what comes into that decision here.

Other than butchering the use of the terms, that’s pretty much along the lines of what I want to do.  Align a decisive section to a weblog, then that can be broken up into categories and sub-categories.

I’m not quite following what you want here, but this sounds a bit like a hosted blog service.  The gallery module is fairly simple, but you could set up a gallery using a weblog and, within the license, allow authors to post to a community gallery.

I’m kind of referring to what you can get from Menalto’s Gallery program.  It allows people to register and setup independent galleries under one master gallery.  People can’t access each other galleries, other than viewing.  Kind of what I’m aiming for.

Though I think I’m following what you’re saying.  I could use a weblog to create a gallery for the members, then they could all post photos to that one gallery, and only people of the proper usergroup could view it.  That kind of gets me halfway to where I’d want to be.  I’d be ok, with a single gallery assigned to a weblog on the admin could post to, but everybody could view the photos from.  Then I could install an instance of Menalto’s Gallery for the individual members if needed.

ExpressionEngine is entirely templated.  The forums use a separate templating system from the main template engine, but the gallery and weblog share the templating system.  So it’s not per module, but you would have to do some separate customizations for the forum and for hte main template engine.

Right, that’s not much different than if I used a package of independent forum software and another CMS that sat on top of it.

One more question.  I did some searching and couldn’t find anything.  Does EE have event calendar support?  Basically, on the main page I’d like to be able to incorporate a calendar with relevant events happening on those dates.  I’m guessing not, kind of a nice to have, but not critical.

Thanks for the insight, still have some research and thinking to do! 😊

helldorado,

EE supports displaying a calendar of weblog entries (see here: http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/weblog/calendar.html).

Usually you’d create a seperate weblog (ie. ‘Events Calendar’), then each entry you post is an event.

So yes, it does that very easily. If you want to have scheduled, repeating events, you’ll need the Repeet plugin.

Lisa, thanks for getting back to me.  I apologize if I ask the obvious, been comparing several different CMS packages over the last week and its hard to keep straight sometimes who offers what!

My pleasure, and don’t worry.  Your request for information was one of the most fully fleshed out I’ve answered - that made it intimidating to some extent, but it meant I was able to give you a more fully fleshed out answer, as well, even if I did run out of space. =)

Gotcha, that’s probably the one thing about EE that worries me because a huge part of my planned design circles around usergroup and subgroup access rights.  I see how I could try make it work, but part of me would feel a lot more comfortable if the core of the system I’m using works around what I need, rather than me working around what the system needs.  Because I’m so familiar with vBulletin and really know how to make the use out of its features, I’m still kind of leaning towards going with that for my forum management and integrating another program like Subdreamer that uses its user database and adds the basic article features I’m looking for. :\

Perhaps I can address your concerns over core vs. third party - if you tell me what they are.  Are there particular reasons you are hesitant to look at third-party solutions?

And I agree, you should always go with a system that at least works with you for the majority of your needs (no system is 100% perfect, is it?).  But being familiar with a system doesn’t make it better, just easier to manipulate at first. 

You’re not going to get a sales pitch from me here - ExpressionEngine *is* excellent, I think it’s the best and that’s why I’m here - but there are absolutely projects where other projects or solutions are better for that particular situation. 

I’ll have to look at those mods more and think about a plan.  Are usergroups easily changeable even though a person can’t be a member of more than one?  Ex, if I had a schema of specific usergroups that had the access I wanted.

Yes, you can easily swap a member from one user group to another.  I’ve removed your particular set of examples - but absolutely having a plan is the best way to approach this.  Ultimately I think that, considering the limitation of one member / one group (and there is a long feature request to change this) - deciding what your subsets are - and if you can handle that in a reasonable number of groups that handle said permutations, is the deciding factor for your project in this case - or at least one of them.

Other than butchering the use of the terms, that’s pretty much along the lines of what I want to do.  Align a decisive section to a weblog, then that can be broken up into categories and sub-categories.

Then you’ve got it.  The easy part here, of course, is that one weblog can have multiple category groups and those category groups can be shared amongst weblogs - you can create a lot of cross-referential data using that to your advantage.

I’m kind of referring to what you can get from Menalto’s Gallery program.  It allows people to register and setup independent galleries under one master gallery.  People can’t access each other galleries, other than viewing.  Kind of what I’m aiming for.

The way I would handle this is communal - a shared weblog that handled gallery content, and many authors post into the pool of content. You can limit the viewing by one author, but it is a communal gallery rather than individual galleries.  That could be handled by EE within the license.

Allowing people to self-host their galleries through your EE would not be part of the license and would have some technical difficulties as well.

Though I think I’m following what you’re saying.  I could use a weblog to create a gallery for the members, then they could all post photos to that one gallery, and only people of the proper usergroup could view it.  That kind of gets me halfway to where I’d want to be.  I’d be ok, with a single gallery assigned to a weblog on the admin could post to, but everybody could view the photos from.  Then I could install an instance of Menalto’s Gallery for the individual members if needed.

I think we’re on the same page here.  Viewing rights by all is no problem, of course.

ExpressionEngine is entirely templated.  The forums use a separate templating system from the main template engine, but the gallery and weblog share the templating system.  So it’s not per module, but you would have to do some separate customizations for the forum and for hte main template engine.

Right, that’s not much different than if I used a package of independent forum software and another CMS that sat on top of it.

Except that you have a single-sign on, and you can access the forum data across in the installation. You can also turn on PHP in the forum module allowing you to pull in information from the rest of the EE installation.  The minor work of customizing the templates is not the only thing at stake here. =)

One more question.  I did some searching and couldn’t find anything.  Does EE have event calendar support?  Basically, on the main page I’d like to be able to incorporate a calendar with relevant events happening on those dates.  I’m guessing not, kind of a nice to have, but not critical.

Absolutely do-able and Sam answered your question. In fact, if you search in the Site Intros forum for “event calendar” you’ll get a lot of sites back highlighting that feature. 

Thanks for the insight, still have some research and thinking to do! 😊

Take your time, try out the demos and ask more questions =)