CMS Noob Going In Circles!

Hello All @ Digital Point!

I have a few ideas that would really benefit from a cms system that in time also has some sort of forum integration.

I want a site where members sign up. They all have a profile and are able to inform others about themselves. I also want these members to be able to upload files to their profiles such as images and video files.

I would like a permissions based system. When a user updates their profile or uploads files, only members that have been given permission are allowed to view this informatin whilst others have no or very minimal access. I want the member to allow different user groups to view certain things and thus a varied user-management system would be a bonus.

A system like elgg (http://elgg.org/) seems to have many of the things I want but is still in it's infancy.

I like this website: http://www.tabblo.com/studio as they state:

On Tabblo

What is a "tabblo"?

A tabblo is a collection of photos and words brought together by a stylized template that can be customized to your heart's content. A tabblo lives at a permanent URL and can be private, accessed by whoever you invite, or public for the whole world to see.

How do I use my tabblos?

You can share your tabblos, publish them to other sites or blogs, or just keep them to yourself. Once you've designed a tabblo, the only limit in how you use it is your imagination.

Can anyone see my tabblos?

That depends on you. As the final step in your design of a tabblo, you get to choose a level of privacy which applies to people who come to the URL either within the Tabblo community or from the world at large.

What is my "Circle"?

Your circle is the group of people who you would like to collaborate with either by sharing pictures for creating tabblos, or by swapping commentary on the tabblos each of you makes.

The elements highlighted in bold seem to be exactly what I want from a CMS system that later hopefully allows forum integration becuase I want people to be able to share information in carefully created categories and having the same username and password as the CMS would be a logical idea.

Overall the website is like myspace, facebook or what ever the latest craze is but for a niche market. I want users to have their own section and potentially colloborate with others who have similar interests etc!

I have messed around with joomla and drupal but think something like elgg is easier to make. Subdreamer seems like an option but I am just going crazy looking at so many CMS systems!

Thanks in advance!

 

Then this ought to really help

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

 

www.opensourcecms.com - choose one... Reputable CMS systems that do it well are Drupal, e107, joomla, mambo, Xoops ... I'll stop there.

There are many ways of doing what you talk about. I believe you wouldn't have a problem making it with any of the above.

Good luck.

 

hey thanks for the replies!

I have just installed all the CMS's mentioned above and the admin section for e107 seems the most easiest to understand and thus am messing around with it the most.

Overall I am having a hardtime understand the concept of:

" I would like a permissions based system. When a user updates their profile or uploads files, only members that have been given permission are allowed to view this informatin whilst others have no or very minimal access. I want the member to allow different user groups to view certain things and thus a varied user-management system would be a bonus."

How do I set-up e107 to do this?

Thanks!

 

I think Drupal.org will help you

and here is very good guide to get you started !
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource11/

 

hey thanks for the link iatbm!

i will have a think about both e107 and drupal and try reach my goal!

i like what tabblo.com and elgg does and just want something similar and hopefully either of the two mentioned CMS's can deliver that.

Thanks,

 

Check out the plugins section of drupal. Pretty much everything you want. At the end Drupal is the thing that will make all things you mentioned possible ...

 

thanks for sharing the info

 

Thank you again for your reply iatbm. I am being cautious and looking at all possibilities at the moment becuase once I start the project I do not want to keep switching CMS's due to it's lack of expandability etc.

I will look at Drupal more closely as many people across the Internet reccomend it and try and figure out a way it fits in with what I want to do.

I will look through the plugins and set-up dummy users and see if it works well etc.

Thanks,

 

When ever you have time iatbm can you highlight some key/important/popular plugins over @ Drupal?

There are so many! Should I be looking at "User access/authentication"
or "User management" for the basis of each member of the site to set permissions for who can look at their profile etc?

Will Drupal also allow me to integrate a free forum that makes use of same login details as 'my' Drupal site once set-up?

Thanks in advance!

 

Drupal already has built in user permission....and forum also

 

Thank you for pointing that out iatbm!

I am overlooking the admin features now as it seems more advanced/indepth than other CMS's I have tried recently such as e107 and wordpress etc and thus finding it a bit difficult to come to grips with it.

I have set-up an admin and then two individual members for testing. Having set it up when member one posts or uploads something it appears in the main site. I think I need to find a simple tutorial to help set-up the basics.

Elgg does it out-of-the-box but Drupal hopefully overtime can help my website grow.

Thanks,

 

Drupal is a little "scary" at the beginning but once you find out how it works it is easier and more user friendly than e107, at least for me that is

Make sure you read that ibm article I posted ... after that everything will be much clearer!

 

I will print of the article and try make sense of it.

I just found: http:// www. ourmedia . org/ and it is powered by Drupal and it framework is similar to what I have mentioned above and thus learning Drupal seems a good option.

This is all new to me. I have ideas but need to convert them to working solutions. Easier said then done at the present moment.

Thanks iatbm for your valuable comments so far!