Hi Andy,

That's quite a list of features. b2evolution doesn't cover all your needs out of the box today but most of what you want can certainly be done with a little bit of tweaking. Furthermore your expectations are in line with our own goals for the near future. So you can expect b2evolution to grow very close to what you want.

You should give us a link to your current site so we get a better idea.

-Francois.

Thanks for your reply!

@fplanque wrote earlier:

That's quite a list of features. b2evolution doesn't cover all your needs out of the box today but most of what you want can certainly be done with a little bit of tweaking....

Can you be specific about what it does and does not do from my list?

Furthermore your expectations are in line with our own goals for the near future. So you can expect b2evolution to grow very close to what you want.

Can you be specific about expectations? I would be happy to do the work, then submit it for inclusion in b2evoltution.

Thanks!

Hi Francois,

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate your taking time to respond.

Right now, the header, left menu, and footer are each put in a separate php file, so that changes made to any of them will immediately affect the entire site.

The unique code in the site is in the following pages:

1) Business Directory
This page is very code intensive, and accesses the MySQL database in order to create all of the categories. I would like to be able to use the code to create the business directory, because I've spent so much time on it, and it is doing exactly what I need. I can modify it to make it work with b2evolution.

2) Articles
This page has a list of article pages available. Each of the article pages actually pulls the content from a syndicator, so I'd like to still be able to do something like this. I'm willing to re-write this code to fit b2evolution. The ideal would be for me to write code to pulls the articles periodically, and put them into the b2evolution database system for display, as if they were typed in by a user.

3) Weather Center
This page pulls the weather report from the US National Weather Service, reformats it, adds the graphics, and displays it. I'm willing to re-write this code to fit b2evolution.

4) Lottery Results
This page pulls the lottery result from the State Lottery Commission in an XML file, reformats it, and displays it. I'm willing to re-write this code to fit b2evolution.

As far as the features I need, the most critical are:

1) User accounts with different permission levels.

Minimum required would be:
a) Public
b) Company/Organization Admin
c) Site Admin

Ideal User Account setup would be:

a) Public
b) Company/Organization User (can create/modify/delete pages)
c) Company/Organization Admin (must approve create/modify/delete pages)
d) Site Admin (must approve create/modify/delete pages from Company/Organization)
e) Site Admin (SuperUser, can do anything!)

2) Ability for at least "Company/Organization User" and "Site Admins" to create/modify/delete pages.

3) Some "Social Media" features (profile pages, friends, groups, etc.)

4) Ability for me to integrate my code for Business Directory, Articles, Weather Center, Lottery Results.

5) Ability for pages from a Company/Organization to have a different layout/design.

I know this is asking for a lot, but if b2evolution can provide some or most of it, then I can build on the rest.

The "wish list" contains:

1) Classified Ads, with the option of being able to charge for posting some ads.
2) Community Event Calendar, with the ability for businesses/organizations to post events, and have a site administrator approve them.

As a responsible member of the community, I am also willing to make some of my work available as plugins, though some of my work would not be made public, as it is proprietary to my business.

Right now, I need to decide on the platform I'm going to use, install it with the features that I need that are included, then start work on adding the other features I need.

Any information and advice you can give will be appreciated.

Again, thanks for your reply, and for any help you can give me in making a decision.

Andy, Here are answers to your questions

1) and 2) If you play with the b2evolution demo site you will easily get a feel for how it's possible to create as many user groups as you want and give them different permissions. Permissions are either global or on a specific blog/item collection.

You seem to be wanting to have 'Company/organization" admins. It is not clear to me what exactly those people can moderate. Can you see them have permissions on a specific blog? How many different Companies/Organizations do you have/expect?

3) Playing around with demo server or these forums you should be able to see al social features. (Note: these forums don't have everything enabled. We don't show the user directory for example). Profiles, messaging, groups... all ok.

4) Business Directory, Weather Center and Lottery Results can probably be stand alone scripts. If you want to integrate them into b2evolution, one way could be to make b2evo pages with a custom template.

Article syndication: are your sources RSS feeds? A plugin that pulls those into b2evolution posts would be welcome indeed ;)

5) Again, how many orgs do you expect? Who is going to make the layouts?

It is possible to use different post types and then use a different layout based on that.

Hope that helps ;)

Andy I had time to sit down and answer more thoroughly. I edited my post above.

Hi Francois,

@fplanque wrote earlier:

1) and 2) If you play with the b2evolution demo site you will easily get a feel for how it's possible to create as many user groups as you want and give them different permissions. Permissions are either global or on a specific blog/item collection.

I'll work with the demo, and probably set up my own instal of b2evolution in order to see what's going on within the database and the code.

You seem to be wanting to have 'Company/organization" admins. It is not clear to me what exactly those people can moderate. Can you see them have permissions on a specific blog? How many different Companies/Organizations do you have/expect?

The "Company/Organization" users and admins should have permissions only to add/change/delete content from their organization, but users would need to have their content approved by their organization's admin. It sounds like I could set up a "group" for an organization, and assign permissions to users and admins in that group?

3) Playing around with demo server or these forums you should be able to see all social features. (Note: these forums don't have everything enabled. We don't show the user directory for example). Profiles, messaging, groups... all ok.

I'm assuming that the typical social features I need will be there.

4) Business Directory, Weather Center and Lottery Results can probably be stand alone scripts. If you want to integrate them into b2evolution, one way could be to make b2evo pages with a custom template.

Without knowing the inner workings of b2evolution, I'm assuming I could create a simple plugin that contains my PHP code for each of these, and just drop it into each page? The code is now in a PHP file that is inserted with an INCLUDE where it needs to show up on a page. If there's a way to do a simple INCLUDE on a page, that should work. Or maybe I will need to create a plugin that does a simple INCLUDE? Or set up custom templates, as you suggest.

Article syndication: are your sources RSS feeds? A plugin that pulls those into b2evolution posts would be welcome indeed ;)

The article syndication is an RSS feed, with some customization to make it work for articles. The publishing industry has a custom RSS format for articles like this, and if I recall correctly, that's what I had to change.

There should be no problem for me to make it a generic RSS reader that pulls into a post, so that everyone else can use it. I'd be happy to do that, if b2evolution is the way for me to go!

5) Again, how many orgs do you expect? Who is going to make the layouts?

There will be many organizations in total. Right now I have over 2,000 organizations active and, though most of those would not need to have users, admins, and their own pages, I'd hope to set it up so that there's no particular limit to the number of organizations, other than the limit of available database space.

It is possible to use different post types and then use a different layout based on that.

This is not a deal breaker, though it sounds like using different post types would work. Most of the organizations will have the "standard" layout, and some few others will likely want to have a different layout.

Hope that helps ;)

Yes it does!

Thanks again!

Hi All,

Maybe I'm making some of this a bit harder than it needs to be?

An "organization" needs their own page(s). where they can post photos, videos, and text. It would not be as elaborate as an entire web site, but there should be a way for them to have something like a menu or toolbar to navigate to other pages within their own organization.

In order to visualize what I'm thinking, imagine that we are setting up b2evo for a large company that has a number of different locations. We want to have employees to have an account so they can add/change/delete content and pages only for their own locations. We want to have at least one "admin" at each location that has to approve content added by employees at that location.

Ideally we would also have a "super-admin" that has to approve all content from all users.

Once the content is set up, we want to have customers (not employees) create a user account in order to comment on the company's content, send and receive messages to the company employees and to other users, and receive information from the company, such as sales, coupons, etc.

We would then want to add a publicly-viewed calendar of events that employees can add/change/delete events, and admins have to approve events before they're published. Non-employee users can view the calendar, but can't add/change/delete.

I hope this example is a better explanation of what I need to do.

;)

Thanks!

Maybe this explanation makes more sense?

Hi Francois,

There will be many organizations in total. Right now I have over 2,000 organizations active and, though most of those would not need to have users, admins, and their own pages, I'd hope to set it up so that there's no particular limit to the number of organizations, other than the limit of available database space.

Thanks!

;)

Ok, so the question would be: how many organizations would need custom content and custom pages?
Is it reasonable that each organization admin is given specific permissions manually?

Also can you describe more how many pages per organization, how they are structured. How do you navigate to these pages, etc.
do you know any website that resembles what you want so we can look at it for reference?

Hi Francois,

@fplanque wrote earlier:

Ok, so the question would be: how many organizations would need custom content and custom pages?

Out of the many organizations, probably about 10% would need custom pages. I'm not sure what is meant by "custom content" as each organization would be posting their own content such as articles, photos, videos, events, etc.

I've installed a copy of b2evo for testing. The ability to have a different skin for a particular "blog" looks like it might work for this situation. If each organization has their own "blog" (i.e. page within the site), they can have their own "skin" (look and feel of their page(s)), so that might be all that I need to do to make this requirement work for me.

Is it reasonable that each organization admin is given specific permissions manually?

Yes. I imagine that an organization that needs an admin would contact me to arrange for setting up their pages, create their own user accounts, and that I would verify the admin(s), and manually upgrade their permissions to admin level.

Also can you describe more how many pages per organization, how they are structured.

I am assuming that either an organization will already have their own website, in which case they may only need one or two pages, or an organization would use this as their only website, in which case they may need 8 or 10 pages.

How do you navigate to these pages, etc.

I'd like it to be set up so that a visitor can navigate to these pages from another "directory" type of page, which lists a number of organizations, or the organization can have their own domain name that points to the first of their pages.

do you know any website that resembles what you want so we can look at it for reference?

I don't know of another site like this, but I'll see if I can find one.

Thanks for your continued interest!!

;)

OK makes sense. So I guess you can create a separate "blog" for each organization and give specific users specific permissions on each. Each of those blogs can be in a subfolder, on a subdomain or even a separate domain.

I believe b2evolution will work pretty well for what you have in mind. Given you have PHP knowledge it should be easy enough for you to integrate the article syndication, weather and lottery results.