Need CMS Recommendation

[southplatte]

I am working on a personal project and had thought I would custom develop the system I need, however 7 months into this project and I have not had near the time to devote to it as I would have liked. Since it is for myself and not for my employer the timeline is not an issue, however I would like to get it up and running sooner than I am doing at the current rate.

With that being said, I know there are several PHP/MySQL based CMS systems in existence, so I would like to list my requirements and get some recommendations based upon that requirements list.

Basic Synopsis:
The site will offer paid memberships on a monthly renewal basis with the option to save by renewing quarterly or annually. Each member that pays will automatically be placed into an affiliate program, where in they can earn a percentage of directly referred new members (no multi-level affiliate program here, just direct referrals). I would like to offer the following features on the site:

• The site will have to have forums
  
  It needs to have advertising management to aid in monetizing the site further, really to pay for monthly hosting/bandwidth needs if/when the monthly membership fees do not cover these costs(this needs to be available for the users as noted below as well)
  
  It should have ecommerce functions available or installable via modules (but not necessarily available for the users to setup their own store though that may be an option looked at down the road)
  
  It has to have classifieds that are available to all paid users.
  
  It should allow venues to add themselves free (unpaid) to post events and gatherings that show up in the user's personal "mini site" (as described below) based upon zip code proximity or city/state.
  
  Each user gets their own unique URL for their own "mini" site (domain.com/user).

Each mini site then has the following:

• photo gallery
  calendar/planner
  road maps
  blog
  friends listing
  donation (paypal, chip-in) area for user to solicit donations for their specific cause/project
  event listing (create events local to their area, display evens within x miles of their area, as well as national events -- this will be in addition to the venue even listing users that are not regular members and both sets of events should show up in the same area, as described below)
  a feed for their ebay/other auctions
  The ability for them to place their own advertising banners on their "mini" site with banner rotator
  weather module (must be able to show at a minimum two locations at one time, based upon zip city/state)
  Event/gathering listing based upon their location (or a location selected via zip or city/state)

In looking at the various CMSes available I am pretty sure I do not want to use PHPNuke, as I have messed with it in the passed and did not care for it. I have not done much other than testing the various demos on the following:

• Mambo
  Joomla
  Drupal

Of these, Joomla seems to have the most available modules that may work to meet my needs, however that is why I post here, to see about experiences with these and what some of you CMS experts would recommend given the requirements list.

The requirements do not need to be built in, they can be a combination of modules/add-ons/extensions and really it does not matter if the modules are GPLed or Commercial at this point (though GPLed, free, open-source is more desirable).

Also, think in terms of extensibility - if a module does not exist, I do have the ability to write my own. Based upon writing one's own modules/extensions which one has the best API or is the smoothest to extend?

[Webnauts]

The best I ever found is this: http://www.silverstripe.com/home/

You can take my word for it. :)

[bj]

I've been looking for most of the same functionality, so I'll be interested in seeing who comes up with what. I personally also want xhtml/css compliance and a good templating system. I've been looking at affiliate as a separate sign up, so I don't know how that shakes out in the following aps that I've already looked at, but maybe my recent research will save you some time.

BTW, Webnauts, that silverstripe link keeps timing out, I haven't been able to connect.

From what I understand, there's only one module for Joomla for subscriptions that works okay, and that's a pay module. The others are not very good, and require core hacks (a problem at upgrade time) to get things functioning properly.

Xoops says it has this functionality, but I've had trouble getting xoops to work on a server where I've never had any trouble getting other aps to work.

I'm trying Drupal next. From what I'm reading, this is the one that should do it, but the subscription right now is tied to paypal. I don't know if there are other payment options available for subscription sites. That's less important to me at the mo, but I don't know what your payment processing needs are. There's also an affiliate mod for Drupal. They're two separate mods, but it's possible you could get someone to tie them together for you.

ModX doesn't have pay subscription options yet, and neither does phpwebsite, textpattern, or movable type.

[sitecreations]

We deployed a solution like this (sans forums) on Expression Engine. A nightmare. I'd love to hear what you put together (assuming you go through with it.) I hear a lot of people get started and then stop.

But here's something to consider strongly. Don't forget the merits of a "minisite" configuration consisting of:

a) A selection of wordpress themes to establish look-and-feel choices.
b) Multiple Wordpress blog installations running on a single MySQL install.
c) One of the multi-blog-admin tools out there.

This gives the mini-site owner an easy-to-update site with pretty easy central administration. There are some administration plug ins out there that make multi-blog administration easier - though I've not tried any yet (will be soon!)

We've found in small-group-test-mode that people PREFER to do the blog-as-a-site plan than to have any kind of "godaddy-style-website-tonight" type thing. Blogs are just so darn easy to use.

Please do share what you end up doing!

[tk-123]

Drupal (www.drupal.org) or Plone (www.plone.org).

Both are more advanced, with a greater learning curve and ramp-up time, but that's what happens when you need a more complex end-user experience.

As you get into a list of requirements as specific as yours however, it's more than likely you'll need some custom development work done. It's very hard to find the "everything-solution" out-of-the-box. Plone, for example, doesn't have a huge developer-base (so it's harder to find help), whereas you can find a million+ PHP or .net coders out there... Anyway, that's just something to factor into your thinking, along with everything else.

[luigip]

@southplatte
http://secunia.com/search/?search=joomla&w=0

You can compare here:
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

[danners02]

Originally Posted by sitecreations

We deployed a solution like this (sans forums) on Expression Engine. A nightmare.

what problems did you find with Expression Engine - seems like a good system?

[southplatte]

Originally Posted by bj

I've been looking for most of the same functionality, so I'll be interested in seeing who comes up with what. I personally also want xhtml/css compliance and a good templating system. I've been looking at affiliate as a separate sign up, so I don't know how that shakes out in the following aps that I've already looked at, but maybe my recent research will save you some time.

BTW, Webnauts, that silverstripe link keeps timing out, I haven't been able to connect.

From what I understand, there's only one module for Joomla for subscriptions that works okay, and that's a pay module. The others are not very good, and require core hacks (a problem at upgrade time) to get things functioning properly.

Xoops says it has this functionality, but I've had trouble getting xoops to work on a server where I've never had any trouble getting other aps to work.

I'm trying Drupal next. From what I'm reading, this is the one that should do it, but the subscription right now is tied to paypal. I don't know if there are other payment options available for subscription sites. That's less important to me at the mo, but I don't know what your payment processing needs are. There's also an affiliate mod for Drupal. They're two separate mods, but it's possible you could get someone to tie them together for you.

ModX doesn't have pay subscription options yet, and neither does phpwebsite, textpattern, or movable type.

PayPal is not an issue as that was going to be the main avenue I went with standard credit card processing added once the site is up and going.

I had tried to get Xoops up and running a while back and had zero results with it. I did have Mambo and Joomla both installed and testing (yes I know I can test them on several sites, but I like to do the install, and thoroughly play with the software in my own controlled environment) some features - rather kind of mixed at this point, especially with some security concerns as pointed out by luigip.

I have installed Drupal before, and may have to revisit that one, it just seemed very basic on initial install so I didn't look more into - I will though.

I may just end up doing a custom programmed solution in the end anyway to get the functionality I desire within the methodologies that I require it.

Thanks for all the replies - when I have a decision, I will post back with it and then maybe outline some of the steps, pitfalls and plusses of what I chose to go with.

[bj]

If you're going to "roll your own" you might want to look at ModX as the starting framework. (and if you do that, the community would be thrilled if you donated at least the pay/subscription membership part of the functionality back for everyone's use. It's a need, is about half done, but it's not "there" yet.)

I've been playing with Drupal. It'll do about half or better of what you want, so it's not a bad starting point either.

My experience with Joom is that if you want to use it stock it's not that bad. If you want to add one mod it's okay. The minute you start adding more than one mod though, everything has the potential of going to hell in a handbasket. The mods seem to be pretty badly coded and there doesn't seem to be any real vetting or trial run before they go into the repository. And all the mods I've tried conflict with each other. If you don't mind tearing apart other peoples' poor code, more power to you, but that's not my idea of a fun time.

[southplatte]

Originally Posted by bj

If you're going to "roll your own" you might want to look at ModX as the starting framework. (and if you do that, the community would be thrilled if you donated at least the pay/subscription membership part of the functionality back for everyone's use. It's a need, is about half done, but it's not "there" yet.)

Will look at that one.

Originally Posted by bj

If you don't mind tearing apart other peoples' poor code, more power to you, but that's not my idea of a fun time.

I would rather code it from scratch than pick apart chicken scratched code.

[southplatte]

Just came across this one, which for some reason I had not seen nor heard of before:

http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

Dolphin?

[bj]

I just hope the Boonex Community Software Experts didn't code their backend like they coded their html.

[spooky69]

Drupal - plenty of modules that can do as you have described, not difficult to customise and a reasonably strong and supportive community (important). Some aspects need to be worked on, but these are being addressed for Drupal 6... my 2 cents.

[happydead]

I know cool cms Content management system, cms based on Ajax framework ! try...