Suggestions wanted for graduate directory software

[spiderbait]

Hi all,

I'm looking for suggestions about open source solutions that can meet a specific set of needs.

I manage a website for a small specialty college. We already use several open source solutions for various functions, such as osCommerce shopping cart, Coppermine Photo Gallery, phpBB forum and WordPress for blogging. All of these different applications are integrated into the site and work seamlessly in terms of navigation and appearance.

What the college wants to do next, is to create a system for graduates of their programs. This system would have (at least) the following features.

Public Functionality:

• Public Directory (so visitors can hire a graduate) searchable by name, location, employment availability
• Google Map showing the location of all graduates and linked to the graduate's public listing in the directory
• Ability to send messages to graduates if graduate has enabled it (see privacy below)

Graduate Functionality:

• Login and create/update their info, such as:
  • Name
  • Location (city, country)
  • Date and type of program they graduated
  • Type of degree or certificate held
  • Gender
  • Employment Availability
  • Willingness to travel
  • Photo(s)
  • Website
  • Contact info (could include social networking info such as facebook, myspace, msn, et cetera)
  • Postal Address
  • Biography
  • Work History
• Choose which information is public or private (should ideally have degrees of privacy ranging from available to administrators only or also to other graduates and/or registered employers and should include the ability to pick and choose which items are private and which are public and whether to accept messages from other graduates or the public)
• Ability to browse and search graduate directory and see the non-public info that other graduates have opted to make available for graduate viewers.
• Ability to send private messages between graduates and/or administrators.

Administrative Functionality:

• Only administrators can create accounts
• Ability to create graduate accounts and guest accounts (for select employers)
• Ability to mass-email (or selectively email) graduates.
• Ability to edit, suspend or delete accounts and their info.

So, what we're looking for are suggestions about the best open source candidate that can ideally perform all these functions out of the box, or at the very least, would be best suited to invest the time and resources into modifying.

If the best candidate turns out to be a full CMS (such as Drupal or Joomla) then I want to make it clear that we don't foresee converting the entire site to the CMS, even if the CMS has that capacity. At this point, the college simply wants to create this graduate functionality and to make it "play nicely" with all of the other open source applications for the entire site. So, please don't waste your energy telling me that we should convert the whole site. It may happen some day in the future, but for now we're sticking with what we have.

Finally, please, when responding, if you could be specific about why you're recommending a particular application it would be very much appreciated. I know there are plenty of people who feel their particular chosen CMS is the best and want to advocate strongly for it. So by all means, advocate away, but try to be clear about what makes it best for this unique usage. It won't be very helpful if we just get suggestions without any explanations or criteria upon which to make a choice.

Also, if you're able to offer some insight regarding the amount of time/effort required to modify your suggested application, that would be fantastic.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing your suggestions. Thank you sincerely in advance.

[spiderbait]

Hi again, Just a quick piece of additional info.

We're open to purchasing a proprietary solution for this project, but it's important that the source files be modifiable (not encrypted or protected in some way).

I wanted to make sure we're not precluding any possible solutions.

Thanks again.

[thorfjalar]

Since you have a budget you can select a CMS and post the requirements in first post on freelance sites such as rentacoder.com or elance.com and take bids from coders to taylor the CMS to your needs.

For this particular program it looks like Drupal is a better candidate than Joomla for following reasons according to comparison run on cmsmatrix.org

Drupal has granular privileges while Joomla has not, as explained on site granular privileges is that "the system allows read and write privileges on a per page or per content item basis, as well as separate privileges for other system functions". This is I believe important to grant the layered privileges needed for amount of personal information available, from very little to the anonymous surfer to everything including ability to kill account by administrator.

It also has public mailing list while Joomla has not.

Hope this helps, good luck.

[spiderbait]

Originally Posted by thorfjalar

Drupal has granular privileges while Joomla has not, as explained on site granular privileges is that "the system allows read and write privileges on a per page or per content item basis, as well as separate privileges for other system functions".

Thanks for this thorfjalar. That's very good insight and I appreciate you taking the time to provide it.

[dumarest]

Originally Posted by spiderbait

Thanks for this thorfjalar. That's very good insight and I appreciate you taking the time to provide it.

I find it funny that thorfjalar would say that Joomla does NOT have the mailing feature. Certainly Joomla 1.5 does have this feature.

I'd check out Community Builder as part of Joomla to see all the opportunities it provides. We use it to collect and provide exactly the type of information you talk about. It has a Field Management function in which you can put in as many fields of information as you wish into your collection screen. Very very nice functionality. Worth checking.

Dumarest

[dumarest]

Originally Posted by spiderbait

Hi again, Just a quick piece of additional info.
We're open to purchasing a proprietary solution for this project, but it's important that the source files be modifiable (not encrypted or protected in some way).
I wanted to make sure we're not precluding any possible solutions.
Thanks again.

I'd be happy to provide a quote on producing the Add, Edit, Delete, Search, View functionality for your Student needs.
We can talk - and it would be written in PHP and you get the source.

HTH

Dumarest

[purplepaisley]

As an alternative to adding another full CMS system, have you considered plugins for your existing applications to provide the desired functionality? WordPress has 3500+ plugins listed, such as custom profile fields and a couple of business directory plugins, it might be easier or more cost effective to modify a couple that already do close to what you'd like. Just a thought.

[thorfjalar]

Yes its true "public mailing list" is not what I thought it was, it's not the mass mailing capability but rather if the CMS developer offers users to subscribe to notification by email, alas Drupal does but Joomla does not according to cmsmatrix.org and they are discussing Joomla 1.5.

Yet my take is that Joomla is more user friendly while Drupal is more powerful, not that I'm saying that Joomla is not powerful, both are quality CMS.

[spiderbait]

Originally Posted by dumarest

I'd check out Community Builder as part of Joomla to see all the opportunities it provides. We use it to collect and provide exactly the type of information you talk about. It has a Field Management function in which you can put in as many fields of information as you wish into your collection screen. Very very nice functionality. Worth checking.

Hi Dumarest,

Thanks for this. I'm just wondering though, based on thorfjalar's comments, would Joomla be able to offer the granular privileges required in order to have each user able to choose which unique content item is public and which content is private?

[spiderbait]

Originally Posted by purplepaisley

As an alternative to adding another full CMS system, have you considered plugins for your existing applications to provide the desired functionality?

Hi Purplepaisley,

I'd thought of that originally, but it's probably not the easiest option given that the existing systems like WordPress are installed in subdomains and have been heavily modified.

The new graduate directory is going to go into its own subdomain too, so it may as well be a new installation and hopefully one specifically suited to the use.

[southplatte]

I know in this day and age many are against self-rolled solutions, but you already have multiple platforms integrated into this system, and it seems that maybe it may take more to modify a CMS or other complete system to offer partial functionality, plus given that you desire to include the Google maps feature, you would either need to self-roll that or obtain a plug-in, which makes upgrades a complete nightmare, more so that what you are probably already experiencing.

If you did a self-roll solution, you would be able to tie directly into your existing systems, since you obviously have heavily modified them, you should be familiar enough with the code to tie into the places necessary. If you use an off-the-shelf solution, you then have the fun of learning that systems code, where it can tie out to the existing system and in the long run may save time creating your own.

Just my .02

[spiderbait]

Originally Posted by southplatte

If you did a self-roll solution, you would be able to tie directly into your existing systems, since you obviously have heavily modified them, you should be familiar enough with the code to tie into the places necessary. If you use an off-the-shelf solution, you then have the fun of learning that systems code, where it can tie out to the existing system and in the long run may save time creating your own.

Hi Southplatte,

Thanks for this. You've mentioned and validated many of my thoughts regarding the project. One point that this raises though, is the long-term vision for the site.

What I mean is that I've always approached the site with the view that it is a work in progress. The college is still learning what IS and what ISN'T useful or valuable (from a visitor, graduate, administration & SEO perspective).

This particular part of the site seems likely to be valuable, as are most of the others that I mentioned in the original brief, but there are other ideas as well, that have yet to be tried.

My vision has always been to keep expanding the functionality of the site until we feel that we've got everything we need to make it well-rounded and valuable to all.

My current thinking is that, at that point it will make sense to commission a completely custom-programmed solution that provides all the same functionality as well as filling in any gaps or flaws that the currently cobbled-together version of the site presents.

So, with that in mind, I can live with some limitations and with minor maintenance headaches.

Does this approach to site development make sense (given that the college doesn't have unlimited funds for testing and development) or does it seem I'm building a many-headed monster that will never be tamed by a custom solution?