Can Conrete5 Meet These Requirements ?
Permalink 1 user found helpful
Hi group, I'm coming from a Drupal development background, and I'm investigating a new platform for my clients.
Looking at Concrete5, ExpressionEngine, CraftCMS and ProcessWire.
I have a particular client with a complex set of functional requirements.
The crux of the site is really a Community Discussion Forum area, where authenticated Members needs to be given different roles and permissions on a per group basis.
ie. a Member may be an Admin in one group, but only a Member without Admin in another group.
I sent an email to Concret5 to ask if they had a sales team, and they auto-suggested I post into this forum. It's a bit high level, but if anyone could take a bit of time to provide feedback on these functional requirements it would be greatly appreciated!
Member Forum/Collaboration area
- Guests groups, Private Groups, Moderated groups
- different authenticated users will be Administrators of their Groups
ie.
Group 1 - Administrator is David
Group 2 - Administrator is John, but David is a member of this group
Membership management (Users and Admin can edit Profiles)
Membership payment processing renewal based on an expiry date through Moneris gateway
Bilingual (En / Fr) front end (localization)
Events Calendar (and member input, and email notifications to subscribed Events)
Newsletter(s)
- my client currently uses an existing third party Newsletter campaign.
- members need to be able to register for a newsletter
Reporting and Statistics
- like google anyltics ?
Front-end Search
- search faceted like Solr ?
Modular approach to customizations and plugins
- my client is very frustrated to have been stuck with an old clunky CMS for many many years, without the ability to upgrade core, or modules, etc, etc, etc.
Responsive Design on the front end
Payment processing
- my client used Moneris payment gateway
Initially, I was going to go out and look for best in breed and build their solution with single sign on integration points.
So for example : CraftCMS as the core, then integrate Vanilla Forums, then integrate a Calendar, then integrate a payment gateway etc etc, etc, etc.
Thanks so much!
If this is too much info for this forum, would even appreciate well known implementation vendors of C5 to ask about consultancy.
Looking at Concrete5, ExpressionEngine, CraftCMS and ProcessWire.
I have a particular client with a complex set of functional requirements.
The crux of the site is really a Community Discussion Forum area, where authenticated Members needs to be given different roles and permissions on a per group basis.
ie. a Member may be an Admin in one group, but only a Member without Admin in another group.
I sent an email to Concret5 to ask if they had a sales team, and they auto-suggested I post into this forum. It's a bit high level, but if anyone could take a bit of time to provide feedback on these functional requirements it would be greatly appreciated!
Member Forum/Collaboration area
- Guests groups, Private Groups, Moderated groups
- different authenticated users will be Administrators of their Groups
ie.
Group 1 - Administrator is David
Group 2 - Administrator is John, but David is a member of this group
Membership management (Users and Admin can edit Profiles)
Membership payment processing renewal based on an expiry date through Moneris gateway
Bilingual (En / Fr) front end (localization)
Events Calendar (and member input, and email notifications to subscribed Events)
Newsletter(s)
- my client currently uses an existing third party Newsletter campaign.
- members need to be able to register for a newsletter
Reporting and Statistics
- like google anyltics ?
Front-end Search
- search faceted like Solr ?
Modular approach to customizations and plugins
- my client is very frustrated to have been stuck with an old clunky CMS for many many years, without the ability to upgrade core, or modules, etc, etc, etc.
Responsive Design on the front end
Payment processing
- my client used Moneris payment gateway
Initially, I was going to go out and look for best in breed and build their solution with single sign on integration points.
So for example : CraftCMS as the core, then integrate Vanilla Forums, then integrate a Calendar, then integrate a payment gateway etc etc, etc, etc.
Thanks so much!
If this is too much info for this forum, would even appreciate well known implementation vendors of C5 to ask about consultancy.
Thanks Steev - based on your Karma points, I'll take your word for it!
All of those are possible. You will need to enable Advanced Permissions for the various user/group/moderator/admin capabilities.
Much will need some addons:
Discussion forums
eCommerce + Membership + relevant payment gateways ( I don't know about Moneris)
One of several events packages
Internationalisation
Mail interface such as mailchimp.
The built in search box is not particularly sophisticated. There are various live search/filter addons for dynamic page lists.
Modular approach for themes and extension - is one of concrete5's big strengths over other CMS. Both in quantity and quality. The disadvantage is that only about 50% of them are free.
The above refers to existing c5 releases.
The upcoming 5.7 will have discussions and better single sign on capabilities built in. But even once 5.7 is released and stable it will take a while for the themes and addons to catch up with it.
Much will need some addons:
Discussion forums
eCommerce + Membership + relevant payment gateways ( I don't know about Moneris)
One of several events packages
Internationalisation
Mail interface such as mailchimp.
The built in search box is not particularly sophisticated. There are various live search/filter addons for dynamic page lists.
Modular approach for themes and extension - is one of concrete5's big strengths over other CMS. Both in quantity and quality. The disadvantage is that only about 50% of them are free.
The above refers to existing c5 releases.
The upcoming 5.7 will have discussions and better single sign on capabilities built in. But even once 5.7 is released and stable it will take a while for the themes and addons to catch up with it.
Hi John - your detailed reply is great appreciated - it's given me the initial confidence to seriously consider the product. Installation on my MAMP took about 5 minutes. Off to a good start!
I'm good with the cost that will create a seamless integration for my client.
Very happy to hear that a modular approach has been taken in regards to applying updates and upgrades. I have longed enjoyed Drupal bc of the flexibility and modular approach, but I feel that using D7 at this point would not be a great move considering the long anticipated release of Drupal 8 - which is coming "soon". :-)
Thanks again. dave
I'm good with the cost that will create a seamless integration for my client.
Very happy to hear that a modular approach has been taken in regards to applying updates and upgrades. I have longed enjoyed Drupal bc of the flexibility and modular approach, but I feel that using D7 at this point would not be a great move considering the long anticipated release of Drupal 8 - which is coming "soon". :-)
Thanks again. dave
John's answer is spot on.
Advanced permissions will let you do what you're looking for with the forums add-on.
No idea about your gateway, but building custom gateways is pretty simple for a decent developer using our ecommerce add-on.
Our ecommerce add-on is certainly not designed for selling hundreds of thousands of products, but access to a permission group is very much within its feature set.
You can setup groups to expire over time.
Subscription stuff is always tricky (like making it automatically bill a card every month to keep someone in the groups so they have access). There's some add-ons that tackle it, but my experience has been what happens when the card expires or someone wants to change plans almost always involves some custom code, I believe this is a universal challenge in life.
Our built in search always works, but never works great. You can do better with some work on your own, or just use google and kill their branding for $100/yr or whatever it is for your traffic.
Yup, yup, and yup.
At a high level, we position concrete5 as a CMS made to balance the interests of a developer with the interests of a site owner. We're always trying to ease the relationship between those two need sets. There's plenty of sexy UI and ease of use stuff that your client will love (See upcoming 5.7 as JTF suggests). There's really powerful permissions and workflow that you'll love as a developer (came in 5.6 release). This kind of balance is what you should expect of us as concrete5 continues to grow.
Advanced permissions will let you do what you're looking for with the forums add-on.
No idea about your gateway, but building custom gateways is pretty simple for a decent developer using our ecommerce add-on.
Our ecommerce add-on is certainly not designed for selling hundreds of thousands of products, but access to a permission group is very much within its feature set.
You can setup groups to expire over time.
Subscription stuff is always tricky (like making it automatically bill a card every month to keep someone in the groups so they have access). There's some add-ons that tackle it, but my experience has been what happens when the card expires or someone wants to change plans almost always involves some custom code, I believe this is a universal challenge in life.
Our built in search always works, but never works great. You can do better with some work on your own, or just use google and kill their branding for $100/yr or whatever it is for your traffic.
Yup, yup, and yup.
At a high level, we position concrete5 as a CMS made to balance the interests of a developer with the interests of a site owner. We're always trying to ease the relationship between those two need sets. There's plenty of sexy UI and ease of use stuff that your client will love (See upcoming 5.7 as JTF suggests). There's really powerful permissions and workflow that you'll love as a developer (came in 5.6 release). This kind of balance is what you should expect of us as concrete5 continues to grow.
Thanks a lot for the reply. This is valuable information.
>> Our ecommerce add-on is certainly not designed for selling hundreds of thousands of products
The commerce portion would only be for member renewal. The is no actual product being sold except the membership.
>> when the card expires or someone wants to change plans almost always involves some
>> custom code, I believe this is a universal challenge in life.
Totally agree. The payment would be manually kicked off by the member, or an Admin.
>> Our built in search always works, but never works great.
How about Solr integration ?
I've used Solr with Drupal in the past, very successfully.
>> See upcoming 5.7 as JTF suggests).
I see 5.7 is on the roadmap.
Would I be doing my client a disservice by starting to implement using the current version of Concrete5, only to have a much better product in 5.7 that I'll need to upgrade "shortly".
Also, as in Drupal, presumably I'll need to wait for the modules to catch up to the core in order to upgrade gracefully anyway ?
As I said, the upgrade paths and modularity are key to delivering a successful project to my client.
Thanks again, I'm testing C5 for the rest of the week!
- I assume this community/forum is being run from the add-on ? :-)
>> Our ecommerce add-on is certainly not designed for selling hundreds of thousands of products
The commerce portion would only be for member renewal. The is no actual product being sold except the membership.
>> when the card expires or someone wants to change plans almost always involves some
>> custom code, I believe this is a universal challenge in life.
Totally agree. The payment would be manually kicked off by the member, or an Admin.
>> Our built in search always works, but never works great.
How about Solr integration ?
I've used Solr with Drupal in the past, very successfully.
>> See upcoming 5.7 as JTF suggests).
I see 5.7 is on the roadmap.
Would I be doing my client a disservice by starting to implement using the current version of Concrete5, only to have a much better product in 5.7 that I'll need to upgrade "shortly".
Also, as in Drupal, presumably I'll need to wait for the modules to catch up to the core in order to upgrade gracefully anyway ?
As I said, the upgrade paths and modularity are key to delivering a successful project to my client.
Thanks again, I'm testing C5 for the rest of the week!
- I assume this community/forum is being run from the add-on ? :-)
Unlike in place upgrades we've enjoyed up to this point, there will be deep architectural changes happening in 5.7 so that it's likely the upgrading will be more like a migration from your 5.6 installation to a clean 5.7 install, and then importing the content into the new install.
Thanks Owen - appreciate the comment.
There is a long term support project for c5.6, with bug fixes and minor enhancements. That is what many existing sites and current developments will be using in the future.
Yes, I'm glad you made this point John.
Yes!