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Hi. We're building a brand new project and thinking Concrete5 is the way to go.
The project is a community of practice website for health facilitators and practitioners who implement evidence-based intervention programs to prevent HIV, STI, teen pregnancy, and partner violence. Primary on the website is program materials and training modules (content already developed), which is subscription controlled. The other part of the website is the community-building portion which will allow these facilitators access to each other in order to better implement the programs. That includes all the usual community features with both user-contributed content and original content curated by a moderator:
new/articles/blogs
pages for HTML online interactive courses (courses already developed)
ideas/how-tos and other materials following a content template (text & file uploads like pdfs or videos)
content tagging
QA
commenting & discussion
group creation by administrators
group membership (1 user to many groups)
automatic group or content category pages based on tags
activity feed
search
user profiles
user reputation system
sharing with social network sites
integration with LinkedIn login/profile/linking
IS concrete5 a good fit for this? All modules must be customized to implement existing UX design (so simply installing of addons probably isn't sufficient). Send us a bid with your time estimates. Must be a U.S. resident.
The project is a community of practice website for health facilitators and practitioners who implement evidence-based intervention programs to prevent HIV, STI, teen pregnancy, and partner violence. Primary on the website is program materials and training modules (content already developed), which is subscription controlled. The other part of the website is the community-building portion which will allow these facilitators access to each other in order to better implement the programs. That includes all the usual community features with both user-contributed content and original content curated by a moderator:
new/articles/blogs
pages for HTML online interactive courses (courses already developed)
ideas/how-tos and other materials following a content template (text & file uploads like pdfs or videos)
content tagging
QA
commenting & discussion
group creation by administrators
group membership (1 user to many groups)
automatic group or content category pages based on tags
activity feed
search
user profiles
user reputation system
sharing with social network sites
integration with LinkedIn login/profile/linking
IS concrete5 a good fit for this? All modules must be customized to implement existing UX design (so simply installing of addons probably isn't sufficient). Send us a bid with your time estimates. Must be a U.S. resident.
Ugh.
While I've heard it'll be getting better, I think c5 falls down a lot for community sites. And I say this as someone who loves c5, just finished a VERY large/prestigious community site with it, and plan on starting another one soon.
I just don't think c5's primary use case is community. Case in point: "full page caching" (which is the global "solution" to a slow site) just isn't compatible, "friendship" (which you didn't specify as a requirement), is more like "following" (one-way rather than bidirectional), I've yet to find a "social login" add-on that manages user creation and login and doesn't suck, and I think that profiles are a bit outdated and inevitably will require a lot of manual work. There also aren't a lot of good options (that I know of) for end-user content creation beyond discussion, which I'm reading between the lines as a requirement.
Even the prestigious project I just finished does most of the community-driven stuff via javascript calls (using an expensive 3rd party service), and that was a pain in the ass and a constant source of issues.
Why would I use c5 for this, and why would I recommend it to you if you were to hire me? Because I have experience in it, from both the non-community and community perspectives, I don't know of anything better and if I found it, I'd have to learn that first. It's more efficient for me to work around the deficiencies, and tweak previously-built libraries for social login, bilateral friendship, etc. If you aren't wed to c5, or to a developer who's wed to c5, it wouldn't hurt to explore frameworks that *might* get you closer.
With that being said: UX will have to be built out with any framework you use, and c5 is probably just as good as any other. Addons will get you a lot of the functionality. There are addons for discussion forums and activity feed, blogs, etc, and some of the other stuff (like news, articles) is "out of the box" CMS.
While I've heard it'll be getting better, I think c5 falls down a lot for community sites. And I say this as someone who loves c5, just finished a VERY large/prestigious community site with it, and plan on starting another one soon.
I just don't think c5's primary use case is community. Case in point: "full page caching" (which is the global "solution" to a slow site) just isn't compatible, "friendship" (which you didn't specify as a requirement), is more like "following" (one-way rather than bidirectional), I've yet to find a "social login" add-on that manages user creation and login and doesn't suck, and I think that profiles are a bit outdated and inevitably will require a lot of manual work. There also aren't a lot of good options (that I know of) for end-user content creation beyond discussion, which I'm reading between the lines as a requirement.
Even the prestigious project I just finished does most of the community-driven stuff via javascript calls (using an expensive 3rd party service), and that was a pain in the ass and a constant source of issues.
Why would I use c5 for this, and why would I recommend it to you if you were to hire me? Because I have experience in it, from both the non-community and community perspectives, I don't know of anything better and if I found it, I'd have to learn that first. It's more efficient for me to work around the deficiencies, and tweak previously-built libraries for social login, bilateral friendship, etc. If you aren't wed to c5, or to a developer who's wed to c5, it wouldn't hurt to explore frameworks that *might* get you closer.
With that being said: UX will have to be built out with any framework you use, and c5 is probably just as good as any other. Addons will get you a lot of the functionality. There are addons for discussion forums and activity feed, blogs, etc, and some of the other stuff (like news, articles) is "out of the box" CMS.
Ugh right back at ya cap'n.
Its true that in 5.6 there's not a lot going on out of the box for my
account and in 5.7 we're doing a lot more thinking in that direction.
However the users model is solid as a rock. Since it reads like this person
is designing a startup with unique needs, why does he care that he'll be
coding his own relationship between users? Sure if Ning or JomSocial will
do the job out of the box with some CSS then you should certainly do that.
I think we agree that if you're thinking of it as a framework to start
from, concrete5 has a lot to offer.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Its true that in 5.6 there's not a lot going on out of the box for my
account and in 5.7 we're doing a lot more thinking in that direction.
However the users model is solid as a rock. Since it reads like this person
is designing a startup with unique needs, why does he care that he'll be
coding his own relationship between users? Sure if Ning or JomSocial will
do the job out of the box with some CSS then you should certainly do that.
I think we agree that if you're thinking of it as a framework to start
from, concrete5 has a lot to offer.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Yes, the users model is pretty solid. But a community site is more than just a solid users model.
Needs are never completely unique... unless it's 1995 and you're facebook.
All I'm saying is that a marginally thorough gap analysis between the listed requirements and c5 will show a lot of gaps, and it's likely that some other software (Ning or JomSocial or ... whatever ... I'm not making any specific suggestions here) will have less gaps, and do a marginally better job than c5 out of the box, and require less coding for user relationships, social login, profiles, building an in-site search engine that meets the most basic expectations, etc.
And to answer your question... he cares because, well, having pay someone to do less coding is typically better than having to pay someone to do more coding.
Yes, c5 has a lot to offer as a framework, which is the reason why I've used it in some other community websites. Though I think we agree that it's just less of a useful framework for some use cases than others.
And I'm saying that social is one of them, and that the OP would be remiss if he wasn't open to frameworks that require less coding to meet the goal.
Needs are never completely unique... unless it's 1995 and you're facebook.
All I'm saying is that a marginally thorough gap analysis between the listed requirements and c5 will show a lot of gaps, and it's likely that some other software (Ning or JomSocial or ... whatever ... I'm not making any specific suggestions here) will have less gaps, and do a marginally better job than c5 out of the box, and require less coding for user relationships, social login, profiles, building an in-site search engine that meets the most basic expectations, etc.
And to answer your question... he cares because, well, having pay someone to do less coding is typically better than having to pay someone to do more coding.
Yes, c5 has a lot to offer as a framework, which is the reason why I've used it in some other community websites. Though I think we agree that it's just less of a useful framework for some use cases than others.
And I'm saying that social is one of them, and that the OP would be remiss if he wasn't open to frameworks that require less coding to meet the goal.
I dunno. I've actually had the experience of spending a lot MORE time
trying to customize something that was close to what I thought I needed vs.
just building it on a solid framework. Making a gourmet meal out of a
McBurger is going to be harder than out of a raw chunk of cow. I certainly
agree if the goal is to simply eat, McBurger will be easier and faster. I
also agree this fellow should look around hard and understand his goals
before he goes building anything in this vein - there's no lack of attempts
out there.
I feel like we basically agree here:
No, concrete5 doesn't do what he wants out of the box.
Yes, you can build that type of thing nicely on top of concrete5 without
hacking at it in ways that it wasn't designed to be hacked.
Additionally, yes - good things take time to build.
Am I missing something?
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
trying to customize something that was close to what I thought I needed vs.
just building it on a solid framework. Making a gourmet meal out of a
McBurger is going to be harder than out of a raw chunk of cow. I certainly
agree if the goal is to simply eat, McBurger will be easier and faster. I
also agree this fellow should look around hard and understand his goals
before he goes building anything in this vein - there's no lack of attempts
out there.
I feel like we basically agree here:
No, concrete5 doesn't do what he wants out of the box.
Yes, you can build that type of thing nicely on top of concrete5 without
hacking at it in ways that it wasn't designed to be hacked.
Additionally, yes - good things take time to build.
Am I missing something?
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
There's that strawman.... If you're going to compare c5 to a big mac and every other framework to be a raw cow (or vice versa, i'm not really clear which) and the OP's requirements to "i just want to simply eat", then you've just sold me!!
Yes, you're missing the fact that c5 is particularly weak in community / social / search functionality out of the box.
Yes, you're missing the fact that c5 is particularly weak in community / social / search functionality out of the box.
I was actually comparing concrete5 to a raw cow and Ning to a McBurger.
It seems like you've really missed my analogy.
Regardless, this good fellow can probably figure it out from here.
Best wishes.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
It seems like you've really missed my analogy.
Regardless, this good fellow can probably figure it out from here.
Best wishes.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
We built an intranet for a 400+ member corporate community.
You can make it work. Both ProBlog and ProEvents support user submitted blog/events combined with ProForms.
And, ironically, jshannon's ConcreteWall addon was helpful as well.
I agree with Frz. There really is no "out of the box" perfect solution. We even did a project with a CMS called SocialEngine, which is entirely built for and around community. Still modified the daylights out of it! And it was built specifically for that.
But honestly, the thing C5 has going for it in this regard is how easily you can modify/override views.
The biggest problem for us though, was updates.
Once you get to a certain number of root overrides for blocks and packages, keeping things up to date becomes a relative impossibility. It's a moving target.
jmh2c
ChadStrat
You can make it work. Both ProBlog and ProEvents support user submitted blog/events combined with ProForms.
And, ironically, jshannon's ConcreteWall addon was helpful as well.
I agree with Frz. There really is no "out of the box" perfect solution. We even did a project with a CMS called SocialEngine, which is entirely built for and around community. Still modified the daylights out of it! And it was built specifically for that.
But honestly, the thing C5 has going for it in this regard is how easily you can modify/override views.
The biggest problem for us though, was updates.
Once you get to a certain number of root overrides for blocks and packages, keeping things up to date becomes a relative impossibility. It's a moving target.
jmh2c
ChadStrat
I would agree with Franz's first point. Especially that any CMS is going to require some hacking to get everything on the wishlist.
One thing - I think because the site's goals require many users (and types of users), then it plays right into a core strength of C5 - the ease of use with which users can create, update, tag, and move content. So yeah - good choice.
Good luck!
One thing - I think because the site's goals require many users (and types of users), then it plays right into a core strength of C5 - the ease of use with which users can create, update, tag, and move content. So yeah - good choice.
Good luck!
We completed a successful rebuild/content transfer of a business community site from the Jive platform to Concrete5. You will need a good developer for custom coding and/or modification of addons but Concrete5 is definitely up to the task.
PM me if you'd like to discuss how we did it in detail.
PM me if you'd like to discuss how we did it in detail.
No, you're not likely to get what you're shooting for, exactly to your UX,
by just installing add-ons.
You will likely be doing some custom coding and using some add-ons as a
starting point/example.
I imagine the same thing should be probably said for any CMS tho - if
you've got your own vision and UX, you're going to be doing your own coding.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz