Two presales questions

Hi Amber, thanks for your questions. :)

1) So CMS Builder lets you create multiple "Section Editors" that manage the content in different parts of your site as well as "Viewers" that display that content to website visitors.

So you might have a section for products, news, jobs, articles, events, etc.

Right now what the user accounts let you do is limit someone to only certain sections. So user1 can only update events, user2 can update articles and events, and user3 can update everything.

2) It would work with subdomains so long as they're on the same filesystem (server). The viewers that display the content are just PHP files, and they include a library file from wherever CMS Builder is installed that has your MySql login details, etc.

I hope that makes sense, let me know if I can be more clear about any of that or if you have any more questions. :)

Yes, that helps, thanks :)
Unfortunately I need a members area (one page) that I can update, without letting THEM update anything except their account LOL. Thought this might work well. I've got article manager which is why I've kept my eye on this :)

Amber

Hmm, can you give some more detail about how that works?

So what sections and fields do you want the user to be able to update, and which sections and fields do you need to update and how is it displayed on the website?

If we can't do it with CMS Builder now at least I'll have some ideas for what features to add for the future.

Hi Dave - actually I'm not worried about them updating too much at all. Its basically like a daily news area, but private that I am trying to achieve.

Alternately, the possibility of them posting their own news/articles/topics, but along with mine - private (logged in members only to see).

(i.e., not all published publicly - where I can choose what can go public, and what stays to just as news/announcements etc. for those logged in)

Amber

Hmm... another thought crossed my mind.

I've got article manager (as mentioned) - that was going to be customized on one site, (my 2nd licence), however, now you have me wondering:

"if" this system allows us to work on subdomains (yes, on the same site)....

I'm thinking whether article manager or this CMS builder would be better, OR - can they work together?

I.e., here's what I want to do on the one site:

- Content articles by subdomain (aka: topic. i.e., business.mysite.com).

- But, I want to allow specific users to JUST post in their topic. i.e., Mike has my permission to post whatever blogs etc. he wants in the business.thatsubject.com topic.

- I want to allow Mike to sometimes add code to the page in certain areas only (like a banner or google adcode that he can earn from).

- I want to also have "sub topics" (like in article manager) that link to each other. i.e., business being the main topic, but home business links to it, and home business may have a different user controlling it. (Let's say "Glenn")

From a user standpoint,
"Mike" should technically have a little more control than say "Glenn".

Glenn's page may have an ad of Mike's - Glenn can't remove it - but Mike could if he wanted to.

I don't know if I'm being too confusing here LOL!

This would 90% just be different levels of users I suspect... and I would figure that I would preset the areas that they can edit?

Lastly - if this works....

would I need to use article manager AND the CMS builder, (so that the cms builder handles the pages and content that is say blogs, products etc), and the article manager powers the articles (submitted by others)?

Or does one do all?

Sorry for the questions - if this works either way, you've just sold me :D It saves what I was about to do: install FOUR different systems to accomplish the main thing.

(Think: about.com has editors specific to their topic... but earn from some revenues, and have control over content but also some flexibility)

Amber

Hi Amber,

Wow! That sounds like quite the system. Ok, so we don't have anything that does exactly that. It may be possible with CMS Builder, but it would probably take a fair bit of experimenting to figure it out.

My guess would be that any way you do this project, whether you spend the time, or get consulting to do it, or hire a programmer it's going to take a bit of time to get it all up and going. It's a big project!

CMS Builder doesn't let you assign different user rights to different categories. Currently it lets you assign a user full access to a "section" or not.

We're planning in an upcoming release to be able to make it so users can only update their own records in a section. Somewhat like Article Manager, writers can add and update their own articles but not others. But the rest of the functionality is several steps away (if possible).

My guess on how to do it with CMS Builder (the next version with the new features) would be this:

You could have one section called "Articles", and only allow editors to add/modify their own records in it. Under user accounts you'd have a field called "allowed categories" that specified the editors category. We'd set up a "category" pulldown in the Articles section and load that with the categories from the Accounts menu. That way editors could only edit their own articles and only assign them to their own categories.

Then, we'd have another section called "Ads", where users could add their ads and specify types, etc. You could create a viewer to load ads for different sections based on which user owned the ad, the ad type, and what section the ad was assigned to.

That's my guess. There's probably other ways too. Keep in mind that a big project like that can sometimes take several iterations to get it right. It you want to try and pull it off with CMS Builder we can certainly help. If you have another way you're more confident in that might be a good call too. As well, we also do consulting/custom programming so that's an option as well.

Hope that helps! :)

Hi Dave - thanks :)

Yes, I know its a big system LOL - I must be [crazy]

I'll wrap my mind around this a bit more - I might do the ten day trial to play around with it to make sure its going to do what I want. Jake had answered a few other questions (on live chat) - and I think I'm close to ordering :) Just going to draw it out. If I can make this work with just 1-2 systems I'd be thrilled :)

Thanks,

Amber

Hi Amber,

Ok, sounds good. Remember, some of those featured I mentioned are in the "next" release. But it might be a good idea to do the 10 day trial and start to get familiar with how things work - or you could wait for the next release. We're adding features pretty fast right now.

If we could figure out a way to make it work, we'd certainly be thrilled to be able to power your mega site! :) Let me know if you have any questions with the trial version.

Hi Dave - starting to work with the trial now - lol - took a few days for the install as we had to upgrade our server to the newer php (then I saw your upgrade this morning that changed that requirement [crazy] )

Anyway... any ideas when the features you mentioned below that were 'coming' would be done?

I really want to get moving on this LOL

Amber