WordPress - do you think it handle this?

WordPress CMS Multi-User

[orionmessier42]

Greetings;

I'm embarking on a project where the client wants a CMS designed in WordPress. (I'm fairly new, and primarily a WP developer)

Here are some requirements we're looking to incorporate:
1) User credentials. We may have members who have access to rich content, non-members, University Affiliates who can modify some region of the web space to show off their content. This would be in addition to external links.

2) Host a database. Qualified, registered users should be able to enter content for their organizations. This should be searchable with limits depending on the credentials of the user.

3) Probably some area where there may be a wiki that qualified registered users can work together on a given project.

4) Some kind of blog and/or discussion area. This could be outsourced to a standard blog program.

5) Video hosting. I anticipate having a library of lectures that may have associated papers and/or powerpoints. Depending on credentials users may have full or partial access. Robust video hosting is required, but may not necessicarly be part of this site.

Have you ever encountered a WP project with such robust interface requirements? I am anticipating writing a Form in which each user can enter data that will be stored and searchable.

Can WordPress handle it? Any feedback you might have would be a great help!

[spadilla]

This seems like more of a job for something like Joomla or Drupal. I could be wrong, but I think even with using WPMU you would need to make some adjustments to the code in order to offer more granular user/data control than WP offers out of the box. That would be a pain each time you patch the installation.

Joomla & Drupal seems like they would be a good fit. I know Joomla has extensions that would probably be able to handle the things you are looking for without much hassle.

Sorry - that probably didn't answer your question too well, but I thought I would ask if you had looked into all the CMS options available.

[orionmessier42]

Thanks, spadilla

Joomla and Drupal sound like options. I've only used those minimally, so I'd be learning them (I hear that Drupal has a steep learning curve. not sure about Joomla.)

Additionally, the folks I'm helping seem to only have WordPress available at the moment. I'm a fairly seasoned WP programmer, and have my hands around the architecture. That's why I agreed to help out.

Cheers

[edited by: ergophobe at 6:07 pm (utc) on Feb 5, 2010]
[edit reason] URL deleted [/edit]

[ergophobe]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld orionmessier42!

Like spadilla, I think there are several good CMS that will mostly do this out of the box. I was not enthused by me recent test of ModX, but I think it would do everything you want.

I feel like I should answer a bit on the Drupal learning curve since I'm the one who initially described it as steep to orionmessier42.

Let me qualify that and say that, for the most part, if you want to build a site that you could build simply with Wordpress, you can build it simply with Drupal (or Joomla).

Where the Drupal curve gets steep is when you start to push it a bit, but at that point, you're looking at sites that would be hard to build at all in Wordpress in my opinion.

And it can get dizzying how all the parts fit together. There's a form API, a menu API, a very powerful theming system and so on, a million hooks. The Views module itself is so powerful that there is now an entire book out on using the Views module... but I don't know any other CMS that gives you the ability to crunch data and pull custom queries and presentations with the ease of the Views module. In other words, getting Views to do what you want is a hassle, but it's not programming. Every other CMS would require you to write a custom module to get similar function. So the curve is steep, but the power is great.

You can get pretty far without doing any programming, especially if you start with something like the Fusion theme with the Skinr module, which gets you any "standard" layout you can thing of (if you want text following an urn you might not get it).

So without any programming at all, you'll get:

1. User credentials - out of the box. For fine-grained permissions you might need the Nodeaccess module or something similar.

2. Host a database. Not sure what you mean here, but you can certainly have a database of organizations that's user edited using essentially out of the box functionality. Depending on how you want the DB entry associated with the user (i.e. if it is to be part of their profile), you might want some modules that allow for richer profiles.

3. Wiki. I'm not sure if there's a "wiki" as we think of it, but you can create a "wiki" content type, use built-in versioning and elevate some users to "wiki editors". You can also use the book module (core) and the workflow module (contrib) and have a write/edit -> approve -> publish flow.

4. blog and discussion. User blogs and forum are built into Drupal core.

5. Video hosting. Well, hosting is hosting, but Drupal has a number of options for attaching videos to pages, embedding them in various ways, whether you host them yourself, farm them out to a CDN or bring them in from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

That's pretty much your whole requirements set.

[orionmessier42]

ergophobe,

Thanks again for the detailed discussion and tips for implementing Drupal. (aside) I did go out and purchase "Pro Drupal Development" by VanDyk just the other day!

I'm willing to tackle this web project - thanks to the folks reading / posting to these forums! I have learned so much from reading them.

cheers-