Forum Moderators: phranque
I am about 3-5 months away from releasing a major site I am constructing using a wide variety of web applications:
"Mambo CMS" for the Content: 1300 Articles
"Gallery" for the Photo Gallery: 5000+ Photos
"phpbb" for the Forum: (no idea, but there is no forum in this topic)
"in-link2" for the Link Directory: 1,300-2,000 Links
"osCommerce" for the Online Store: 1000+ Products
"(havent decided)" for the Classified Ad Script: (No idea how busy)
As you can see this is a big project, and currently I am doing this all alone. (Which isnt a problem).
The majority of these products can be integrated together in some way via 3rd party scripts and hacks (for example phpbb embedded in Mambo). However I've made the decision to keep them all standalone applications on there own subdomain.
My reasoning is that many of these products are getting regular updates from the developers.
If they are all integrated I worry that when a new verson of (for example) mambo comes out I will be left hoping that someone has created a mambo<->phpbb integration script for this new version. (Since I am definitely not a php programmer).
Relying on other people to release scripts and hacks that I need to hold my site's parts together kind of puts me at the mercy of others.
By keeping the applications all stand alone, I can update one without worrying about compatibility with the others.
Furthermore, if for some reason a application's development is stopped (which is common in open source) or is loses popularity (thus losing the community of 3rd party developers who most of the time make the application integration scripts and hacks) it will not effect my site since it does not have to interact with the other applications. I can just leave it at its final stable version and let it be.
This might be crude but its safe. I am working on a template to give all the applications the appearance of being one site.
Ok, finally the questions:
Is this stupid? Am I missing something? Anything I should consider?
Instead of doing this should I just use a CMS which has all the features under one roof (like ezpublish)
You are right on the intergration part, I tried to intergrate phpbb with gallery but with the amount of phpbb mods I have installed I could never get it to work. So yeah I would agree and just leave them as standalone. Updating each of these can be a nightmare as it is expecially if you have loads of mods installed, so I would just stick to the version you start with unless it is a major security fix.
