I want to build a website to allow users exchange clothes with each other.The website will be similar to an online auction site and a book exchange. This will be a point-based exchange community. The website allows users to
1) register for a private account
2) list items based on a specific, yet simple form that they can keep track of in their account
3) Rate items that they have received based on three simple criteria
4) Admin can add/delete products and also categorise them
5) Sizes labels etc can be assigned to products
6) Other users can upload their products/categorize them assign
7) users can perform faceted search on the products and filter by size, label etc..
One main point here is that there is no payment involved. I was thinking to use virtuemart over joomla for this kinda website and needed an opinion on how tough would it be customize virtuemart/joomla to meet the requirements.
Can you please suggest some other architecture if you think that the above arechitecture is not feasible to build this sorta website? Magento is not an option.
Thanks.
Surely people need be able to exchange items? From taking a quick look at your specification, I don't think your list covers all of the required functionality.
While cash payment isn't required, it sounds like payment might be involved because your site is a 'point-based exchange community'. I think this might actually make the task of creating your site slightly more complicated because there's less chance of using pre-written modules (most e-commerce CMSs are geared towards cash payments).
I'd suggest you look at an ecommerce system called Ubercart (which is based on Drupal). This can be customised reasonably easily by writing modules which plug-in to the main CMS. There's also a very supportive developer community. To work out the feasibility of using Ubercart, I'd recommend posting your question on the Ubercart forum (www.ubercart.org).
Related
I have been creating a custom web application using mainly PHP with some Javascript. I have been curious about rebuilding the site using Drupal. I have only produced a 'minimum viable product' and it is functional but not nearly as professional looking or feature rich as it needs to be with using some tailor made modules.
It may be easier just to look at my site, but I will describe it below as well. http://www.localtolocal.ca
Visuals need improving but that is another discussion all together!
I previously felt that it needs to be a custom application but since I want to incorporate things like articles, video content and forums I was thinking using Drupal may be very helpful. What I have so far is the part that I was thinking needs to be written by myself.
I have mostly seen Drupal used for sites that are blog based, content providers or eCommerce focused. My site's main focus is user-provided data. A user creates an account and will either browse and write reviews, favorite pages etc. OR post data about their business or endeavor. A small business would input their contact info, information about themselves and what they provide and that creates a page to display the information on, like this:
http://localtolocal.ca/display_page.php?page_id=23
They are also able to create custom vouchers, add photos and of course update information they have previously input. I will eventually also have paid subscriptions meaning tiered user structure.
Are there Drupal modules out there that can accomplish this? I assume it would need a considerable amount of customization.
Can Drupal be used to create something as full featured as Yelp or a high profile social media site? Asking in terms of evolutionary potential.
Would that learning curve not even be worth it compared to flushing out my custom application?
You can surely use Drupal to create a user generated content driven site as described. True, the learning curve is steep and it'll take some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it'll be worth the effort imho. With Drupal you can develop a user-testable prototype of your application within days which is a really big win.
The site doesn't seem really complex, so main challenge will be defining the personas and testing that they have the correct permissions. In general I would suggest extending the user profile so they can submit information about their business, using the flag module to favorite pages and a separate content type for reviews (which you can publish direct and moderate later or the other way around).
I'm making a website for video game music concerts. It is user-contributed, which means that anyone can input information about new concerts or modify existing ones. Editors can revert changes. User's would probably be divided into four groups: unregistered users, registered users, editors, admins.
The site will be on a subdomain of http://vgmdb.net/, which is site for video game music albums. Please take a look at that site and imagine my site being similar, but simpler. I'm a beginner programmer with only little experience of WordPress, Drupal, PHP and MySQL. Some people suggested to use a framework instead of a CMS. But I like WordPress the most and would prefer to use that.
Can WordPress handle these things easily?
Advanced search functions.
The concerts would be linked to specific games, artists, venues, cities, countries, genres, dates etc. in the style of VGMdb's advanced search
User profiles with information about
what concerts they have been to ("went to this concert" -button on concerts)
what ratings they gave to concerts (5-star rating button on concerts)
Image galleries for each concert
for scans of pamphlets and other stuff given at the concert
users upload this stuff (just like they modify and add information)
Users can add or modify information about concerts
in an easy way in the style of http://vgmdb.net/album/new
Of course it can be done in WordPress. But it wouldn't recommend it.
The biggest problem is that you want unregistered visitors to do these things. WP is good at managing content. But not if it is user generated.
It will end up unstable and totally user unfriendly.
I don't know if Drupal would be better.
I'd recommend learning Zend framework or Symphony first.
You say you are a beginner, the hard truth is;
This is probably to big for you, and whatever you end using you will have to learn a lot more.
We're looking in to a product that we would like to launch that gives small business owners (specifically offline shop owners) the chance to easily build a site.
A option would be a special 'fork' of wordpress/joomla/etc with some predefined pages (about us, homepage, opening times, pictures, contact etc) and also predefined templates which they can alter.
A shop owner would sign up and buy or move a domain to us to which we attach the software. He chooses a template and fills in the standard info. Some elements of this are required but he could also add his own pages (e.g. specific sale events).
Within the templates there are elements which he cannot change (backlinks and/or widgets from us). But he can change the templates (colors, pictures, logos).
Everything should be hosted in the cloud (e.g. EC2) and easily scalable. We would sell this service for a small fee per month giving a small shop owner an easy way to his own site.
Are there any open-source packages that have these options?
Joomla isn't very flexible to adjust,
Wordpress is a better choice.
the build in twentyeleven theme will show you how easy it can be to adjust colors.
It's also far easier for the user to manage.
You might even take a look at a WP-multisite. Manage all sites with one admin. And keep all your wp sites up to date at once.
To disable some widgets you only need a good template.
Robert suggests magento and shopify, Magento will be too much and to hard to manage. I'm not familiar with shopyfy, but it's a online shop (not offline)
Form this question I take that you/your company is a startup and you don't have much experience.(As does a quick google)
What ever you take you will need (more then basic) coding knowledge php/html/css/javascript
Might be worth having a look at http://www.magentocommerce.com/ or http://www.shopify.com
let me be clear first its not like i am trying to build a members area. There are hundreds of posts on that topic.
this is what i want to achieve.
1)a very basic website where registration is completely free and no credit card details or anything is required at that time.
2)a section in the website where a person can upload files (music created by the user or his band in my case).
3)everytime he wants to upload the music (a singe or an album), he pays using credit card or paypal and then has to pay every month until he mails us that he doesnt want t continue.
4) for an example head over to www.tunecore.com but with drupal obviously.
5)I am hoping to use drupal 7 as it is newer and will be supported for a longer period of time and as i have read many features come out of the box but drupal 6 is also acceptable if i can achieve the goals .
P.S. i tried searching for this(9 days * 11 hrs to be exact) but couldnt find anything thats why i am posting here.
the reason we are choosing drupal is that its completely free , highly customisable , very secure and best of all easy to manage so it will decrease our setup cost which as a startup we always look for.
i am looking for suggestions,modules, custom builds, tutorials, blog posts or basically anything to help me and my startup to achieve what we aim.
Thank you for your help
If you're going with Drupal 7, you should probably try Drupal Commerce.
As for what you're trying to achieve, you could probably look into Rules as well as user roles.
I have a real estate agent client who wants a website to list the properties he's selling. Although there are great 3rd party web apps out there that do this, he adamantly demands that I recreate a simple and custom website for him.
I can do this quickly with a php framework like Code Igniter that comes with MVC, data access objects and data bind controllers. The database would be straightforward:
t_page: generic content pages
t_property: for each property on the market, has fields like address, price, #of bed rooms etc..
However, the client has heard many great things about Wordpress, and strongly advises that I build his real estate site with it. I've only used Wordpress to create blogs and relatively straightforward websites. SO I dont know how effective it is as a real estate property content management system or how effective it is for users to search for real estate properties based on attributes such as "# of bedrooms, square footage, is basement finished etc..."
So my question is, is it a good idea to build a real estate agent website with Wordpress? Or should I try harder to convince him to build it with web framework like Code Igniter?
Rather than argue with your client about the future platform or CMS or listen to people for/opposed to WP out of principle, sit down with your client and map out exactly what he/she wants to do in terms of the site. How do they want to add material or blog posts? How easy should it be? How do they they want users to be able to search: by price range, location, etc? Get them to show you on other sites how they want things to work.
Then look at the capabilities of various CMS's, frameworks and the like. Investigate search and MLS plugins, property XML feeds, maps. Determine what other real estate sites use (esp. his/her competitors).
Then explain your decision with evidence as to what they want to do compared to what's possible with different systems. They may talk themselves in or out of systems without your help.
It's called working with a client so they get what they want in terms of usability and end-user functions, not imposing what you want on their project. Sure, you know what you are talking about in terms of getting things to work, but they don't care; they want it to work in a certain way: their way.
(And see what's already out there in terms of Real Estate WordPress Plugins and WordPress Real Estate Themes).
I've developed several real estate sites using Joomla and openRealty, and I have tried to create a decent real estate site for my wife using Wordpress due to it's ease of use for end-users, but unfortunately programming a real estate site in Wordpress is tricky. It's a blogging engine and not terribly good at "directory" based information. So I find that the ease of use goes out the window as you try to hack together real estate functionality. Then you are asking your end-users to create custom-fields, etc and it becomes a pain and you end spending too much time managing your end-users.
I love WP. But, a directory style site is not it's highest and best use.
If the client is so adamant that you use WP for his site then let him do it. Then wait till he comes crawling back to you when he can't get it to do what he wants and you can build in properly in CI.
You wouldn't tell a plumber to fix your toilet with a socket set...
Check out ExpressionEngine, it's perfect for this as you can create custom fields (# bedrooms, square footage etc.) and retrieve content by any of these custom fields using the {exp:channel:entries} tag.
So basically you'd create a channel for these listings and then use "custom fields" for the data about each of these listings (specified by the needs of your client).
If you need design for this site "City Guide" from WooThemes will be available for EE as of tonight ;-)
And since you mention CodeIgniter - EE 2.0 is built on CI and if you need some custom functionality it's all CI so that should feel like home.
Wordpress custom post types would work well for this sort of site.. A custom page template and modified WP_Query would provide the basis of the site.
As mentioned by everyone else, WP probably isn't the absolute best tool for the job, but it would not be a bad choice. I've done weirder things with it.
Old question but still relevant. My opinion is that WordPress is not a good option for creating real estate listing sites. The main reason is that it is designed primarily as a blogging engine so it requires a lot of work to set up and is susceptible to getting hacked. More detailed explanation here:
https://smallbusinessforum.co/why-an-alternative-to-wordpress-is-needed-for-real-estate-websites-ff82de096d93#.j2cduk4xs
I think that using Wordpress is a plus, not because it is the best program to use, but if you make the site properly, and he wants to add/change something, you (and many other people out there) can mold it to his needs.
There are a lot of plugins you could extract some php code from and make a good listing. You also have the option of using post_types (which are saved as posts), custom fields (which all the fields are saved in one table but indexed), or creating your own tables (adding tables function or using a plugin like PODS).
I think you will save time on coding if you go with Wordpress, and customization is pretty okay (not anywhere near decent, but I am pretty sure this site will be the next craigslist). Wordpress is the 1995 Toyota Tercel of CMSs: it won't be great, but it gets the job done, and almost everyone has worked on it at some point in their live.
If the money is good, then try to wow him with a CI demo. But with WP, could probably accomplish your task in a few hours. There are ways to set up CI around Wordpress, but that is beyond me.