I'm planning to create a CMS for a client (a logistics company). Besides of typically pages like About Us, contact us, company information, Services, there is a special feature request from the client.

The client want to create a parcel tracking page which will keep track of client's customers parcel where are they arrived at.
For example
client's customers can login from front-end , then a list of parcels with current deistination is shown say
parcel# source midpoint destination status
002332 locationA locationB location F on delivery
002312 locationA locationC location D on delivery
002452 locationA locationD location D closed
002305 locationA locationB location E on delivery

when a parcel arrived on another destination, site admin will update the destination thru back-end.

ps Sorry for my bad English.

Tim,

Could you give me some ideas and directions ? I'm really new on silverstripe. I have read the 5 tutorials and I'm still can't figure out how to have a start.

Let say,

1. how to I create customer records ? extend dataobject ? or Page ??
2. how do I let customer to login and view their own pracels
3. should I create two say PracelHolder and Pracel which extend the default , Page ??
4. how do I assoicate a pracel record to a customer ?

I'm used to use joomla for site development. SilverStripe is totally different as compare with joomla.

Besides, there is no front-end user database of silverstrip out-of-box ? In other words, I need to create a dataobject on my own ?

1. how to I create customer records ? extend dataobject ? or Page ??
2. how do I let customer to login and view their own pracels
3. should I create two say PracelHolder and Pracel which extend the default , Page ??
4. how do I assoicate a pracel record to a customer ?

Besides, there is no front-end user database of silverstrip out-of-box ? In other words, I need to create a dataobject on my own ?

It's pretty much impossible to answer all your questions in a forum post.

1 and 2 > Basically, you can use the already existing "security" model in SS for your customers. After they've logged in , use their current user-id to obtain the list of their parcels.
See : http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=security&s=security

3 and 4> There are more ways than one to implement this. In the simplest scenario you'd want to create a parcel dataobject with all necessary members (destinationA,destinationB,destinationC,status). A customer would need a 1-to-many relation with parcels , a parcel would have a 1-1 relation to a customer ... By using the already existing complex-fields you can make the back-end screens.

See :
http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=complextablefield

and

http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=complextablefieldexamples

Good luck !

I took a full day reading the "Level 2: SilverStripe fundamentals" of documentation. A section mentioned SS core has a Memeber class.
In my case, customers record (name, adrress, tel, password, etc) should extend this class or just extend a databobject and manipulate cusomters record thru CustomerHolder and Customers as extending from Page object

Haven't needed this for myself , but I guess you can subclass the Members class, yeah... I'm sure there's some docs on this subject ... For example :

http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=member&s=member

Beisdes, how to deal with the location dropdown list while creating a new parcel of a customer ?

If you'd like to give the user the ability to add locations , then you could create a location-class as well. If that is not really that important , just 'hard' code the values in your class , see http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=dropdownfield .

Good luck !