Hey!

I was about to implement a site using SilverStripe - But now im having kinda second thoughts about using a cms or not. I fear that it is my general understanding of CMS that lacks...

I want to build a small community site:

- A user can create a group
- A group contains several users
- Each user can add blog post, create events, upload images
- Each group is configured to be available to the public (non user) or not

Questions:
1. User management. SS has a user database - Should i use that one for all the users in all the groups? Or create my own model for users, and a model for user rights?
2. The /admin/ (CMS) interface. Is that only intended for me as a content manager or would that also be available for all the users in all the groups? Alternatively I would have to create forms for all the actions?
3. Publicly available groups should be navigatable with urls like www.mysite.com/group/firstgroup/ - is this supported in latest version? (The reason I ask is that I saw some issues related to this in older blog post)
4. So in general you might notice that I perhaps lack some understanding on the whole CMS concept. Perhaps what Im looking for is a community module? I see that using a CMS when a company wants to launch a website that is easily editable... but in my case..?

Thanks!

It sounds like you want to create something not to dissimilar to the Guitar hero website (http://hub.guitarhero.com/), which is built in SilverStripe.

To more directly answer your questions:

1. I would suggest you use the main user class, but extend it to make exclusive user types (member, moderator etc).

2. It can be both, you can specify user groups and grant access to different parts of the based on what members are in what groups. Generally though I would say that you should keep the admin area accessible to only to higher ranked members (admin, moderators etc), not anyone who can edit some content. Then create some simple forms for everyone else.

3. You would want to look at using 2.4 to get the most URL options. It is still in production, but is quite close to launch and defiantly worth looking at.

4. The good thing about Silverstripe is the CMS functionality is quite adaptable, it can be as minimal or all encompassing as you want. I am sure there are people on here who will say that you should look at Zend, Symphony, Django, Ruby on Rails etc. But for me Silverstripe offers a good combination of a pretty robust web framework and a very flexible CMS, so I think you would do well with Silverstripe. You will just need to get your head round some concepts like MVC, OOP how it relates to the CMS and what you can do with it.

I would say, as a final note, the Silverstripe book has some chapter that cover some of the stuff you are looking to do. It is written for 2.3, but for the most part there should be little difference.

Hope that helps,

Mo

You can use some Zend Class ( see Money Class in SilverStripe...became from Zend )

Thank you for your replies.

@biapar: Im not able to find out what you mean with the money class - could you tell me more about it?

@Mo: Nice answers. I've decided to go ahead with ss and im looking forward to it! Thanks!