Hi, We are building a multi-online content subscription site to serve both regular members and casual shoppers, each with varying access requirements. The site will sell annual paid subscriptions (memberships) to one or many different online content collections (static pages of information). Each person can buy access to one or more subscriptions, and view all the content they paid for in their members area - using one login. It seems aMember may help achieve this, but ... ... we also need a shop (selling subscriptions (100+), books (20+), and seminars (100+)), a news section with archive & RSS, member help desk & FAQ, plus all the usual Administrator features, all in an easy-to-use CMS. What works well with what? Knowing what you know about aMember and the scripts that can work with it, which bundle should we go with? aMember Pro + Expression Engine OR XOOPS OR ??? We have the budget, but we don't have the time to try out every combination until we find the perfect match. We have just 3-weeks to get to the altar. Thanks
A comparative analysis of Xoops, Drupal and Joomla Hi! 1. HTML CONTENT GRABBING There are scripts i.e. CMS that will eat all your html pages, insert into mysql database and offer groups feature as well as permissions on it. So you need to have a plugin (not to get into the details of which one and how) to interface with this content area. This strategy will have an advantage that your content will reside in mysql database and enjoy all advantages arising out of it. The protection system would be respective and NOT .htaccess system, which is ofcourse much slower. However, aMember does offer .htaccess in-built system of protecting folders. 2. GROUPS COMPLEXITY IN CMS It all depends on the complexity you want to use the portal with. Joomla Joomla offers very basic groups feature. There are modules and components that will provide more compexity. However, you are dependent on those component developer and those components, according to reports, are all not that safe, hacker or bug free. So you will then strategically restrict yourself to a one man show or a much smaller group of component developers who will offer you encoded software as against open source and a gigantic development force of input throuth the open source developers community. Even with the newer 1.5beta, you will find that the complexity of groups is fathoms away. Xoops The core developers of Xoops have put its development under an idiotic (=strategic!) stop swimming under the illusion of bringing out a new Xoopshere and in this regards developing newer branches of 2.3 and 2.4. However the current branch of 2.0 and 2.5RC1 offers an excellent groups management system though. In comparision, 2.5 is an advanced one in terms of management but is rejected by the core team stamping it as "not-recommended". Drupal Drupal system offers one of the best quality of programming and maturity as well as a sound, rapid, continued or competitive development togather with a much smaller but friendlier community, not regarding that your messages in the forum may not be answered at all. Most of the investors as well as programmers and web designers, if they may have to decide, would decide on Drupal keeping custom coding to be pre-requisite in mind. In the past months and years, many well known magazines, portals and social networking sites have triggered their ventures towards Drupal and have successfully launched sites to hold and sustain a traffic of 15 - 20 millions of pageviews. In this regards, Xoops and Joomla would be a joke to use. Mind you, to get a Blank page as an output from Drupal scripts all of a sudden "is not unusual" and this is due to its architecture or the core programming, which should theoritically be stable and work, as against the object-oriented and modular programming of Xoops. 3. SALE OF GOODS & ITEMS Anathor story by itself. There are many shopping carts. You may find that there are couple of plugins aMember has. Out of both, I would prefer X-cart as against osCommerce for several strategic reasons, although osCommerce is not that bad. I have seen it growing. In General As you can see, one needs to analyse in-depth to suggest a solution. Hence it would be better to crystalise the conceptual and strategic business approach to be able to trigger a combination of products i.e. software for your business activities. Other then above mentioned three best known CMS out of the five in the Top-CMS-listings, I am not aware of any other. There are several hundreds scripts having some features of selling, management, groups, permissions, etc or the other. However they do not have several advantages against the above known and eastabilished systems mentioned above, which I find myself toooooooo lazy to list them here. So the answer depends really in a bit more in-depth perception of requirements that you need to judge yourself by investigating the matter and decide, since this choice is similar to marriage and it becomes really nasty in case of a divorce, they way how divorces are designed to function. A general discussion could only help to initiate several fundamental brain storming ideas.
Thanks very much draj. That's very useful to know. Appreciated. Though the form and function of the site has long been decided and planned. The only thing that remains now is sourcing the most suitable CMS to use, and that depends on how well the shopping cart module is integrated into the prospective CMS, and IF together they will work well with aMember. I short, we have decided to use aMember, but need the most compatible CMS/cart combination that we can use with it. Thanks again for your input. Though it's disappointing not to hear from aMember, either here or via their support.