I have given much thought to how I want to construct my new membership based site. I have decided to build it on a Content Management System. I can see from the list that AMember Pro works with a number of CMS systems. Which one is the best in your opinion? Mambo? PMachine? (ExpressionEngine?) Envolution? Xoops? Typo3? PHPWCMS? Drupal? WordPress? Other? Also, which is the most tightly integrated with AMember Pro? I want rock solid stability over fluffiness. It needs to work and work well. Any thoughts on this are much appreciated!
I cannot say if one is better or not, because we don't use any CMS for our website. Also, integration is always the same.
Even if you dont have an opinion on which CMS is best... could anything be said about the integration if I purchase the additional plugins to allow for that. I want something that works well, not a jimmy fix. These comments and any others are greatly appreciated!
I'd say Mambo is the most feature filled. I've been working with Drupal and I really like it too. If you just want to blog or post some basic content, WordPress is probably the best.
I've tried a range of cms's and I think Website Baker is fantastic. You can read reviews and check out a demo at: http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=509 Website Baker home page is http://www.websitebaker.org Latest version is newer than the demo at opensourcecms.com Davido
Website Baker Hello Davido, Yes, I have tried website baker before and I also liked it very much. I will have to give it another look as I never really tested it all that much. I just remember I liked it.
Me, personally... I'm chancing it with Mambo. My website launch is awaiting an integrated aMember solution with Mambo's Community Builder add-on. Mambo's pretty feature rich with all the add-ons available out there. Good integration is the challenge.
I am looking for a way to manage a site membership (multiple sections) and am looking for a way to use amember with Website Baker. Possibly using PHP includes, but is there a better way?
How does aMember integrate with CMS systems anyway? It just hooks into their user database or is there something more to it? Does a CMS have to have some sort of user authentication/user groups/permission-based access in order for aMember to take advantage of those features, or it doesn't matter (since aMember has that permission based access feature as well)?
aMember can use it's own ACL, the CMS's ACL, or both. CMS is not required to have it's own access control list for aMember to work. Through their respective integration plugins, CMSes are integrated with aMember via login/logout synchronization of the two user databases (ie. aMember's user DB & the CMS's user DB) & other access level adjustments as configured.
when you say access control list, do you mean that it could be possible to integrate amember with something like wordpress, which doesn't have fancy user priviledges and permissions, and when the two are working together you can achieve permission based access to certain features of the wordpress? or does the cms (in the case wordpress) have to have necessary framework in the first place in order for that permission based access to work? as in, if you want to restrict viewing of certain articles/posts in wordpress to certain usergroup, amember would be able to do it even tho wordpress itself cannot?
Integration is only successful if it accomplishes your specific needs. Since people's specific needs can vary quite greatly from CMS to CMS or individual need to individual need, it's hard to answer from a generalized all encompassing perspective, ie: I'm not familiar with the wordpress CMS, but if it has a core access control mechanism of it's own and if aMember has a plugin for it, then they can integrate via the CMS's ACL. If not, there is always the option to just use aMember's ACL which is directory based access control. So if an aMember protected directory contains your specific article files/posts, then aMember can accomplish access control to that specified directory without relying on access control from the CMS. Mind you that the user's authentication is now tied to aMember's user list/database. aMember does not require that a CMS have an ACL structure in place in order to protect content. It can still protect independant of a CMS's permissions mechanisms. In fact, independant protection (that is NOT the CMS's core) is an access strategy that I am working on for my project (which is currently pending aMember-->Community Builder integration). It's kinda of a hybrid for me, because I'm using aMember solely for the reason of restricting file access, but at the same time (for process reasons), I want other attributes of my CMS & aMember user accounts sychronized: like login, logout, name, e-mail, session, profile, etc. Those other attributes aren't exactly access-protection-essential, but they do allow for seemless single logon for the customer... so that people don't get confused over their aMember account vs. their CMS account. aMember uses a separate database of it's own whether it is integrated or not. If it is integrated, it has to duplicate the CMS users in it's own db for knowing when to grant or expire access. On the other hand, aMember cannot duplicate it's own internal directory-based-protection attributes in your CMS userDB without changing your CMS tables (which is not good practice). That is why there are two databases. AMember has to manage it's own DB which is used to grant and expire appropriate user access. -Fred