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Is there a Solution for this need?

Thread began 12/08/2011 7:07 am by Peterson Design Studio - jefferis | Last modified 12/08/2011 10:48 am by Peterson Design Studio - jefferis | 1640 views | 3 replies |

Peterson Design Studio - jefferis

Is there a Solution for this need?

Hi folks, I was approached about a non-profit project or a community
based project for our area. My friend is interested in duplicating
part of the features on teenink.com/ namely, the ability for
registered students to post works of art, writing, photography and
video online. My first thought was that the problem with something
like PowerCMS, Drupal or WordPress is that each student would have to know how
to insert their pages into the proper navigation structure, and that
situation creates a potential nightmare, since the participants will
be at all levels of web experience. There is a possibility that
submissions and postings could be managed by an intern, but I told him
I would ask for advice, options and ideas from my colleagues.

So I was wondering if anyone has any experience developing something
like this that could be community based? I assume membership and
logins will be required and memberships would have to be pre approved.
But I know of no system that would allow people to easily submit and
categorize something like what I'm talking about here.

The other issue would be the budget to develop something like this. I
kind of know how many hours it might take in Drupal to come close to
this setup, IF it could handle what he wants… but he's going to be on
a donation budget, so it may be too expensive to develop… I was
wondering if there might be an easier solution. Or perhaps Adobe
Breeze could fulfill this function or some other subscription service
that has this system premade?

Thanks
Jeff

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gruant2000381341

If I am reading your post correctly, you want to allow people to create pages and then also allow them to add in links in your navigation area.

Powercms2 will allow you to create dynamic pages from a template, so that part is easy.
There is nothing really built into pcms2 to deal with the navigation. here are 2 ways I got around that

1st way i tried it was I created an editable page(not from a template) in pcms in which I simply used source view so users could add their links to the new template driven dynamic pages. then I simply added that developer code snippet to my navigation area. That way works fine for my clients who have a basic unsderstanding of how to add unordered list items and applying the needed span tags and classes to each item, so they will pick up the proper css for the css menu writer.

then i have some clients who really don't understand that so I had to go a step further.

the second way was I saw this menu manager
474819
I made my own version and integrated it into pcms2 so that it is very very user friendly.
The way mine works is that the user can add a page name and url.
then it adds the page and you can drag and drop it anywhere inside the existing site tree.
Once they have their link where they want it, they just click a publish button and then I have php rewrite the menu.php page that is included on my pages to show the new navigation.
I have php go through the list to detect what level location everything is now and automatically add in appropriate span tags and classes before it writes the new menu.php.
That script i mentioned above was like 9 dollars, I didn't buy it, but it may be configured in a way that you could adapt that pre built one to fit right in. I just saw it and it inspired me to build my own.
I still use pcms2 to have the client make their template based pages....this is just so they can add the navigation links to the drop down menu.

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gruant2000381341

another alternative is here www.webintersect.com
it is an opensource social site kit.
The developer did an awesome job building it and he even shot a massive screencast collection on how it is coded step by step. the tutorials should be listed on the site as well as a download link.
(click on the green buttons in all the sections to see lists of all the tutorials)
I added my own blogging system to his project...which may very well fit right in to what you need. there is no dynamic menu builder exactly as you described but it would be pretty easy to add in.
my blog add on tutorial series is here part 1 watch?v=fZkGU9GSINQ&feature=g-upl

if you went this route, you may even forgo the whole user editing the sites main navigation system and just add links to student works on their own profile pages....would keep newbies from messing up the works in regards to the main navigation system

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Peterson Design Studio - jefferis

Originally Said By: gruant2000381341
  another alternative is here
if you went this route, you may even forgo the whole user editing the sites main navigation system and just add links to student works on their own profile pages....would keep newbies from messing up the works in regards to the main navigation system  



Thanks Grant. As I was discussing this idea with another developer, I realized what I almost need is a WordPress type design with multiple blog pages to allow for archiving and updates. But I do like the idea of using links to profile pages... I was thinking that if you got 100s of submissions, a navigation menu to keep it updated would be impossible. The only thing that might make sense is a blog roll for each category, like Poetry, Non-Fiction, Photography, etc...

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