Need some "Can s9y do this. . .?" help

[steven]

I hope I didn't miss it if the answer is already in the forum.

I work with several organizations which badly need help with their websites. They have been tacked onto for much too long and need a more cohesive look and functionality.

Most of our members are only slightly computer savvy and things need to be reasonably simple.

I am new to s9y, but find it facinating. I am hoping it can be configured to do the following with plugins or "lite" programming:

We need a webwide frontpage with good navigation and a what's new section. Serendipity should work fine out of the box for that using the blog for announcements, notifications, etc. Stickies for some things, and static pages for most of the base navigation to information. - OK

We use a forum for people to ask questions on the current site. That seems to be able to be tied in through a variety of plugins. - OK

We need a members ONLY section. This is where my real questions lie.

We need to be able to control access to this section.

We need to have several blog type sections, one for each committee. The Committee Chairs would likely be the only author and the other members could respond thru comments. These would be open to all members visiting the site.

I would like people to be able to subscribe to these committees by RSS or email and use one signup page. Few members will signup for all of them.

Navigation may or may not be different for each Committee. I'm still working on the possible scenarios.

Can Serendipity be configured for this? Is there a better way to organize the site to get this functionality?

I hope the answer is yes and that you can point me to some readings or examples. I have looked at Drupal and think its way over my ability to manage.

Thanks

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Yes, you can definitely do that with Serendipity.

S9y supports multiple, hierarchical categories. You can assign read+write permissions for each category using authorgroups. Once you put users into those groups, they can see the specific content.

Using another "Assign Templates to Categories" Plugin you can make each category look different, by having a template for each subcategory if you like.

So basically, s9y should be fit to do all of that. Especially if you are willing to do some light coding to it. Drupal is actually more targetted at what you want to do, but you already figured out that its maintainment is a bit more complex than serendipity, and many users appreciate the slightly different take that Serendipity makes to manage webpages.

If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask!

Best regards
Garvin

[steven]

I thought I saw what I needed, but I'm not sure what everything is called and not sure what to ask for.

I assume I can use the catagory feeds built into the program to let everyone pick and choose their interests.

For the members only section, are the built-in permissions adequate by themselves, or is another layer of login or password recommended. These are not state secrets, but this is where the benefits of signing up for membership reside.

Yes, Drupal seems to be a great program, but it looks as though it also needs a very competent administrator. . . which doesn't include me. Serendipity seems very straightforward for someone with basic html/css skills.

Thanks. I am sure I will be asking more questions as I work thru this.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Yes, category feeds etc. will work as usual. Of course if only specific members can read the categories, those items would not be contained in the global feed.

Members-only can be done with the integrated s9y membership means. The "User Self-Registration" plugin for example lets visitors sign up there.
So their authentication would work via username/password, like any other s9y author.

Have fun,
Garvin

[steven]

Yes, category feeds etc. will work as usual. Of course if only specific members can read the categories, those items would not be contained in the global feed.

If we have feeds from the member's only sections, how would we make sure that only members can get them?

It would not be too hard to guess at the catagory feeds of the National Fruit and Vegetable Association.

FeedBurner (I use it on my current blog) doesn't seem to allow any monitoring. And I assume once it gets into the FeedBurner system it can be crawled by other search tools.

Thanks for any help.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Feeds only work when authenticated first; so without authentication you can't get a feed that is designed for members. authentication currently only works with cookies; that means the RSS reader one uses must support the HTTP cookie sharing. I think only few readers do that.

A workaround would be to use HTTPS authentication for feeds. Implementing this as a plugin would be a matter of only a few hours...?

FeedBurner (I use it on my current blog) doesn't seem to allow any monitoring. And I assume once it gets into the FeedBurner system it can be crawled by other search tools.

Of course if you would resort to use feedburner, you could not make individual authentication. Then your feedburner feed would only contain public items, no member-only content at all.


Best regards,
Garvin

[steven]

Since I have no idea of what that is, I will have to keep working on this. I am just at the "drawing on paper" stage. I am sure I will have more questions.

Thanks