Is TP and SMF for me?

[sammie99]

Hi all
I have spent 5 months looking at CMSes for my website, i have used phpnuke, it failed as a CMS when you couldn't manage the content.  ie, a basic need in content management is to be able to list the content in an order you want, not the date it was published only.

eZ Publish fails as a CMS because it has nothing for members, no profiles, very little interaction for members, and so complex you cant add anything like chat or other forums, the drain on the database crashed the site 5 times a week when 4 members were on it.

i have just installed mambo 4.5.4 and that failed because they too have no profiles on thier forums, you need to add mods to get what you want, and that means updating more parts each time one of the others updates.

So my question is, is TP and SMF for me?
what i need is this:
forums that come with profiles SMF seems to have everything i need
flashchat: SMF and flashchat work together just fine i am told.

Questions about TP: maybe with SMF group setting?
can i use TP for my sexual health advice sites CMS?
can i restrict access to content to age? ie: 13+ 16+ 18+
can i restrict access to content to gender? male female
can members post comments on the main sites content, (feel part of the site and add thier advice)
can members make thier own page?
can the main site content be edited by a select group of people/editors?
can members upload pics?
is there a gallery for each member?

if nothing for any of the above, is there a working workaround?

with many thanx for your time and help in advance.
Samantha x

[PhilH]

You will find a good sampling of TP sites in the Showcase board. Should give you an idea of what can be done with TP.

[sammie99]

You will find a good sampling of TP sites in the Showcase board. Should give you an idea of what can be done with TP.

i have looked, and i am impressed with what i see, but can some of the things i asked, be done? i cant join 10 sites to find out if the age related question works or not, how would i know? join a site twice as 13 and 23?

i guess the only thing is to install it and hope i dont get to heart broken again if i wasted more time. but i really do think it is what i am looking for

sammie x

[Thurnok]

Mambo doesn't have a forum.  Mambo is strictly a CMS.  SMF is not a CMS, it is Forum software.  TinyPortal is not a CMS either, it is a mod for SMF that gives you Portal capabilities.

If you are looking for a combination of a CMS and a Forum, there are options, but they do not involve a single product.  Frankly, Joomla (which is pretty much Mambo since all the Mambo developers started it with the last Open Source version of Mambo) is the best CMS in my opinion.  It provides a good balance of features, capabilities, and ease of use.  Those "mods" you mention are plug-in modules and do not need to be added, they are simply there to give added capabilities.  There is no product out there that will give you everything you want out of the box.  That's why they are so customizable, because not everyone wants what you want.  In terms of Content Management however, Mambo/Joomla do provide a full working publishing system.  I'm not quite sure what you are looking for as far as "profiles", but authoring, editing, and publishing profiles exist in Mambo/Joomla.  And if you need something very elaborate for Content Management, Joomla is it.

Now, if you really just want your users (or certain ones) to be able to display Articles on your Frontpage, and also need a nice Forum system on the back-end for your users' everyday communication, then I'd say go with TinyPortal on SMF.  SMF is a very elaborate Forum system with many features and capabilities, and yes... here too you can find numerous "mods" to enhance it.  TinyPortal is one of those mods, and it provides you the capability of various content blocks on a frontpage.  Your users can post articles to be displayed (if you give them permission) and there are numerous pieces of code out there to enhance TinyPortal as well.

Since you were pretty much stressing you were looking for a CMS product, let me say that there is a way to "bridge" Joomla (a CMS) with SMF (a Forum) if you need that capability, and an option to that would be Joomla with phpBB (another Forum software).  Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, phpBB and SMF are on equal terms in capabilities, features, ease of use, support, and looks.  I still have over 20 phpBB sites.  I'd have more, but I've converted about 15 of them to SMF with TP.

SMF is like that favorite, moist, chocolate cake.  TinyPortal is like that rich, creamy, chocolate icing on top of it. 

[sammie99]

Since you were pretty much stressing you were looking for a CMS product, let me say that there is a way to "bridge" Joomla (a CMS) with SMF (a Forum) if you need that capability, and an option to that would be Joomla with phpBB (another Forum software).  Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, phpBB and SMF are on equal terms in capabilities, features, ease of use, support, and looks.  I still have over 20 phpBB sites.  I'd have more, but I've converted about 15 of them to SMF with TP.

SMF is like that favorite, moist, chocolate cake.  TinyPortal is like that rich, creamy, chocolate icing on top of it.

maybe i didnt make myself clear enough, i have been looking and testing CMSes for 5 months, because thats all i know that was out there, looking at SMF to phpbb2 i have used phpbb2 for some years and i think SMF is one step ahead of phpbb2.

TP looks like it could offer me what i am looking for, i am using mambo with SMF just now, but issues with the css have made me wonder yet again about adding something that is not built for it, ie TP was built for SMF from what i can see.

so i am looking to install SMF and use TP as the content end, maybe CMS is the wrong word, but what else can you call it, is it is used to manage the content?

my site is asksam2.com it's a sexual health advice site, it contains pics and movies of sexual health matter,  i will install TP and SMF and test them out before i do anymore work on my site. but thanx for your advice.

SMF is like that favorite, moist, chocolate cake.  TinyPortal is like that rich, creamy, chocolate icing on top of it.

thats the bit i like best. sounds good to me mmmm

sammie x

[G6Cad]

Questions about TP: maybe with SMF group setting?
can i use TP for my sexual health advice sites CMS?
can i restrict access to content to age? ie: 13+ 16+ 18+
can i restrict access to content to gender? male female
can members post comments on the main sites content, (feel part of the site and add thier advice)
can members make thier own page?
can the main site content be edited by a select group of people/editors?
can members upload pics?
is there a gallery for each member?

1. Yes

2. You can restrict age on registration and they have to verify the gage by email, fax or phone (all depend on the options you set for the registration.

3. Yes, there is quite many ways to restrict diffrent boards, and if you need more then whats builded in already, there are password protected boards mod with easy install through the package manager in the forum.

4. Yes, both within Articles, and forum posts, depending on how you have set the permissions for the visual content and for what groups.

5. As for now both yeas and no, You can have diffrent membergroups, and then set the permissions for them to maintain diffrent parts of the forum and portal. one exaple is the Articles, Another way is to use the Blog module. But if you look in the Roadmap you see what is planed for feature release of TinyPortal.

6. Yes

7. Yes

8. For now there in no built in gallery module for TP. There are however Coppermine gallery you can bridge in to SMF user database so it can be used with in your forum and portal. Also there is SMF gallery mod. And also a gallery module is planned for the furure in TinyPortal. This can also be rad in the Roadmap

[Thurnok]

Ok.. now that I've generalized, here's some direct TP info:

Questions about TP: maybe with SMF group setting?
can i use TP for my sexual health advice sites CMS?
can i restrict access to content to age? ie: 13+ 16+ 18+
can i restrict access to content to gender? male female
can members post comments on the main sites content, (feel part of the site and add thier advice)
can members make thier own page?
can the main site content be edited by a select group of people/editors?
can members upload pics?
is there a gallery for each member?

can i use TP for my sexual health advice sites CMS?
I have no idea about your sexual health advice, but you certainly can display any content using TP and/or SMF.

can i restrict access to content to age? ie: 13+ 16+ 18+
Well, there is nothing built into SMF or TP that allows you to restrict something by age though there may be a mod I'm unaware of that does.  Even if not, you could simply create "Age Groups" and make sure members of the appropriate ages are in those groups.  SMF provides a primary group and any number of secondary groups and permissions are very flexible as such to allow you to do what you want.  Age is a part of a user's SMF Profile by default.

can i restrict access to content to gender? male female
Same as above.

can members post comments on the main sites content, (feel part of the site and add thier advice)
Absolutely.. actually I answered this one in my "glorious" speech above.

can members make thier own page?
Not really, at least not in the sense I'm sure you are thinking.  However, such can be simulated via an Article or Block.

can the main site content be edited by a select group of people/editors?
Absolutely... again, my first post...

can members upload pics?
Yes, they can upload files that can be stored in the Download Manager that is part of TP.  They can also Attach pics to Posts in SMF, or simply directly insert them into a post if the pic is HTTP accessable somewhere.

is there a gallery for each member?
No, there will be a TP gallery eventually - it is in the works.  There is however an SMF Gallery mod, as well as other Gallery mods available that let your users do just that.  I suggest trying the SMF Gallery mod by vbgamer45.

There you go...  You just needed to let me finish, because I didn't want to put it all in one post. 

[sammie99]

oh wow, well now i am looking forward to having something that is going to do what i want by the sounds of things, i would like to thank you both for your time and swift replies, you have both been most helpful.

(mrs g6 i hope everything works out fine with your little boy, he looks so hansome and a smile that makes you feel good when you see it) good luck to you all. my thought are with you both.

sammie xXx

[Thurnok]

np, you are most welcome.

As you can see I'm trying to catch up with my Sis's post count, but she impedes me defiantly as her avatar suggests.  LOL

[sammie99]

well girls can multi taske better than guys lol

oh wow now i just seen the work involved in the setup and i havent found the readme how to install yet, just the editing page