Hi group, I'm coming from a Drupal development background, and I'm investigating a new platform for my clients. Looking at Concrete5, CraftCMS and MODx.

I have a particular client with a complex set of functional requirements. The crux of the site is really a Community Discussion Forum area, where authenticated Members needs to be given different roles and permissions on a per group basis. ie. a Member may be an Admin in one group, but a Member without Admin in another group.

Member Forum/Collaboration area

• Guests groups, Private Groups, Moderated groups
• different authenticated users will be Administrators of their Groups ie. Group 1 - Administrator is David Group 2 - Administrator is John, but David is a member of this group

Membership management (Users and Admin can edit Profiles)

Membership payment processing renewal based on an expiry date

Bilingual (En / Fr) front end (localization)

Events Calendar (and member input, and email notifications to subscribed Events)

Newsletter(s)

• my client currently uses an existing third party Newsletter campaign.
• members need to be able to register for a newsletter

Reporting and Statistics

• like google anyltics ?

Front-end Search

• search faceted like Solr ?

Modular approach to customizations and plugins

• my client is very frustrated to have been stuck with an old clunky CMS for many many years, without the ability to upgrade core, or modules, etc, etc, etc.

Responsive Design on the front end

Payment processing

• my client used Moneris payment gateway

Initially, I was going to go out and look for best in breed and build their solution with single sign on integration points. So for example : CraftCMS as the core, then integrate Vanilla Forums, then integrate a Calendar, then integrate a payment gateway etc etc, etc, etc. But I am trying to find a full on solution under one roof.

Thanks so much! If this is too much info for this forum, would even appreciate well known implementation vendors of OctoberCMS to ask about consultancy.

Does OctoberCMS handle all the functionality at octobercms.com/forum ?

Last updated 10 years ago

I also come from a Drupal background. I've used it for years and still do. For what your talking about, Drupal 7 really would do that pretty well/quickly. That said, it would be pretty "heavy" with Drupal and upgrades may be a pane.

I don't know if the OctoberCMS.com forum is built off of october, but I would assume it is. Personally, if I was going to build something like what you are stating, I would also think about using vanilla Laravel... simply b/c I've found several things a pain to do in october (mostly b/c of the extra learning curve and missing documentation, though that is getting better fast) that I've done easily in Laravel.

Either way (october of plain laravel) you're going to build most of the functionality you want as its not already available.

Update... so your question in the subject "CAN OCTOBERCMS MEET MY REQUIREMENTS," I would say yes. Not because october has that functionality already but because its built on a great framework and your functionality could be added. So essentially, symfony2, yii, phalcon, etc... those also "meet" your requirements.

Last updated 10 years ago

Most of the things are already there, but if you use them extensively, you will find many bugs (really! Dont forget this project is still in a beta stage!).

Going through your requirements, there is:

• A User plugin plus role based authentication: http://octobercms.com/plugin/rainlab-user & http://octobercms.com/plugin/shahiemseymor-roles
• A Forum plugin (which is indeed the one used on this site): http://octobercms.com/plugin/rainlab-forum
• A translate plugin (this is really buggy from my experience but the concepts behind are GREAT!): http://octobercms.com/plugin/rainlab-translate
• A mailchimp integration (newsletter): http://octobercms.com/plugin/rainlab-mailchimp (I think this is also used here in the footer ;) )
• A payment plugin is on its way to the marketplace: https://github.com/responsiv/pay-plugin It already works, but of course it is not tested at all and has some things to be fixed. But it works - I tried it.
• The update system of october works like a charm (mostly)!

So if you are interested in digging a bit into code and fixing some bugs you encounter, October might be good choice. If you dont have time for these, better go with the dead-tested alternatives (drupal, typo3).

Last updated 10 years ago

Thanks for taking the time to reply That0n3guy - I think I was expecting an answer very similar to what you have described! But had my fingers crossed on a more Cadillac CMS. :-) Agree that Drupal is not a terrible solution for this project, however it is a bit overwhelming for me to take on on my own right now - as I'm sure you know all the typical Drupal issues you run into all the time, as well as the upgrade paths, as well as the Drupal 8 on the horizon. (Dries has been saying this for a couple of years tho!)

I've not used Laravel yet, but have come across this framework very often in the past few weeks while researching a solution.

You sound like you are on the fence about moving away from Drupal as well ? I'm ready, and I think the client(s) are also ready to "move away from the old school" CMS thinking of Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc and into something new like Craft or Statamic.

I'm not moving fully away from Drupal for a while. For most of my custom stuff, I use Laravel but for a CMS... I'm on the fence (low end clients I can roll out a free theme and have a drupal site up VERY quickly).

Drupal 7 still has a LOT that you can do very quickly, but october will be much more flexible.

MODx was ok when I used it, Concrete5 was a headache. I love OctoberCMS and I'm just 10-11hrs into the development of my site! I started using it when I began investigating Laravel and it's excellent. I am building a platform on top of it, and everything works wondrously.

Hiya.

This is clearly a much forgotten thread but I would love to resurrect it looking back to what has happened since the original discussion and also to the future.

If you were to help the OP today, what would your advice be? I'm in a very similar position.

Thanks much.

Given the thread started 2 years ago, things have moved on a lot since then. I've done most of the things listed with October to build portfolio sites, multilingual domains, AMP sites, booking platforms and even a Native app. The platform is simple but extremely customisable. It's just Laravel under the hood.

Here's my thoughts on how to solve each of the items:

• Member Forum/Collaboration area - forum plugin
• Membership payment processing - Integrate Stripe. The only choice for subscription payments
• Bilingual (En / Fr) front end (localization) - translate plugin. works like a dream
• Newsletter(s) - Add Mailchimp widget. Simple.
• Analytics - Google Analyics. You can even add the GA plugin to view some data from Ocotber
• Modular approach to customizations and plugins - Extremely flexible and customisable. I build some plugins and anytime I update the git repo, the changes is automatically pushed out to users.
• Responsive Design on the front end - Default theme is responsive. The backend is responsive too.
• Payment processing - Again Stripe.js is the answer

Last updated 7 years ago