advices for a new site's organisation

[f34nc015]

Hi,

We want here to develop a CMSMS site. As a newbie, I would like to check if my solution is ok, or if there are no modules for that.

The aim of the site is:
We are licensing some sdks. Our customers (around 100) should be able to display and download all the sdks they are licensed for.
The "frontend administrator" of this site (my boss), will be able to admin users, license, sdks, and so on.

Features:
Users: can log-in, display and download their sdks. Modify their informations.
Admin: Display with filter and Modify sdks/users/licenses. Add an sdk, and upload its zip file.
(Some others features, but which I think are independant: Automatic email notification of license ending, historic per users, news per users depending on their licenses, send notification mails when users modify their infos, ...)

My way to go:
- FEU module for the users and the "front end admin".
- CustomContent to display different pages for the admin and the users
- Own db table for sdks and licenses. UDT to read the db and display / filter
- Form builder to add or modify sdks and license.
- Upload / Download: Not thought yes. But worst case scenario: juste referencing a link.
- Modification of a front end users by another FEU (the admin): Unfortunately, I can't set some values with the FEU modules, except from the cmsms admin area (or writing directly in the cms_module_feusers_ table. Which may be risky). We may keep the idea to login in the cmsms area to modify a user. Which is not very nice.

My question:
Any better idea?

THANKS!

[Jo Morg]

....
- Own db table for sdks and licenses. UDT to read the db and display / filter
- Form builder to add or modify sdks and license.
- Upload / Download: Not thought yes. But worst case scenario: juste referencing a link.

Maybe one of these modules may do it for you:
- Cataloger;
- ListIt2;
- Products;
It depends a bit on what you require but either one should be able to do the job. If so, is all a matter of preference...

[f34nc015]

Thanks a lot Jo

I do have a list of item (the sdks), but each user only see a part of them (the licensed).
That means I need to link each user with a specific subset of items.

I checked these 3 modules, and I don't think they fit.
But I hope I'm missing something and you can prove me I'm wrong :p

[Jo Morg]

You can use CustomContent to filter who sees what, either by group or by user.
If you need frontend submission/management of sdks, maybe Listit2 and FormBuilder can do the job, but if not either module works perfectly... Just different philosophies. You really need to read each module help. Also check http://www.i-do-this.com/ for some examples of use of these modules.

[f34nc015]

Thanks Jo

Yes, I didn't think about using customcontent this way.

I was almost convinced, but after checking all parts, it's too much.
"Sdks" could be any kind of list/product, and "license" some references in product or user.
But, I need to store some special info per license (date, type). And to retrieve/modify/display all of this. Sending some e-mail depending on the dates, ...

There's also the solution of 2 lists, one for sdks, and one for license. Then some field should be crossed between all lists / FEU (for instance, a field for sdk referencing a FEU, ...)

At the end, as a beginner, evaluating/hacking all solutions and being sure will take (already took?) much more time than just doing it with my own table.

The site IDT is very good thanks for that too.

I have another question: it is considered bad practice to write in module's db, right? The structure can be modified by an update? Or is it something that people do in cmsms. Like modifying some FEU users.

f