Pre-Install Question. Advice on cmsmadesimple accomplishing the funtion I need?

[awarner20]

Hi folks,

I have just discovered CMSMadeSimple after looking at many CMS solutions and I'm anxious to give it a try for a website a friend wants me to build. I have experience in osCommerce and Wordpress applications, but have not yet tried any CMS apps to build a site. After lurking on the forums for a gew days, it seems that there is a great support community here, so I am hoping that some experienced users might be able to guide me in learning if this is the right solution to accomplish my goal.

My friend is in the Adoption business and is looking to start a website that she can populate with contact information on available Foster parents for Adoption agencies to search and contact. This is her email describing the initial functionality she's looking for...

It's actually a website to connect foster/fost adopt parents and children. If you look at www.cakidsconnection.com it will show you kind of the website I had in mind only in reverse.

I'd need some drop down boxes the same as those on that website so social workers could select the children's needs. Then a search engine would match it with foster/fost adopt  parents or group homes that had openings.

There would also be a section on the website devoted to a listing of the various agencies and to some training programs we plan to add. The public would be able to access the agency listing and training but not the matching (dropdown) part-that part would be restricted to only counties having a code. Each county would need their own access code. And, the agencies would need to be able to input their foster/fost adopt families and group homes that have openings.

So each agency would need their own code too.

As far as invoicing the agencies we need a way to keep track financially of the # of families/group homes they list each month (month-to-month). We aren't charging the counties.

The kids just aren't getting matched out here....I want the website to be able to grow and I think it should be simple for users.

Could anyone offer any advice on if CMSMadeSimple is the right application to handle this funtionality? I will be installing a test version soon so I can get familar with the app, but it seems to me that accomplishing what is required may be quite complicated, especially if I am to turn this over to the user for regular updates.

Again, any advice is greatly appeciated:)

Adam

[awarner20]

Ok, well after experimenting with cmsms a little bit, it seems that with some selected modules, I may be able to accomplish what I need by creating different groups with different permissions.

I'm still thinking about how an social worker could upload profile information on foster parents. I suppose there is some form creation ability with cmsms? They would need the ability to upload photos along with profile information and these profiles would need to be searchable and be able to be filtered in the search as well.

So, I'm kind of "thinking out loud" here, trying to wrap my head around the features and modifications that could be made to accomplish what I need. Oh, did I happen to mention that this person is also requesting a subscription payment ability?

Well, I am really hoping that all you cmsms experts on here, would be willing to give me some guidance as to if I can accomplish this with cmsms and maybe a short list of necessary modules for me to look at?

Again, any help is greatly appreciated.

Adam

[stopsatgreen]

From what I can see, the Front End Users, Form Builder and Uploads modules would take care of most of the functionality; not sure about the subscription payments. There are a couple of shopping cart and payment modules which might suit your needs.

[RonnyK]

What kind of subscription are you looking for, you can off course create an account with Paypal and use that, it has some options for recurring/one-time/etc.... payments.

Ronny