(ANSWERED)Can CMSMS Do What We Need

[blue_eyed_monkey]

Greeting CMSMS experts and interested parties.

My name is Tatyanna. I work for a community technology access and education program in Los Angeles, California, USA. My boss, Karen, and I are looking to build our own site utilizing an Open Source CMS that can accommodate our specific needs. We were looking into Drupal, but the leaning curve is prohibitive.

Let me stress that at this point we are not looking for anyone to do work for us or any of that. We want to do this ourselves and if we bump into any glitches, we will go to the appropriate forum and scream..."HELP!"...at that time.

The organization is Foundation for Successful Solutions-Project T.E.C.H. or just Project T.E.C.H to make it easy. www.fsstech.org We are a non profit and do programs and education for middle school through elderly. Our "juicy" program right now is a technology based Algebra Enrichment program for African American students. Check out our blog here: http://achieve.fsstech.org/

I am hoping that you all can help me figure out if CMSMS can do the following, and suggest the modules to install, etc. See summary and list below:

We are looking to build a site that can provide online registration for our classes, and also provide a password protected "intranet" type section where staff and volunteers can: communicate in forums, collect program data via online forms, share calendars, share files, etc.

Additional Questions:

Can a CMSMS site be hosted on a sub domain of another site?
Will there be compatibility issues if the main site is not PHP?
Can an ASP site be converted to CMSMS?

Thank you for your time and for sharing your knowledge with me.

~Tatyanna aka B.E.M.

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

either you can answer these questions yourself and do what you want, or you can have less functionality with something like Kompozer.

Pierre M.

[jmcgin51]

Tatyanna,

I think CMSMS can do everything you want, if you're willing to work and learn a little.

Converting an existing ASP site will take some work, because you'll have to convert your ASP scripts to PHP scripts.  There is a tag that allows you to embed existing scripts in a PHP page, but I haven't had much luck with it.  Then again, depending on what you were ASP scripting for, CMSMS might have core or module functions that do what you want without custom PHP scripts.

Yes, you can run CMSMS in a subdomain.

No, there shouldn't be any conflicts if the primary site is scripted in a different language, as long as your host/server supports PHP (and the ancillary CMSMS requirements).

You can use a combination of FrontEndUsers and CustomContent modules to have your password-protected intranet.  There are modules to integrate forums, to create forms, create calendars, etc.

[blue_eyed_monkey]

Hello,

either you can answer these questions yourself and do what you want, or you can have less functionality with something like Kompozer.

Pierre M.

Pierre,

I am not sure if you didn't want to answer my question or thought I had not done any research (three full days actually) , but...

If I wanted to create a fluffy site that was pretty to look at I would use Komposer. Great program for such things.

I'm not sure what else to say. Hmm... Thank you for your time.

~B.E.M.

[blue_eyed_monkey]

Tatyanna,

I think CMSMS can do everything you want, if you're willing to work and learn a little.

Hi jmcgin51,

Thank you very much for your response. You answered all the questions I had and that is much appreciated. We are definitely willing to learn and of course work to get this done. In fact, both of us are hungry to learn. That's one reason we don't just hire out. We will be increasing our skills sets significantly through this venture and that is exciting.

Thanks again.

~B.E.M.