PW – time banking, login states, subscriptions etc – what is possible?

[a-ok]

Hi folks,

I have been using PW for a while; and on every build it seems to perform really well and always have the ability to do what I need. Thanks everyone! I have a site coming up that I want to be involved in but it has some features that I feel PW won't be able to handle...

Here's the list...

Time banking system, interactive map, complex search criteria, calendar/events, login/registration states with payment (subscription?) and profile, front end profile views, internal messaging systems with approval levels and news

Most of these I know I can handle, but the ones I am unsure of are time banking system, login/registration states with payment (subscription) and profile, front end profile views and internal messaging systems with approval levels.

Has anyone ever had any experience with the above? Do you think any of this is possible on PW? I know I am asking a lot of questions but any help would be appreciated. I think most things are self-explanatory but the time-banking system, I'm assuming at this stage, is essentially a bit of a messaging platform where you post requests, record hours and have a statement of those hours. The best example I could find seems to be from the 90s, but to be fair it seems robust (http://hourworld.org/_TimeAndTalents.htm)

Any help or advice would be really appreciated.

Cheers,

R

[Beluga]

It seems the only alternative is for Drupal https://www.drupal.org/project/cforge

Couldn't find the source for hourworld's Time and Talents, though.. is it behind a registration or something?

[mr-fan]

Maybe you've found this, too....it's less 90's 

http://timebanks.org/get-started/community-weaver/

should be possible with pw for shure....since it's only data and display them....

[mr-fan]

Best listing ever found on this to share for you:

http://ma.juii.net/blog/time-banking-software-recommendation

regards mr-fan

[teppo]

I have a site coming up that I want to be involved in but it has some features that I feel PW won't be able to handle... [...] Has anyone ever had any experience with the above? Do you think any of this is possible on PW?

None of the things you've mentioned here are impossible, and all of them are very much doable with ProcessWire. This does sound like a big project, though, so better make sure you're up to it before signing up for anything.

Just a few quick notes on the specific parts:

• Time banking system sounds like it could be a lot of work. You'll spend quite a few hours putting that together, so especially if this is a paid client project, make sure that you've made a list of features, proper plans, and estimates beforehand. The larger the scope of the project, the easier it is to miscalculate the amount of work, so leave enough room for surprises and mistakes in your estimates.
• Same thing goes for the messaging system, though this depends a lot on how it's actually supposed to work. "Internal messaging system" alone isn't a very good description. If it's just about leaving messages for other users, that's not particularly complicated, but you'll need to make sure it's secure. Privacy is a very big deal in a system like that.
• Registered users should probably be actual ProcessWire users, so that you can let the system itself handle authentication etc. That's the complicated stuff after all. Registration state sounds like something that could be a custom field on the user template. For the viewable user profiles profiles the support for multiple user templates and parents could come in handy.
• The best way to handle payments / subscriptions depends on a lot of things. Check out various payment services available and see how those fit your needs. Building a payment system from scratch would be a lot of unnecessary hassle you really don't want to get into.

Not sure how much this helps, except for (hopefully) making it obvious that this sounds like a pretty big project. In the end the question here is not so much whether ProcessWire can handle this – it's more about whether you can handle this