Trying to decide if ProcessWire is the right platform

[MatthewHSE]

I finished a site with ExpressionEngine just before Ellis Labs began what appears to be a potential crash-and-burn course with regards to the future of their CMS.  Considering those developments, I'm looking for another CMS for new projects moving forward.  I think ProcessWire might be the one, but I'm having a bit of trouble evaluating it.

My current project is a somewhat complicated one.  Here's a quick list of specs, as best as I can outline them. Optional features are italicized.

• The site is primarily education-based.  In fact, you could consider it a set of online courses.
• Site concept involves teams of registered users collaborating toward a defined set of objectives. Primarily this will involve reading assigned content, marking content as having been read, and leaving comments for one another, over the course of several weeks or months.
• Team members will typically know one another in real life, but will register separately and must confirm their team membership.
• The content assigned for each team member to read will depend on their answers to a short quiz taken just after registration. Most content will not be available until after the quiz has been completed.
• Team members will often be assigned different content from one another, but should be presented with a list of content assigned to other team members and have the option to read it. Each article should show each user who else on their team has read it, ideally on both the article page and the article listing page.
• Teams will typically be two members, but may be three, in which case, one member will be a team leader and will be exempted from taking the quiz, and will have access to all site content with the ability to assign content to one or both other team members, regardless of their quiz answers. Team leaders will also need to be part of more than one team at once.
• Team members should be able to leave comments on particular articles, which are only visible to their own team. They will also need a "forum" of their own (threaded comments could work) where they can create and carry on several conversations concurrently.
• Regarding the record of who has read what content: Team members should have to deliberately mark an article as "complete" (and this should be visible to all team members) but all articles should automatically show which team members have "viewed" it.
• Teams who have completed the course should then be given access to all site content in a categorized directory-style structure.

Can ProcessWire do all of this?  And how complicated does this really sound?

Thanks,

Matthew

[JeffS]

Hi Matthew,

Welcome to the forums. 

I believe you could build it with PW since just about anything is possible given coding effort. However just because you could does not necessarily mean you should. There would be much to work out. Just as there would be in EE (unless you already built something similar).  Big factors in development effort here would be related to the level of automation required. Your specs bring up more questions than I care to ask at the moment. 

Posting a big scope for review and feedback is usually asking alot in a forum. Best to approach it one bite at at time.

ProcessWire is a great CMF/CMS and can accomplish much of what you can with EE, without the expense of third party modules.  I have not built a site in EE that mimics the functionality you require, so I won't comment on its fitness to the task. 

You just might want to take a look at moodle and evaluate it for this particular project.  It is a learning management system that might have many of the features you need built in or available in a plugin already. 

Since your here, I will say this. ProcessWire has good docs and the api is easy to follow. You can quickly be very productive. The community here is helpful and friendly. Come on down and kick the tires. Might not be a match for every project, but it is for most I am working on. 

[ryan]

I agree with JeffS. You could definitely build this in ProcessWire. But no matter what you build it in, it's largely a custom application that will require significant code on your part. That is, unless there is a software that focuses on these things in particular (which might be Moodle, I don't know). In addition to looking at Moodle, a full blown framework might be another path worth considering. If after evaluating the different options, ProcessWire looks like the simplest way forward, we'll be glad to answer any questions and get you started on the right path to building it. 

[SiNNuT]

I agree with previous posters; this sounds like a pretty specific web app/site. I would definately do some research before trying to build something on any cms, cmf er general framework.

I you google for something like 'open source software for online learning' you may find some interesting stuff, but i gues you already have done so? This Google project seems interesting: https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/

[Joss]

Which ever system you use, there will be customisation needs. There are several group style applications out there, but they are all going to be pretty general.

The choice is between do you start with something that covers some of what you want, has a lot you might not need, but you can hack to add the functionality, or do you just start from scratch.

If the latter, then PW would be a good choice, I suspect, probably with the addition of the Form Builder to make the creation of the form elements easier (but you could also do this by hand).

The advantage with the first method is that you will already have some of the collaborative system in place as a starting point. The advantage of the ProcessWire route is that although it will be more work, you will get a more precise application designed to work exactly as you want.