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User and Creator admins


Commander_Gal
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So, for my webcomic site, I was thinking there can be two types of accounts. User and Creator accounts.

Creator accounts can post novels, art, and videos on the site. While User accounts can like, comment, share, and repost Creators content, but can’t post any work of their own.

This is so I can filter socks/spam accounts and quality control.

How would the Creator and User accounts look on an Admin panel? What are some things I should know before going forward with this idea?

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This sounds like kind of a big project. I would advise you to make one or two smaller sites with ProcessWire first. You may find that you can add the multi-user stuff on later, but most likely you will have learned so much that you’ll want to start from scratch anyway 😉

Check this out regarding different user types: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-core-updates-2.5.14/#multiple-templates-or-parents-for-users

Just using the built-in roles and permissions features may be more than sufficient, though.

One important thing to consider is whether these users will all be trusted. Are they people you know or do you want to allow any rando off the internet to make an account? Do you want to let them into ProcessWire’s admin backend or do you want to build custom forms for everything?

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2 minutes ago, Jan Romero said:

This sounds like kind of a big project. I would advise you to make one or two smaller sites with ProcessWire first. You may find that you can add the multi-user stuff on later, but most likely you will have learned so much that you’ll want to start from scratch anyway 😉

Check this out regarding different user types: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-core-updates-2.5.14/#multiple-templates-or-parents-for-users

Just using the built-in roles and permissions features may be more than sufficient, though.

One important thing to consider is whether these users will all be trusted. Are they people you know or do you want to allow any rando off the internet to make an account?

For the Users, I would say anyone could apply. Creators would be the people that I would know.

As for the site, I’ll plan to start small with myself first, then slowly grow in size with my friends. My idea is that I start with my comics first, then I slowly grow into a webcomic portal for other people. I know my ambitions sound big but I do want to start small first lol

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Hi there,

TL;DR: Start by building your own personal site to learn ProcessWire/PHP, while considering all the implications of becoming a content host/publisher. Which it sounds like you're planning on anyway.

It's very exciting when you have an idea for a new project isn't it?  A few years ago I had a webcomic I used to run on ProcessWire. (long since archived to a static site* that never updates) and it was a such a pleasure to build on that I had the same idea to set-up my own comic hosting site using ProcessWire as the engine. I even got as far as starting to develop modules for it.

Ultimately, I abandoned the idea for the following reasons:

  • Hosting costs money. Hosting images costs more money than text. Like... a lot more. The larger and higher-quality the image, the more it costs to host, and comics tend to need high quality images. You also mention videos - are these to be hosted too, or linked via YouTube (for example)?
    • Ok, so you could use a third-party image hosting service, but then that too will cost money if your needs grow.
    • Also, any site that hosts user content is going to need regular backups, which will also grow in size and require safe storage. Your users won't appreciate their hard work going *poof* in the night.
  • Technical support. Any site that has users creating and uploading content will need 24hr (or near 24hr) technical support -- not just for site maintenence, but also user support.
  • Security. You need to ensure user data is safe and secure. Now, out of the box ProcessWire is one of the most secure CMS out there, but you still need to ensure the database and user data is secure (remember those backups? They need to be stored securely). The exact details of the hoops you need to jump through and what laws you need to comply with vary depending on where the site is hosted.
  • Responsibility. Like it or not, you will be a publisher. You will be responsible for the content put on your site. You will need a cast-iron acceptable use policy... run it by a lawyer! You will also need to enforce it, have a reporting system etc.
    • And how will you deal with DMCA takedown notices?
  • Acceptable content. When it comes to what is acceptable content, will it be child-safe only? If not, how will you ensure kids can't access it? Even if it is intended to be child-safe, what safeguarding features will there be to protect kids?

I looked at the above list and decided "fudge it, I'm too old for this sh*t".  You, however, may reach a different conclusion, or may have thought of everything already!

There is one more issue that was less applicable to me: technical starting knowledge. When I had the idea, I was already a PHP programmer of several years (before ProcessWire, I hand-build a site to publish my comic), but I get the strong impression that you are not just new to ProcessWire, but new to PHP (maybe even programming? Forgive me if not) in general.

Now, as Jan suggested, building a small site first is a great way to learn - my comic is how I learned a lot of my craft. I recommend you build a site for your own personal content while you learn, and it will give you time to consider all the other things in my List of Concerns above.

We will be here to help as you learn.

---
* Which was super-simple to do with ProcessWire too!

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@LMD

Your right. I’m new the programming and PW in general. I didn’t have a computer to fully test out anything, but I will start out with my comics first. As for video hosting, I was thinking we could have PeerTube baked in the site, so when you click a video, you watch it in the site and not go to a different website to watch a video (Think of Newgrounds and their video player).

I’ll start small first, then come back when I’m working on bigger stuff

edit: I do plan to use open source software for most of the features but I’m not sure if that would run up the costs of said site. I also plan to run my website off a Linode server, but again, not sure if that’ll raise the price.

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[Note to moderators: this topic is no longer about ProcessWire specifically, could it moved to the Dev Talk forum?]

@Commander_Gal

I think the first thing you need to do here is work out your budget. How much money do you have to spend per month/year? Your budget will determine your hosting plan. You can always expand it later.

Secondly, how much experience with web development do you have? Have you ever had a website before, specifically, have you got experience running a web server? That will determine what type of hosting plan you have.

For a personal project, you might be better off with shared hosting where you do not have to manage the server yourself (whether physical or virtual/cloud) - it is also cheaper.

As for developing the site, you will need some sort of local webserver to build the site on your computer (I use Laragon, free and fairly easy to use/learn) and I recommend a PHP-friendly IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to code with (I use Visual Studio Code, again free and open source).

On 1/22/2023 at 5:31 PM, Commander_Gal said:

As for video hosting, I was thinking we could have PeerTube baked in the site, so when you click a video, you watch it in the site and not go to a different website to watch a video (Think of Newgrounds and their video player).

That is not an easy thing to set-up.  I took a look at PeerTube (https://joinpeertube.org) and noted on their home page "PeerTube platforms you visit are built, managed and moderated by their owners" -- that means you have to build and maintain a server (although the FAQ does say it can be a virtual machine, see the FAQ: Should I have a big server to run PeerTube?), and you host the videos uploaded to your instance.

 

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