Availablity of Extensions

[net2Community]

Greetings, I am helping out at my church to determine the best approach for
creating and maintaining a website. One of the things we want to do is to have
a members login area where the various ministry teams can upload content and
use the site as a collaboration tool.

Another primary need is to have a live calendar for events, RSVPs and maybe
even payments in the future.

Looking around I haven't been able to find these types of tools and the other
extensions available seem to have costs associated with them. Any thoughts on
how we can accomplish these things while still keeping costs to a reasonable
level?

[Joe Makowiec]

On Wed 12 Jul 2006 03:35:25p, net2Community wrote in
macromedia.exchange.extensions.dreamweaver:

> I am helping out at my church to determine the best approach for
> creating and maintaining a website. One of the things we want to do
> is to have a members login area where the various ministry teams can
> upload content and use the site as a collaboration tool.
>
> Another primary need is to have a live calendar for events, RSVPs and
> maybe even payments in the future.
>
> Looking around I haven't been able to find these types of tools and
> the other extensions available seem to have costs associated with
> them. Any thoughts on how we can accomplish these things while still
> keeping costs to a reasonable level?

You've posed very broad questions. This depends on a whole bunch of
things:
- Level of sophistication you want
- Level of sophistication of your users
- Level of sophistication of your web developer(s)
- Kind of hosting you're on

A few suggestions...

Bulletin Board?

[url]http://www.phpbb.com/[/url] (as one example)

Wiki?

[url]http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki[/url] (as one example)

[net2Community]

Thanks Joe,

To answer your questions...

>- Level of sophistication you want - Easy to maintain hopefully not requiring

professional help beyond the initial setup

>- Level of sophistication of your users =Experience of users - it MUST be

easy - we have a broad range
Experience of

>- Level of sophistication of your web developer(s) - Without hiring out - I

am it... Familiar with coding CSS and XHTML beginner level lacking experience.

>- Kind of hosting you're on - Currently IIS server with small hosting Co.

mostly MS shop

Sounds like you are pointing me to use open source and just plug it into the
site. Any issues using Contribute to update static sections of the site?

[danilocelic AdobeCommunityExpert]

net2Community wrote:

> Greetings, I am helping out at my church to determine the best approach for
> creating and maintaining a website. One of the things we want to do is to have
> a members login area where the various ministry teams can upload content and
> use the site as a collaboration tool.

A log in area can be built using ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP using Dreamweaver.

Uploading files via forms is not something built in, and you'd either need to use some scripts freely available online, or purchase an extension to allow you to automate some of the coding. I see in your other response that mention Contribute, if you mean upload content in a sense that authorized visitors would be able to make modifications to existing content on the site, then perhaps an onine HTML editor might be useful to you. InterAKT has a free version of such a beast, KTML Lite: [url]http://www.interaktonline.com/Products/Online-HTML-Editor/KTML-for-Dreamweaver/Try-Download/[/url] in addition to a more featureful commercial version. I believe that there are a couple more out there, but don't recall them off the top of my head. If you go that route, maybe you could even save them the cost of Contribute.

> Another primary need is to have a live calendar for events, RSVPs and maybe
> even payments in the future.

Accept PayPal payments with a free extension:
[url]http://webassist.com/professional/products/ProductDetails.asp?PID=18[/url]

Try searching the Exchange for more options for what you're looking for, there are quite a lot of extensions listed:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm#view=sn120[/url]

Or check out this listing of Extension developers:
[url]http://www.dwfaq.com/Resources/Extensions/default.asp[/url]

> Looking around I haven't been able to find these types of tools and the other
> extensions available seem to have costs associated with them. Any thoughts on
> how we can accomplish these things while still keeping costs to a reasonable
> level?

What is "a reasonable level" in your mind? that means several thousand to some, but under $10 to others.


--
Danilo Celic
| Extending Knowledge Daily : [url]http://CommunityMX.com/[/url]
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