Some help with the best way to structure my project

Off Topic
1

Hi,

this is very off-topic, because I’m not expecting to use FW for this … but since I have only ever used FW for my website and it’s all I know, I hoped someone here, amongst the experienced users, could give me some pointers.

I am about to setup a web-forum for a very small number of users. It will be invitation only, with 50-100 users max. We are professional photographers and the goal is the sharing and discussion of our work. My intention is to use one of the many web-forum templates.

The Question :

I have a couple of specific features I would like to implement and I’m not sure of the best way to go about implementing them. Here’s what I want to do :

1/ The main goal is to share images. I would like these to be keyword searchable and to be stored on a central server.

2/ We do not want people who do not contribute, so we have settled on a points system, which we would like to be automated.

Posting an image, get points.
Each day that goes by without an image posted, points are removed.
Points are displayed dynamically, next to the member’s name. When they drop below say <10, they are displayed in red.
When no points are left, a warning email is sent, then finally the account is deleted.

I’d like all of this to be automated.

3/ New members are anonymously proposed by existing members. The existing member fills in a page with some text (why they are proposing) and a url for the proposed photographers website. The system then automatically sends 5 emails to a RANDOM choice of existing forum members (except the person posting). They reply anonymously with a YES or a NO and the proposed new member is either voted in, or refused.

Any help that anyone can offer would be very much appreciated. I’m a bit lost about how I should be proceeding with this.

Oh! And any suggestions for the most suitable web-forum software would be welcome too. The choice is completely bewildering.

Grant

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2

Wow! This is not going to be an easy project to implement.

Picture storage and management on top of your sign up requirements are going to mean a bucket load of customisation of any standard forum package.

Personally I think that unless you have a good/sizeable budget for custom coding then you are going to have to make some serious compromises.

David

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3

This sounds a whole lot like Dribbble[1] for photographers. Dave is
right, there’s a whole lot of custom code behind the business logic
you’re describing here, and I haven’t ever seen a system that works
this way out in the wild as a free open source or even pay per
installation project. I could certainly build it for you, as could
many other members of the Dynamo list. You’re right, Freeway wouldn’t
have much more than a passing use for this, just to build the template
layouts that the database and application server would use to format
the dynamic content for view.

Walter

  1. http://dribbble.com/

On Feb 4, 2011, at 5:51 AM, grantsymon wrote:

Hi,

this is very off-topic, because I’m not expecting to use FW for
this … but since I have only ever used FW for my website and it’s
all I know, I hoped someone here, amongst the experienced users,
could give me some pointers.

I am about to setup a web-forum for a very small number of users. It
will be invitation only, with 50-100 users max. We are professional
photographers and the goal is the sharing and discussion of our
work. My intention is to use one of the many web-forum templates.

The Question :

I have a couple of specific features I would like to implement and
I’m not sure of the best way to go about implementing them. Here’s
what I want to do :

1/ The main goal is to share images. I would like these to be
keyword searchable and to be stored on a central server.

2/ We do not want people who do not contribute, so we have settled
on a points system, which we would like to be automated.

Posting an image, get points.
Each day that goes by without an image posted, points are removed.
Points are displayed dynamically, next to the member’s name. When
they drop below say <10, they are displayed in red.
When no points are left, a warning email is sent, then finally the
account is deleted.

I’d like all of this to be automated.

3/ New members are anonymously proposed by existing members. The
existing member fills in a page with some text (why they are
proposing) and a url for the proposed photographers website. The
system then automatically sends 5 emails to a RANDOM choice of
existing forum members (except the person posting). They reply
anonymously with a YES or a NO and the proposed new member is either
voted in, or refused.

Any help that anyone can offer would be very much appreciated. I’m
a bit lost about how I should be proceeding with this.

Oh! And any suggestions for the most suitable web-forum software
would be welcome too. The choice is completely bewildering.

Grant

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4

Dave, Walter,

thanks for the replies.

I didn’t expect it to be so difficult. :frowning:

I could build a Filemaker database to do this in an hour … but the web-forum aspect of it would be difficult. (And expensive). Also, it’s hard to do the image uploads in FM.

I wonder if I could run an FM database, for the ‘points’ calcs, in an iFrame or something, inside a standard web-forum? It could just be a running total of each members points situation.

The voting for new members could be automated via FM to, but I would need to trigger it manually I suppose. It would be an infrequent process anyway.

Do you have any suggestions for web-forum software/templates? Obviously, being photographers, we’re going to want to change the way it looks. :wink:

Grant

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5

Drupal and Joomla have the largest number of plug-ins available,
there’s also Wordpress (but that’s very hard to code add-ons for, or
to modify the look and feel).

Really, I think that in order to get the sort of integration you need
between user management (the points), file uploads, search and
metadata, and the rest of the member features, you’re going to need to
do an integrated development in one language and one web-centric
database. Your iframe idea is interesting, but it’s like cutting a
window in the middle of a page and showing a view of a distant
billboard. It won’t affect the parent page in any way, and so you
would be able to look at the fact that a person’s “points” had run
out, but not do anything about it.

Walter

On Feb 4, 2011, at 10:26 AM, grantsymon wrote:

Do you have any suggestions for web-forum software/templates?
Obviously, being photographers, we’re going to want to change the
way it looks. :wink:

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6

On 4 Feb 2011, 2:38 pm, waltd wrote:
Your iframe idea is interesting, but it’s like cutting a
window in the middle of a page and showing a view of a distant
billboard. It won’t affect the parent page in any way, and so you
would be able to look at the fact that a person’s “points” had run
out, but not do anything about it.

Walter

But a reaction to the points situation could be performed in Filemaker and emails or whatever, auto-generated and sent.

Would it be straight forward to integrate an iFrame into a standard forum template?

Grant

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7

I know there’s an iframe plugin for Joomla, probably one for Drupal.
Where would you host the Filemaker database so that it could be seen
from a public URL?

Walter

On Feb 4, 2011, at 11:39 AM, grantsymon wrote:

On 4 Feb 2011, 2:38 pm, waltd wrote:
Your iframe idea is interesting, but it’s like cutting a
window in the middle of a page and showing a view of a distant
billboard. It won’t affect the parent page in any way, and so you
would be able to look at the fact that a person’s “points” had run
out, but not do anything about it.

Walter

But a reaction to the points situation could be performed in
Filemaker and emails or whatever, auto-generated and sent.

Would it be straight forward to integrate an iFrame into a standard
forum template?

Grant

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8

:slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: I haven’t even gotten that far yet.

FM’s security is very tight and I don’t know what that would mean for logins through an iFrame etc. It is surprisingly simple to publish from a home computer with instant web-publishing. I have a Mac Mini which acts as a media server which is on 24/7, which would allow up to 5 simultaneous connections, but I don’t know what that means when it’s being viewed via an iFrame. Alternatively there are a number of FM hosting companies at a reasonable cost for such a small usage.

Grant

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9

which would allow up to 5 simultaneous connections,

Not just amount of connections to be considered - there is also the question of Bandwidth when uploading etc.

And knowing you photographers you will be wanting to upload some pretty hefty files.

If you can get Filemaker hosting at a reasonable rate for the bandwidth you are contemplating and that is where you strength lies then that sounds like the way to go.

But getting your FM DB to talk to the rest is going to give you some headaches I think.

And for that reason I think you should go down the PHP/MySQL route unless you can find something off the shelf that offers a compromise you can live with.

D

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10

On Feb 4, 2011, at 9:38 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Really, I think that in order to get the sort of integration you
need between user management (the points), file uploads, search and
metadata, and the rest of the member features, you’re going to need
to do an integrated development in one language and one web-centric
database.

This sounds ripe for a Ruby/Rails and MySQL project. As others have
commented, I think to really get the functionality you want then
building it from the ground up is the best long-term option. The other
way seems fraught with compromises and headaches. But I could be wrong.

Todd

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11

I would have to second this. One of the first projects I ever worked
on when I went freelance was a Filemaker-backed system, and after many
months of work we had to scrap that and create a hybrid system that
used MySQL on the server, Filemaker on the desktop with a custom plug-
in to publish to the server, and an API and bridge function that I
ended up having to write to connect the two. There are now commercial
systems for this purpose, they let you do your rapid dev work in FMP,
but then extract that into MySQL (ANSI SQL) that the server – any
server – can use efficiently.

In my personal opinion, with the ease of great desktop tools like
Sequel Pro to do the database design and administration, there’s no
real reason to use FMP at all, no matter what the scale of your
project is. And you can export that database to any of thousands of
commercial hosting providers, with no need to look for a specialized
FMP host at a premium. Even “free” or $7/month hosting comes with
MySQL in my experience.

If you want another great example of running your desktop on the same
industrial-scale engine that powers the world’s largest sites, look no
further than Web Sharing on the Mac OS X. Each Mac hosts a complete
installation of Apache 2 (the most popular Web server in the world –
used by massive commercial sites), just to be able to share personal
Web pages on the local network.

Walter

On Feb 4, 2011, at 1:10 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

And for that reason I think you should go down the PHP/MySQL route
unless you can find something off the shelf that offers a compromise
you can live with.

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12

Thanks for the help on this chaps. Much appreciated.

I’m re-thinking it a bit, as this is far to onerous for such a small group.

Grant

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