I've been having a good look at xoops, I installed a copy to play around with, and I’m beginning to fear it’s incapable of what I need. I’m hoping someone who knows the system a lot better than I do can help explain if, and how, the following can be done.

Most importantly for the site I’m trying to make, I need both a public, and a private area (the site is for a group of people, membership is restricted, but they'd like the general public to have access to some parts). Specifically the image galleries and news sections, which are going to be a large part of the site, need some publicly accessible areas, and some restricted members only access (i.e. some pictures/galleries and some news categories should not be viewable to people not in a specific group).

It would be best if the site could still use registration, the way most sites do (registered users being able to post comments in public areas and such, but still not access the private members only part of the site).

The other issue I have is the customisation of the site navigation. For example, I'd like several completely separate types of image galleries, each as a separate link on the main menu, and not connected to each other by internal section links, is this possible? How?

Thank you for any help you can offer.

Next version of News module is likely to supply access restrictions on topics, so you can specify, which usergroups can access which topics.

No, no ETA... I mean it... no

(already implemented, however, is submit and approve permissions dependant on usergroups)

Excelent, thanks :)

Quote:
Hehe thats ok, there's no huge rush (if they want to pay me, I'll rush, otherwise it'll be done when its done :))

Hello,

I've just used the multi-instance TinyContent "hack" - isn't there something similar for other mods like news and galleries? Failing that you could just use completely different modules and restrict access to the member mods, i.e. gallerymod1 for public, gallerymod2 for members.

As far as changing design goes, XOOPS works on the Smarty templating system so you can change pretty much anything - one HTML and one CSS file does most of it.

oddb0d

You could use XT member Einstein's news clone module and use it to restrict the access...

Like you have:

normal news- all/public users
cloned news- your private team news

get is clone module (kindly named dolly ) from his site http://www.einsoft.com.br/

cheers

Hmm... cloned (and slightly hacked) modules would work for the image galleries, but the problem is I'd like the members only news page to show the public news stories too.

In the hours since I posted this thread (nice fast replies btw, its always nice to find a system with a userbase who answers you when you have newbie questions :) I've been looking at other systems, and Im currently considering e107 (www.e107.org). It seems in many ways a much more simple system than Xoops, but I think that is an advantage, it makes hacking about with it a lot easier, and should help me develop a site that does not look like a cms (I rejected nuke portals mostly on the grounds that they *always* look like nuke portals lol).

At the risk of going off topic, does anyone care to voice an opinion as to which would be more suitable for the above task?