I am a CMS newbie who is exploring Xoops, and considering using it for a new Web site. However, I cannot find a comprehensive digest of the basic XOOPS capabilities on the XOOPS site. One question and answer in the recent “Website of the Month” newsletter interview with George Hoogendoorn, of NABUUR.com raised some key questions that are not really answered on the All About XOOPS page (https://xoops.org/modules/wfchannel/):

> George: We use many XOOPS modules, amongst others:
> Forums
> Member pages
> News
> Newsletter
> Documents
> Links
> Articles
> Polls

- Is a marketing digest about these XOOPS modules available — even a paragraph or two?
- Where are these modules located on the Web site, or are all included in the main XOOPS download?
- Does the use of each XOOPS module require a separate SQL database?
- How many other XOOPS modules are available?

I would expect to see such basic information detailing which modules (if any) come with the XOOPS installer on the “All About Xoops” page, but could not find it there and was left guessing. The answers are probably obvious to experienced XOOPS users, but to a newbie, it seems that this page needs just a little more information about these basic modules and their capabilities.

Can anyone help? Thanks in advance for any guidance.

I am not sure whether you were looking for answers, or just giving feedback on this website's content.

I'll answer them anyway just to be on the safe side

Quote:
In the main XOOPS package are News, newBB (forums), Xoopspoll, Sections, Members, MyDownloads, Contact, MyLinks, FAQ, Headlines, Partners

Other modules mentioned may be found in the Downloads section
Quote:
No. XOOPS is one unit, whether you have 1 module or 25 modules installed and only requires one SQL database.

You can even run several XOOPS installations on one database by specifying a different prefix for each installation.
Quote:
Loads - check the downloads section, XOOPS 2.x, Modules

I was looking for answers, but thought I'd take the opportunity to provide the feedback as well. Thank you for your quick and helpful response. That is very surprising about the single database.

Does housing everything in a single database have the potential to compromise performance? Until I discovered Xoops, I assumed that I would have to one database for a BBS and another for article management, etc. What about security?

Are their minimal pipeline recomendations or server requirements (CPU MHz and RAM hard disk spindle rates, seek and access times) if one uses several modules?

Most XOOPS Modules are fairly small - meaning they have some 5-10 database tables (although I have made modules with more than 20 tables)

The single database is quite normal in the web CMS world as almost everything has to be connected at least to the core for user authentication, access control etc. so I think it would probably have an even bigger impact on performance if one should have a separate database for each module (and specify database name, possibly username and password individually for each module) - not to mention that XOOPS would be far less usable as many webhosts only supply a limited amount of databases.

I'm not entirely sure what your concern is regarding security. Of course, if one should install a module which is insecure database-wise, it could compromise the entire database, but we strive to have modules without such vulnerabilities (but since the major part of modules are third party work, we cannot really control that, only make people aware of it, when vulnerabilities are discovered)

Server requirements are hard to say - it depends on the traffic you will receive. The general requirements are avilable In the Requirements section of the wiki and XOOPS runs fine on a small server - provided traffic is at a minimum. With increasing traffic you will of course need a faster server and fatter pipe. This is whether you have many modules or few modules - of course modules take up HDD space, but usually below a MB each.