Well, Im not completely new to it. But I havent looked into XOOPS since probably 2002. Im a long time user of PN. Been with them since early 2001. Developed many sites, couple modules, and many themes for pn. Today I stumbled upon XOOPS again when I was searching for a good yellow pages type script for a city portal site im going to be working on. Found xdirectory and that it only worked with xoops. So i figured that I could be lazy and use fantastico to install Xoops, then install the xdirectory module to see what it could do.

Its only been about an hour that i have been messing with Xoops, but i am extremely impressed how far it has come and all the amazing modules for it.

Im a pretty experienced Xanthia theme developer, so we will see how it goes with XOOPS and how much actual control I have over the display of the site content. Looks promising so far. My personal opinion is that if it looks like a CMS made site after the site is made, its no good.

Since im new to xoops, i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for modules, etc, for the city portal im going to be working on. Here is a brief summery of what im trying to do with it:

"Provide a web site for reviews of local bars, clubs, restaurants, hotels, concerts, and community events."

Editors will write reviews on, for example, a local bar. Will include pictures of the bar, some staff, link to menu, weeks specials, and monthly calendar of events. Editor will also give the establishment a rating. I want users to be able to comment on the article, and also give their own ratings. Maybe link to establishments web site if it exists. If it was a review of a band or something, im going to want to include maybe a mp3 to a song of theirs. Hopefully be able to stream it someway.

1) I havent played enough with xdirectory to see if its going to work for me, but it seems awfully powerful. I love the fact that it works with a mapping site. Not really related, but im going to see if i can develope a module that will work with local.google.com to provide a module that will display local searches for whatever, maybe pizza joints. Then displays the map. Anyway, just like local.google.com, but will be specific to just our city.

2) Im also going to need a good calendar module. I probably would be using PostCalendar if i was using pn. Im going to want to be able to have categories for things such as sports. But then, i woudl want a sub category for a specific team. That way you can see whats going on that month as far s sports, but also maybe check out a teams schedule for the week, month, year, etc. Do you have a recommendation that you think might fit my needs?

3) Movie Showtimes module? I had developed one in the past that pulled content from movies.yahoo.com for a pn site. Does anything like this exist for xoops?

4) Need a good stats module for tracking page views and user activity.

5) Shopping cart module. Maybe even a cafepress like one.

6) Match Maker type module. Not sure if im going to do it, but might be useful. PN had one called friendfinder or something like that.

Looks like you have a great module repository that im going to have to dig into and do some research. Just figured you long time users could give me some tips, just like i could do for pn.

Thanks for your great work and i cant wait to dive into it.

-MACscr

P.S. Does XOOPS do "shorturls", etc for SEO?

No one has any tips?

XOOPS has a Cafepress Module and a Store Module
Check here.

And as for match making, you may need to use a few modules to do what you want, I'm guessing.

And yes, XOOPS does have a Movie showtime module and its in the Module Repository or here.

Calenders are all here.
Probably Agenda-X or eCal.

For stats, use XOOPS Stats from here.

If you need other modules, look in the repository.

Try Simplified URLs hack for SEO.
fromhttps://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2005

Thanks for the tips. I really appreciate it. Now if i could only get the groups module to work, getting a 404 for some reason. I will try reuploading the module and searching the forums. Does XOOPS not have permissioning like PN? I didnt see it in the default install. Ive gotten pretty dang good with them with PN, so i love to use them whenever possible now. Especially in templates. Sry for the questions without doing more research first though. I usually dont do that.

Thanks for your help.

Yeah, there is permissioning.
In the system module, under the Admin Pages
Click on Groups
Those are the permissions and what modules each group can access.

Odd, when trying to access groups i get this error.

You don't have permission to access /xoops/modules/system/admin.php on this server.

I have reuploaded the groups.php file a couple times and also checked the perms, but they seem fine. Havent seen something in forums really about this problem, except that someones hosts security module was causing a problem. Sounds like bad coding to me.

Is it a PHP ERROR or a Apache Error?

Like Apache:
Not Found
The requested URL /aa was not found on this server.

Apache/1.3.29 Server at www.xoops.org Port 80

Or PHP:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: error() in /home/..../public_html/error.php on line 2

Which one?

Or is the XOOPS Redirect thing saying that you dont have permission?

looks like its apache:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /xoops/modules/system/admin.php on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.peoriascene.com Port 80

Unfortunately i still havent gotten this groups problem fixed. =(