Building a Group Website (Elgg, Dolphin, ???)
I am working on building a website for a small non-profit group.
They want to be able to share files (mainly their meeting minutes, by-laws, assorted info). Need to be able to grant only certain people upload access.
They also want different discussion forums for different groups. Board members, for example, would have a private forum that only board members could access.
They want a calendar. They want to post events and have a system whereby they can say they need x number of volunteers for that event and once x number of people have signed up, it'll say that it's filled or whatever.
They also want a photo gallery.
On the surface, Elgg meets the bill. Despite my reservations (I used it previously on one of my sites, and ended up deleting the thing), I thought Elgg might just work out.
But, the thing is--and there is no real nice way to say this--Elgg pretty much sucks. It has a lot of the right features, but it's not easy for casual computer users. I had a private group set up for board members; and the one board member testing it hit the "Leave Group" button to exit the page, but that actually resulted in him leaving the group, so he couldn't get back in with administrator approval.
Some things could be made easier by editing the design a bit, but the core problem really is that Elgg just isn't ready for prime time, in my opinion. And no amount of lipstick is going to make this pig a lady.
Does anyone have any suggestions for something that can do the types of things I've described, but isn't an absolute pain? Have heard mixed reviews of Dolphin, so I'm not sure about that. Something open source or free would be preferable. But, if there's something relatively low cost, they might spring for it.
They want to be able to share files (mainly their meeting minutes, by-laws, assorted info). Need to be able to grant only certain people upload access.
They also want different discussion forums for different groups. Board members, for example, would have a private forum that only board members could access.
They want a calendar. They want to post events and have a system whereby they can say they need x number of volunteers for that event and once x number of people have signed up, it'll say that it's filled or whatever.
They also want a photo gallery.
On the surface, Elgg meets the bill. Despite my reservations (I used it previously on one of my sites, and ended up deleting the thing), I thought Elgg might just work out.
But, the thing is--and there is no real nice way to say this--Elgg pretty much sucks. It has a lot of the right features, but it's not easy for casual computer users. I had a private group set up for board members; and the one board member testing it hit the "Leave Group" button to exit the page, but that actually resulted in him leaving the group, so he couldn't get back in with administrator approval.
Some things could be made easier by editing the design a bit, but the core problem really is that Elgg just isn't ready for prime time, in my opinion. And no amount of lipstick is going to make this pig a lady.
Does anyone have any suggestions for something that can do the types of things I've described, but isn't an absolute pain? Have heard mixed reviews of Dolphin, so I'm not sure about that. Something open source or free would be preferable. But, if there's something relatively low cost, they might spring for it.
Do something spectacular; be fulfilled. Then you can be your own hero. Prem Rawat
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