Zikula Community

Hi Everyone

Firstly, I'm newly registered, and have only been aware of PostNuke for the last few days, so forgive my apparent stupidity. Also, I hope this is the most appropriate place to post this question; apologies if it is not.

My problem is this...

I am trying to build a website (www.lost-doggies.com) dedicated to helping dog owners to report their lost or stolen dogs, and likewise to allow people who have found a dog to report it, like a stray for example. I already had the site as a basic thing a year or so ago (www.lost-doggies.co.uk), but it got a bit too popular and my manual setup made it difficult for me to keep up, so I had to close it down while I learnt PHP and MySQL. The idea being that users could submit a report, with a picture of their dog, and the site would automatically get updated thus reducing my workload.

I was trying to do just that by reading books etc, then I found out about PostNuke. Hooray, I thought. A short cut!!

However, from what I have seen over the last few days, there seems to be a fundamental floor in my plan:

a) It seems that graphics as a main area is not good with PostNuke because as I understand it PostNuke is mainly a delivery system for news related sites. I see a few people do have graphics on their sites, but apparently by adjusting a news module somehow and manipulating it for their use. Even in these cases though, it seems that the pictures are added eye candy and not much more. With my site, the ability to store and display graphics, including the uploading of them from people's PC's is imperative and vital for the site to function.

b) Secondly, it seems that I would have to create my own HTML page, and still add PHP code to create a submission page for the reports? Even if I was able to do that, would I still be able to pull that into PostNuke so it could be used (I think the answer to this is yes, but I was hoping I would be able to get PostNuke to build it for me!!)?

Lastly, could some of you kind people tell me the links to your sites so that I can see just what the potential of PostNuke is. I have come accross a couple so far, but not many.

I hope someone can help explain this to me. I have spent several hours looking for similar queries and this has been the result of my research, although I really hope I am wrong. Can anyone give me some advice?

Thanks very much

PostNuke is fully capable of doing what you need, the question isn't one of limitations, but of potential. The modules you need may not exist, they may. From what I read, you need a few existing modules (or at least would be helped by them)

1: PhotoShare from http://www.elfisk.dk for photomanagem
2: Pagesetter from the same site for content.
3: Forms Express from http://www.stuchbury.com (I think, I'll look it up). This will allow you to create custom forms
4: FEProc, the FormsExpress Processor. DOn't have a link handy, but I'll look for it. This can be used in conjunction with FE & PS (I htink the link may be in the docs for Pagesetter) to have a form to submit data to Pagesetter.

Alternativly, there are several of us on here who do custom Module development & a few that do custom theme development.

Your needs can be met by PostNuke, it's just a matter of tracking down the tools you need, or paying someone (Or possibly finding a kind soul that will do it for free, but paid work typically gets done faster).