Is ExpressionEngine he right solution for user genererated content that's editable?

Question

I'm currently building a job-board website with CodeIgniter 2.0 that is very user content driven. Most content will be created by users who are logged in and create paid job postings that can be edited after being published as well as deleted and set to private. There also needs to be an admin interface that lets the admin go in and edit,update,delete content as well as users.

Does this sound like something that EE can easily handle? I've heard that EE has some short comings when it comes to letting users edit content. Is there any examples and/or documentation that shows how this is done?

Thanks!

Answer 1

ExpressionEngine is a great tool as a CMS (Content Management System) and even has built-in member management.

However, ExpressionEngine assumes that the majority of content it handles will be created and managed by users logging in to a Control Panel — this is like many other database-driven Web Sites. Furthermore, ExpressionEngine has a specific data model which may be less than ideal for your needs.

Note: These limitations can be somewhat overcome by using ExpressionEngine's SAEF (Stand Alone Entry Form) dubbed SafeCracker that allows content to be submitted by users outside of the EE Control Panel. The SolSpace User Module can also be setup to extend displaying and allowing user-submitted content.

Whereas with CodeIgniter, you're building a custom Web App so you have the freedom to make all of those decisions during development. You're also not locked into a certain feature set and are free to create any functionality you require or desire.

Answer 2

You could technically do this inside of ExpressionEngine, but EE does indeed lack in group-editing features. If you're still interested in how this would work in EE (even if you're no longer considering it as an option), here's a rough breakdown:

You'd probably want to build a control panel that lives outside of the EE control panel — one that you can style and brand appropriately for your users. This new control panel would be where all of your users add and edit content (via SAEF forms). You would use a custom status group (with statuses for published, deleted, private, etc.) to control how each job posting appears. You would also use a mixture of custom member groups to control who has access to what.

I'm not sure exactly how you'd handle the payment part of things, but there could be some great solutions out there (depending on how your pricing structure algins with existing EE add-ons). You could also create your own add-on to take care of this using EE's developer API.

Anyway, best of luck with the site, regardless of which direction you take!

Answer 3

CI let's you build Apps. EE let's you build CMS driven sites.

This sounds like an App to me not a CMS driven site so stick with CI and ask lots of question here about how to do it.