Can CMS builder do this?

2 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: June 6, 2011   (RSS)

By willydoit - June 6, 2011 - edited: June 6, 2011

Hi,

We have been approached by a customer wishing to have a website which would allow individuals to place advertising for certain items for sale in a similar way to this website http://www.findafishingboat.com/ . While much of what will be required we have already covered within our own websites such as automatic signup and account creation the main feature they require which we have not done previously is the ability to have adverts displayed only for a certain time, ie an advertisement facility is purchased for 2 weeks at a certain cost or a 4 week facility at another cost with an automatic reminder and option to renew notification being produced. They also require the ability for the advertiser to be able to see how many times their advertisement has been viewed.

This would require the CMS facility to be able to create a new user account and allocate it a specific number of days to display based upon the package purchased and to be able to suspend display of the advert after the specified number of days if renewal is not made. There needs to be a method to calculate how many times the information has been viewed. They also require for the CMS backend to automatically generate and send notice of expiry emails to each advertiser with the ability for the account holder to be able to extend their existing advertising period by purchasing further advertising time. They would require all the above to be fully automated by the CMS backend.

Could anyone advise if they have managed to accomplish this type of functionality which I would suspect is a fairly common requirement so that we at least know it is possible with via CMS Builder. (am suprised that a module providing smilar has not been made available for CMS builder which is why I am concerned that it may not be possible) If it is possible would anyone know what sort of cost there would be in producing the required coding etc as it would be beyond our own limited knowledge of php etc. As they are looking at trying the site to see if the idea would work from a business point of view the budget available to the client is limited which doesnt help, therefore we may have to ascertain, what is possible, how much different elements would cost to implement so they could priorotise required functionality in order that some things can be initially omitted or performed manually with a view to automation when the business possibilities are proved.

I appreciate that at the moment the request is fairly generic and I am sure it will generate requests from us for far more in depth analysis once we ascertain that the facilities requested are possible.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice provided.

Re: [willydoit] Can CMS builder do this?

By Jason - June 6, 2011

Hi,

Yes, everything you mentioned is possible using CMS Builder. Some of the features you're looking for are automatically built in, while others would require some custom code.

- You can set an "expiry" date to a record using the special field "removeDate". Once the date set in this field is passed, it will no longer appear in any searches or lists. The record itself isn't removed from the CMS, so it can be recovered by simply moving the removeDate field further into the future. For more information on Special Fields, check out our [url http://www.interactivetools.com/docs/cmsbuilder/special_fieldnames.html]Online Documentation[/url]

- CMS Builder has a built in function called "incrementCounterField()" which you can use to easily keep track of how many times a record has been viewed. For more information on how that works, take a look at this post: http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=68091#68091

- The other features you need (ie, processing payments for advertising space, automatically setting removeDate, sending email notifications, etc) would require custom coding. The time/cost involved would depend on exactly how you need everything to work, but we can definitely automate this for you using CMS Builder.

If you'd like to go over these requirements/options further, you can send an email to consulting@interactivetools.com

Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks
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