Forum integration and member area

This isn’t quite a commercial inquiry yet, because I’m still scoping it out, but...

An internal client (a University research group) has asked me to create a simple members-only section and to integrate a forum into this. I don’t have time to take this on, but I said I would try to find out how much it would cost to get another developer to do it.

The members-only section would mainly consist of documents (mainly Word) to download. These documents would need to be protected against downloading by users who weren’t logged in.

The forum would need to use the same logins as the members area, but other than that, the type of forum could be fairly flexible. I know an SMF bridge has been developed, but I also know that it doesn’t work perfectly. Part of this job would, if we decide to go with it, include making it work more efficiently. We would also be happy to consider integrating a different forum.

I don’t feel the need to reserve any intellectual property on this, so anything developed could be released to the community.

If anyone thinks they might be interested in this and could estimate a price (only an estimate at this stage), please let me know. Also, if you need any more information, I’d be happy to provide it.

As I said, no guarantees that the client would decide to go for this, so it is speculative.

This is a perfect application for the coming 097 release as it allows documents on the filesystem as content in the tree. This would in turn allow you to set permissions on these documents. Given that though, 097 is not here today.

The forum integration (SSO) is similarly a separate issue which the team is actively tackling for the MODx development/wiki/bugtracking system too, but no where close to complete.

Thanks, Ryan. I know this is probably an impossible question to answer, but do you have any idea when these things are likely to be ready for release?

The honest answer is no, but tons of work is happening to move it closer. Public beta should be in February, but no telling how long beta period will last and getting all the distribution options together for a super-friendly release.

Okay, thanks. Looks like I should probably try to get a 0.9.6.1 solution for now.