Can I manage all this?

Hi
I am building a site which offers online training. After trying a number of possible combinations, including Joomla with Moodle and Simple Machines Forum, I am still not sure about the payment and access management system to use. I have used jFusion to integrate the login with the three systems, but there are some issues.

I am slowly coming away from the idea of using moodle and thinking that I can build individual courses just using sections, categories and articles. I'm happy with the forum.

So the question is: Can SUBS enable me to provide only paid access to a specific course in Moodle?

If not, can it provide access depending on course chosen to just the specific section, category and articles? If the latter is true, can I provide timed access, i.e. access based on a date for a specific category/article?

In the Forum, each Course has it's own Board, so here access also has to be restricted, so that users who sign up and pay only have access to the forum board relevant to them as well as the section/cats and articles?

Thanks for a clear answer.
Regards
David

CBSubs can restrict access to Sections, Categories, URLs, components, etc., so in that respect, the answer is yes to all of the above.

The only portion I'm not sure of is whether it can allow access based on a date. Someone else will have to address that issue, because, as far as I know, it's not possible out of the box except thru a specific date.

iamalive wrote:

So the question is: Can SUBS enable me to provide only paid access to a specific course in Moodle?

Have no idea how Moodle works or what its integration with Joomla is capable of doing.

With this lack of knowledge answer must be: if Moodle has some group authorization functionality, CBSubs SQL integration plugin could be used to add/remove users to such group based on subscriptions status.

You would have to experiment with this.

Thank you both for your answers.

The current plugins for managing subscribers is jFusion www.jfusion.org/ , which offers plugins for both SMF and Moodle amongst others.

I am happy to just use articles, categories and sections for the content I offer, but does that mean I won't need jFusion anymore, that CBSubs can take care of all of that, including access to the smf forum?

If yes, then most of my problems are solved.

Thinking about timed release. Can I perhaps just do that via the publishing date in the articles?

Thanks for feedback and ideas.

Regards
David

Post edited by: iamalive, at: 2009/11/08 13:20

Post edited by: iamalive, at: 2009/11/08 13:21

iamalive wrote:

Thank you both for your answers.

You're welcome.

The current plugins for managing subscribers is jFusion www.jfusion.org/ , which offers plugins for both SMF and Moodle amongst others.

I am happy to just use articles, categories and sections for the content I offer, but does that mean I won't need jFusion anymore, that CBSubs can take care of all of that, including access to the smf forum?

CBSubs cannot bridge to SMF forum, so you would need jfusion for that. Also, I am not sure if CBSubs URL protection works with jfusion url re-writes, you would have to test this first.

If yes, then most of my problems are solved.

You could also test if you can use CBSubs SQL plugin to add/remove subscriber to certain SMF groups that protect certain forum areas.

Thinking about timed release. Can I perhaps just do that via the publishing date in the articles?

Don't think that will work. You would need some kind of mambot that will hide/show article content based on whatever time criteria you have in mind.

Again, great input. Thanks.

After a lot of looking around and reading, I have substituted the Agora Forum - very nice component - for SMF and decided to do provide the courses I'm building via sections, categories and articles. I may have to get some programming done, as suggested, to provide timed release of content, but that's not too major.

So, CBSubs now looks the right way to go and I've just bought a starter licence to see how it all works.

Thanks again.

Regards
David

Post edited by: iamalive, at: 2009/11/08 19:08