Geeklog Forums

Hello:

My first time evaluating blogs/cmses... Boss wants me to find differences between geeklog and e107.

It will be a subscription / paypal pay system with free membership with upgrade to paid level/features.

We need (idelly): blog/journal for users; classified ads system (for paid members); photo gallery with customizable profile fields (ability to add/change fields and names);

If anyone can help a couple BEGINNERS we'd be Very Greatful!

Thanks!

The Beginners

I would reccomend

opensourcecms.com/

A good place to start

Also try the CMS matrix.

bye, Dirk

Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

Are there any subscription / paid membership features of this geeklog software by add ons or otherwise?

I'd like to set up a paid site with some areas not free.

Please let me know if this is doable with the current plugins. Thanks!

I know of a few sites that have paid memberships, but to my knowledge none of those have released their source ...

It shouldn't be too hard, though, to come up with a solution that (more or less) automatically adds a user to a certain group (that has access to the for-pay content) when the confirmation email from whatever service you're using for the payments arrives.

bye, Dirk

Since I have tested both the cms-es very thoroughly here are my 2 cents :

Installation :

e107 is a breeze, very smooth, click and play
GL is a bit geeky

General features ( news )

e107 allows anonymous user to submit news in their own name provided that the name has not been already registered.
e107 also allows to submit images by any user so that they can be approved by any admin .

GL does NOT allow any of these.


General features ( forum )

e107 forum allows you to attach image in the same go as hitting the submit button as well as offers PM , all inbulit. It has also handy features like quick reply.

GL does not allow image submission, and for PM you have to pay to get the module - e107 is actually free and open source and full free too. GL, for certain parts, you have to pay


Plug ins

e107 plugins almost all the important ones come with the package , inbuilt. For GL, things like forum installation are a hassle though surely it can be done.
Both have classified ads and image gallery plugins - however , I am not sure, how well the classifieds work with the latest GL. For individual users , GL does not provide individual blog, drupal, another cms does this.


Security

One strong advert for Gl has been its security. But latest versions of e107 seems to be as secure. Despite GL's long notes in favor of why it is using reg glob on it is worthy to note php.net does not recommend it.


Others

e107 is much more customizable - theme and language filewise, blocks can be placed anywhere , not just right or left, but center up or down, htmlarea can be put on or off at will, has a more active and up to date plugin community ( visit both the websites to compare ) and has more features in general which can be put off or on at a single click.


However, if GL 2 is released soon and has updated and easily installable plugins, it might be worthier of the two .

I could not find a good classifieds script for EITHER e107 or GL.

e107 blows GeekLog away in the cms matrix - but I know that the chart after having looked into things a little deeper is not all that complete and accurate.

Overall, I have come to the conclusion that e107 is superior in depth and features, and, like you said, has more out of the box. Add that it and it's mods are easier to install, and I dont see any advantage of Geeklog at all. Maybe Im missing something but no one here has given me any advantages of GL over e107.

Even Amember Pro, an ecommerce password protection system, works with e107 but not apparently with Geeklog.

Having said all that, I wish e107 had a more professional design/layout theme. I'll have to look into that. Not sure if it has a photo gallery plugin but I'm sure it does.

That's my final conclusion, if wrong in any way, please feel free anyone to correct me!

e107 has Coppermine, easily integrable. the advantage over Gallery is that coppermine lets you send photos as ecards. However 4images is sleeker and less resourceintensive - old Gl had inegreti with 4images - not sure if the latest versions of both work together, even if they do it is lot of "geeky" manipulations, defeating the purpose of cms for the ordinary end user

Any know for a fact if GL supports 4images?

Well, at least it worked at one point ...

bye, Dirk

I'm going to touch on one aspect - almost all the GL sites I visit feel somewhat snappy. Most of the e107 sites I visited just now, and we are talking a wide sampling, did not feel snappy. They felt sluggish and slower loading.

I'll try this later on another connection and another machine, but side by side, that really bothered me about e107.

It all depents on the audience you are trying to reach and the features you need. I wouldn't use e107 simply because my audience would be completely lost.

I did a search on their forum and it gave me a messy result. Other sections also doesn't give me a sense of stability and easy navigation.

Maybe I have been with GL for over two years and I got used to its clean structure and love it. And it is getting even better.

Sam

Which versions of which were being tried ? On opensourcecms when we try both , GL is distinctly slower. However comparatively speed is same on both. On my machine under localhost both are a snap .


Since e107 is more easily customizable and more features can be just turned ON or OFF at will at a single click I guess with e107 I can reach any audience - with GL my choice of audience becomes limited.
Regarding messy results :
GL does not work properly with both reg glob on and off
GL calendar is a mess - users cannot delete personal events
For sending simple PMs one has to pay for the module. I guess PM is used more than search. Personally though I find e107 search quite OK.
As well as the fact news submission is more handy and dynamic - users can submit images or have the facility of htmlarea turned on or off as well as plenty of language packs.With GL any user wanting to submit image has a supermessy procedure - submit news, then email the admin the images separately.
Installations of forum and gallery like 4images is supermessy - one has to mess with so may files in GL - its disappointing. None of the cms-es e107, drupal, mambo has such a difficult installation.

Structurally both are php-nukish, that way Drupal is way ahead with its "node" system and much more stable appearance and solid performances.

I can't speak for the original poster, however a quick check of the main sites of each as well as user sites pulled at random for each portals forums showed GL was a bit faster.

I would attribute that to the fact that many of the e107 sites are a lot "busier" - i.e. they have a lot of plugins loading, or java stuff or flash stuff, or something else, including stuff that hits the CPU quite a bit. If I was on dialup, that would have pushed me away right there.

I wouldn't take anything away from that, other than people need to think about their audiences. That wasn't a scientific survey or anything -- those were sites in the real world, from a typical broadband connection. I'm sure there are plenty of e107 sites out there that aren't that bad or try to maintain a simple layout with a few core plugins and none of the eyecandy.

To the original poster, topweb: You really need to download and install several CMSes yourself. GL will fill all your needs, but then again, so will many CMSes - you have the luxury of working with a few core features so your not as limited in your decisions.

That's why I said it has to do with the audience. I bought PM and plugged in. But in the entire year only two persons used it for a little while. Now it is just sitting there. If that is important for your audience, good for you. Based on the quality of the product, I don't mind paying for what it is worth.

When I mentioned about search, I was saying that I searched their forum. Why don't you do a search at the bottom of their forum, and see what it gives you? I did a search for "Calendar" because I didn't see the calender feature on the main page. I love to have a good calendar with recurring events. If I ever say goodbye to Geeklog, it would probably because I need a good calender.

You mentioned about submitting image. I don't have that problem because I have integrated the HTMLArea with ImageEditor pluggin. Everything I need, I can make Geeklog do it, with the execption of the calendar. So there has to be a very compelling reason for me to like another CMS.

Anyway, I am not here aguing with you. You drew my attention to e107 so I checked out and just hasn't appealed to me so far.

Sam

You bought the PM and later you found no use of it. With e107 or drupal or mambo or almost all others it is free and out of the box - so even if you do not need it you can just turn it off. That is say with these systems you have choice to tailor make ur site acc. to ur clientelle, with GL u r somewhat tied down.

You did not see calendar in e107 as it might have been turned off. You can just turn it on and place it anywhere you like - right, left, up, down . Unlike GL you can delete happily - in GL what you enter stays there and do not listen to delete button ( unless you sweat with the codes )

Regarding images - htmlarea does not work in many browsers like Opera. e107 has simple form based image upload - so it is always available. Everything you need is already there in e107 - you need not "make it do it" except just clicking yes or no button.

What appeals to one is based on many reasons ( unless you are biased ) - so it is good what you find good. Cheers !

Come on. You keep selling the turning on and off thing which is good but I don't care that much. What I care is the look of final product. Once my sites are finalized, I hardly go about turning things on and off all the time. My users would go crazy if I do.

Have you really done the seach on their forum? How does the result look comparing the Blaine's forum on Geeklog? That's what I mean, the "quality".



How do you know everything I need? If their other modules are only as good as thier forum, then forget it!

I will tell you there is one thing I do need very much--an integrated calendar that can do Recurring Events. Can e107 do that? If it does, I would give it a star.

I was looking for their calendar not because that I wanted to know if they had one. I wanted to see what can it do and how good it is.

Am I bias? Sure I am because I can never be satisfied with the out of the box product. I always have to customize. That means you still end up having to spend time getting familiar with the source codes. I have to be bias because I don't have time to learn another set of codes unless it has shown me some compelling quality modules that I need.

Sam