Assessing Typolight: specific site functionality

Hi there,

I am in the process of deciding whether to go for EE or for Typolight for a new site. Let's not debate how I came to those final two, however I do want to make a decision of which one to put my time into to make the step up from using Website Baker and Joomla for client sites. I only have so much time to be picking up a new CMS. ;o)

Anyway, I thought a good place to start was with a current site I will soon be developing, and some of the specific site functionality. If someone could provide me with a simple, high level overview of the steps that would be involved in creating each, that should give me a fairly decent insight into Typolight's capabilities in this regard. Anyway, here we go:

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1. Standard content page with attached image

All CMS's offer some way of adding a new page and adding content to it. Most, however, don't easily enable the option of attaching an image to the page to then be displayed in a way that I, the designer, intend. Most enables the client editor to add an image within the content, but that then puts the positioning of the image in the hands of the client admin. I want to be able to determine where the "main" image is displayed.

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2. Business directory

The site has a directory that would have listings displayed under "categories", and if possible "sub-categories". In this case, those categories and sub-categories would be areas of a city and suburbs, but it could obviously be type of business ...etc within a different site.

Listings within the directory would come from site users themselves, with the client admin "approving" a listing for it to display on the front end. So they would ideally receive some for of notification that a new listing has been submitted. For this site the listings would be free, though for other sites they may require payment via PayPal, so would be good to have some idea of how this might be accomplished.

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3. Classifieds section

In some ways similar to a directory, the main difference being I guess that there should be a length of time associated with a new classifieds add after which it no longer appears on the site. Payment to list a classifieds ad is even more important for this feature.

And I just came across the Foxee add on, would this be the best - and only - way to create a classifieds section?

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Am looking forward to hearing an overview of how possible and the general high level process of how to create the above. Thanks in advance for your time.

Cheers,
Dave

To be honest - TL is not really geared up for it. You could certainly achieve it with TL but I think you'll find quite a few obstacles and some custom programming requirements.

If i was building a site like you've described i'd probably go with Joomla

On either system you need to do some coding.

Question 1 can be solved with an extension (there are two i know about).
No. 2 looks like some catalog extension extended.
No. 3 should base on no. 2, but definitely needs some advanced coding.