I’m thinking of buying expressengine for a website I’m designing but I’m going to need some very specific features, and I’m not sure to what extend EE can be modified. EE looks like an amazing system but I have no idea if its ideal for the kind of complex website I’m looking to build. The website is about food and restaurants, and here are the features I will need:

1. A unified login system for visitors (for both the main site with reviews etc, and also the forum).

2. A system for reviews of restaurants. Users will be able to submit resturants to the database (which I will approve) and submit a review and rating for restaurants. Users will be able to browse and pick their city then rank by most reviews or by highest rating. Users will also be able to find a restaurant by submitting their zip code and a maximum distance, and then again rank by most reviews or by highest rating.

3. A function to search through other users profiles based on variables they submitted in their profile, or account information. For example, a user should be able to search for users who picked their city as Los Angeles, their favorite food as Indian, and logged in within the last 7 days. In other words they should be able to search for multiple variables simultaneously.

4. A system that allows registered visitors to create their own blog.

4. This modification is completely optional, but would be nice to implement eventually. I would like users to be able to dynamically generate graphs based on user profile information. For example, a user could generate a pie chart that shows what % of users (who filled in their preferences) prefer indian food, or chinese food. Another example would be to generate a graph showing the % of users who prefer indian food (y axis) and how it changes over time (x axis).

Do any of these functionalities already exist as mods, and if not can they be custom implemnted? And if custom, does anyone have a clue how much they might cost (for everything except the dynamic graphs)?

Thank you!

Hi Bandalar,

Thanks for your interest in ExpressionEngine and welcome to the Forums!

1. A unified login system for visitors (for both the main site with reviews etc, and also the forum).

Absolutely. ExpressionEngine includes Membership management out-of-the-box!

2. A system for reviews of restaurants. Users will be able to submit resturants to the database (which I will approve) and submit a review and rating for restaurants. Users will be able to browse and pick their city then rank by most reviews or by highest rating. Users will also be able to find a restaurant by submitting their zip code and a maximum distance, and then again rank by most reviews or by highest rating.

Have look at Solspace’s Rating.

4. A system that allows registered visitors to create their own blog.

ExpressionEngine was born from a blogging system. SafeCracker would let your users submit entries to their area of the site. With Zoo’s Visitor you can create complex member profiles.

4. This modification is completely optional, but would be nice to implement eventually. I would like users to be able to dynamically generate graphs based on user profile information. For example, a user could generate a pie chart that shows what % of users (who filled in their preferences) prefer indian food, or chinese food. Another example would be to generate a graph showing the % of users who prefer indian food (y axis) and how it changes over time (x axis).

That’s front end development, but you can use ExpressionEngine to supply the data for something likeJS Charts.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,

Decker, I’m not sure if Solspace’s Rating does exactly what I need, like sorting by state or city, and then by popularity or # of reviews. If not, is it possible to modify modules like Solspace? What programming language is used? Do I need to find someone with EE experience or just PHP in general.

As for blogs, I’d like to have a section called “Blogs” in the sidebar and once a visitor pressed on it, it will have a list of every member’s blogs. Some more advanced features like ranking by most popular (page views), most posts, etc would be nice. How much of this can I do out of the box with EE?

Sorry for asking so many questions, and thanks for the help!

Hi Bandalar,

I’m not sure if Solspace’s Rating does exactly what I need, like sorting by state or city, and then by popularity or # of reviews.

Not on its own. Rating ties in with the channel module. The channel module is at the core of ExpressionEngine and can be used to store and sort all your content.

As for blogs, I’d like to have a section called “Blogs” in the sidebar and once a visitor pressed on it, it will have a list of every member’s blogs. Some more advanced features like ranking by most popular (page views), most posts, etc would be nice. How much of this can I do out of the box with EE?

ExpressionEngine can handle all of that out-of-the-box.

If you have any other questions, let me know!

Cheers,