Need to Assess whether Joomla is good fit for Web Application Requirement

Question

Hello,

I have a web application that needs to be built using PHP/MySQL. The application will require documents to be generated from data in the MySQL database. Such documents will be printed and/or emailed and user will be prompted to run a daily print/email job based on business logic.

This application functionality needs to be made available to individual users such that they can upload data, have the system prompt them as to whether letters/emails are to be generated. The site also needs to be able to support a bulletin board, online live training events and will have admin area as well.

Question: Should a hybrid solution be developed such that the data management (upload functionality, and letter production) be a separate part of the site that authenticated Joomla users can access? That is, the document management functionality would exist separately from Joomla, but be called from within it via a link in the Joomla sitemap. Alternatively, should custom modules be developed from within Joomla to accomodate the document management functionality?

Thanks so much for your input!!

Answer 1

Joomla could do the job for you but based on the amount of things you need that differ from a normal Joomla site I would use a framework to build from instead of a CMS. I say this because it sounds like you need a lot more than just a CMS and it can be more work if you try making Joomla do things it wasn't designed to do. In my opinion Joomla is for "web sites" and not as much for "web apps". Of course those terms have overlap but it sounds like you would be better off with a Framework to go off of instead of working around Joomla to get what you want. However if the site is already done in Joomla it may be less work just to make a Joomla add-on.

Since you have to use PHP I would definitely recommend CakePHP for your framework. As for an integrated forum try looking at the links in this post. If that doesn't work for you, try out Vanilla forums (vanillaforums.org) which are very clean and may be easier to integrate into CakePHP than some of the other PHP forums.

If you decide to use CakePHP, check out Cake Forge to see if you can find anything there to make your life even easier.

Answer 2

If you were to use Joomla, the upload functionality and letter production would be written as a custom component. You can write the component to make sure that the current user is authenticated before generating the documents. I would not develop this as a separate application alongside Joomla; it would be easier to write it as a component.

Many forums and forum bridges are available for Joomla, so that would be something you wouldn't have to write.

I'm not sure what kind of live event support you're looking for.