Ok, I'm still in this game. If you are interested, please turn subscriptions for this.

I AM READY TO START THE PROCESS IN HIRING A CONTRACTOR TO DO THIS ON MY OWN. If you want in on this, then let me know. I have a $3,000 budget for this and I will have it completed inside of 60 days from today as my target delivery date. I am planning to have this slanted heavily towards automotive. 1) Dealer Reviews and 2) Vehicle Year/Make/Model/Trim/Options ... and maybe 3) Parts & Accessories reviews as well.

I will put up project tracking tools on www.stevebluhm.com and I might use eLance.com to handle the contract becuase it just makes things easy and I don't have to worry about the money as they can handle it and we can all be involved on the site with me being in charge though.

I you are interested, let me know via PM and we can get started. Your level of interest in investing in this project will directly relate to the amount of input you will have. (i.e. a $300 participant will have his/her requests taken more seriously than a $20 participant.)

* The other option is that I find a good developer and I will make this a commercial plug-in with a basic free version plus a paid version that will probably run something like $50 per version release, and hopefully I can get 50 or 60 paid versions launched so I can make my money back.

Ok, that's my suggestion - I >REALLY< need this modification, like yesterday, and I can't wait any longer so I have to jump on it myself. If I am running off half-baked, please send me a PM and let me know.

I'm already working in a CMS system, which has nothing to do with vB CMS and vbAdvanced (even if vbAdvanced is a totally different product, and I totally respect what the author did).

Most of you will say that I'm strange person, and really I'm. But I don't plan to explain here the deep reasons, something that maybe will be without sence for most of you. But I believe that I have a great imagination when it comes to coding, and finally my mods are not so buggy, ehh?



Well, here are some features. Keep in mind that I call them articles, but you can call reviews or whatever you want:

1. Homepage, Category listing, Article page:
   1. You can choose from 5 predefinied Layouts or create your own.
   2. Drag and Drop blocks to layout.
   3. Configure each block per page. eg in homepage you may want to show 5 latest articles with thumbs, but for the same block to show 10. etc etc
2. Four (4) types of articles:
   1. Normal Article
   2. Normal Article with Likes/Dislikes
   3. Article with Discussion (thread)
   4. Article with Reviews
3. Different type of rating questions per category
4. ..... many more that I want to keep secret for now as the mod will be ready by the end of July. But, sorry if I disappoint you, but features like external connections (except Google Maps), are not in my plans at least for the first release.
5. Give a look at the screenshoot. Have you seen dragable block which contains tabs? How many tabs is up to you (just check the checkboxes that you want).

Maria

It will be ready in a month from now (even if I plan it for July 31st), and it will costs you 1/20 of your budget
Maria

I love your work.

If you want to start a separate project feel free to do so.
The project in this thread is still advancing. If you want to be part of this and there are particular features that you need in this, then feel free to share them, so I can include them in the list.

Mary, I respect your work and you really did some great mods. However, coding an own CMS does not make sense in that case, at least in my opinion. In our case we just converted from Wordpress to vBulletin CMS and it was hell, the URLs of more than 50.000 articles changed. With vBulletin CMS we at least got the safety to build on a reliable and stable component, which is supported by a whole company. A CMS can be a crucial part of a website.

I would love to see you coding addons for the official CMS though. That would be really great and everyone could stick with the current solution. Just a thought.

It's difficult to explain what exactly I'm doing. But maybe tomorrow I'll post a video in YouTUBE to be more understandable. I'm not actually coding a replacement of vB CMS. Ley's try with an example of my microCLASSIFIEDS. It has the homepage (I repeat, homepage of microCLASSIFIEDS, not vB), it has a page for listing Ads, and finally a page for showing the Ad itsself. You know very well, that even the best design can satisfy all users. Some user don't want xxx block, some others want xxx block but in different position and so on.

This is what I'm doing. All available blocks in a container, from where the user can drag and drop them anywhere he wants. Just I'm not stoping there. Except the microCLASSIFIEDS blocks, should be blocks coming from forums and CMS. An example. Lets say that someone wants to show Latest Threads, Popular Threads, Sticky threads. He can just drag and drop these block to the page (with visual effect... seeing it with data). But he can also drag and drop them in a Tabs container to save space, and make it more attractive.

Last but not least: Static blocs: Video, Audio, Images, Banners, Texts, Navigation menus and many more.

So at last the pages of microCLASSIFIEDS, should be exactly as the user wants to be.

I talked about CMS because the first Mod that I'll use budled with Drag and Drop features should be a multifaced Articles system. Depending on the settings can be Articles, Reviews or anything you like. Even recipes mod.

Maria
PS- Don't confused with the nickname. This is my company's name.

So far I am also interested to help finance the project.

Hi Everyone,

Alfa PMed me about this project, so I would like to offer some information about my background and what I'm working on. It might be a fit for some of you.

For nearly 10 years I ran a successful automotive forum called autopia.org. The new owner has taken it in a different direction, but the original community had a large product review database, product catalogs and how-to articles. I used a combination of GARS, Censura, Price Tapestry and phpMyDirectory to construct my monetized content. I created mashups on the vBAdvanced home page and forum pages to promote reviews, products and vendors. I learned a lot and had excellent income from both sponsors and affiliate sales. The issue was 1.) software support and 2.) maintenance.

Based on my experience, I'm building a CMS called Plugin Pages that works on the idea of catalogs. I'm not using vbCMS to build it because I want portability. My CMS is currently working on vBulletin 3.8 (beta), WordPress 3.x (beta) and vBulletin 4.1.x (alpha).



The primary goals for Plugin Pages are:

1. Generate Revenue for Website Owner
2. Rapid Catalog Development
3. Create Content with Microdata Markup for Google Rich Snippets
4. Import Data from Content Providers
5. Automatic Update of Data Where Possible
6. Smart Cross Promotion Between Catalogs

The base catalog type is a product catalog. I started there because that's where the money is (e.g., promoting products). I have plans to add screens and templates for:

1. Coupon Catalogs
2. Review Catalogs
3. How-to Article Catalogs
4. Video Catalogs
5. Recipe Catalogs
6. Business Listing Catalogs

The Review Catalog will be a special type in that it attaches to other catalog types to create its own catalog. That way any other catalog type you build will instantly have reviews built-in. This has the effect of doubling your catalog pages.

Once I get the core system out of beta I will release an API to allow other developers to build new catalog types, widgets, etc.

I will take the Review CMS features list Alfa created and use it for guidance. If you have any other input, I'm all ears.

Thank you!

Pete

For a better understanding here's a link to the Plugin Pages.
Sounds interesting Pete, so far as I understand it will be not possible for a user to create a new product review when it's not already listed in the catalog?
Is it possible to add all kind of products into the catalog or is all just imported from content providers?
Sorry if asking this, but what's in for you? Because add-ons in this kind of complexity are most paid or kind of Multi-level marketing stuff.
Thanks.