Symphony.

Hi all,

I’m back to periodically working on this big frankenstein project I’m planning to build with Symphony. Wondering if anyone has ever done something like this…

1. Presuming 2.2 and the Members extension will be out by the time I get around to the build (which is almost guaranteed given my workload) I will be using that to let people register to the site.

2. I want members to have a frontend entry form that basically lets them choose from a list of predefined data sources, probably up to a maximum of 5 data sources or such.

3. Members will then pick certain formatting/selection options relevant to the data sources they chose.

4. At the end, the member’s mashup entry options will be stored in a section. The mashup itself will be rendered on the frontend, either with a generic master page that can handle all the data sources and formatting options chosen in #2 and #3, or using a custom page that is generated on the fly when the entry is submitted. The latter would require a unique page for every entry, presumably.

In essence, I’m giving members a limited/semi-automatic way to build parts of a Symphony site.

Anyway, questions:

• If you were building this, would you expose Symphony’s data sources directly in #2? Or is there another good method to expose (simplified) data source selection?

• Any suggestions about #4? A generic page that has access to all the system’s data sources is going to be a bloated monster, so I have to do something to pare them down. Is generating pages on the fly a good approach? How hard is that to do?

• Anyone interested in helping me build this thing? It’s going to be 2030 before it’s done at my current rate…

Anyone interested in helping me build this thing?

Always.

But I’ve read your post three times and still can’t figure out what it is exactly you’re planning on building :-/

Heh, yes. I’m being somewhat vague. Here’s some Dribbble shots that might make it a tad clearer.