Symphony.

Firstly let me say that I am a WordPress Refugee. I love WordPress, but I am concerned that it wont scale (or be fast enough) for my latest project and I think Symphony may just be my saviour!

I am trying to create a Football (soccer) website with an emphasis on betting, statistics and access to football records and data.

I have amassed a huge quantity of data by fair means and foul and I want to create something rather special. I have historic data for most European Leagues going back over the last 10-30 years. For the UK leagues, my data goes back to the beginnings of the professional game. But it is more recent history that really interests me and its relevance to predicting match outcomes for betting purposes.

I will also automate the collection of data for played matches using available API's and a little scraping.

So as well as my Symphony-CMS database, I will be manipulating large quantities of data into tables suitable for publishing as predictions for matches and generating probabilities for match outcomes. I will probably cache these "generated" tables for speed but will need to include API data from the bookmakers in the same tables and perform comparisons.

Then I want to connect to a number of API's for real time score updates, team news, scorers, substitutions, betting odds and also some real time analysis of social feeds (probably using a natural language analysis tool).

So quite a project!

Then there are my tech specs.

Native XML (since this matches the APIs I will be using), HTML5, CSS3, I want to use the very elegant Foundation Framework (from Zurb) and will have to mix and match Symphony, XSLT and Foundation, MySQL databases and some stored XML files and stored HTML files..... plus the API's of course.

I am relatively new to XML/XSLT but can handle the PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS/Javascript side of things pretty well.

I have begun to develop a comprehensive plan for my site structure in terms of both the URL structures and the individual page types and sections. I also have a pretty good MySQL map for my Data.

So here is my question to the community.....

Is Symphony a good choice for such a project? Why? And what are the pitfalls I should look out for?

I think Symphony is a great choice for your project, especially since you have the knowledge to extend it where you need.

The only pitfall I can think of is not planning it out before hand. Having a firm knowledge of Symphony and the core concepts is a must before you start planning things out. You'll be happier with the outcome and you'll be able to capitalize on the many benefits of Symphony. So, take the time and really get to know Symphony :-)

Wise words. It often happened to me that I extended Symphony in a far too complex and verbose manner, simply because I didn't know the possibilities well enough. :-)

That's great advice, thank you.

You seem to have hit upon my biggest worry in migrating to a new CMS. If it was WP, I would know the hooks (or types of hooks) available and be able to dive right in, write some hacks and then code the proper solution.

In Symphony, I am feeling my way around at every step. I dont think the issue will be lack of familiarity with XML and XSLT, we have all learned "new stuff" and code is code, right (?) (syntax aside); its more likely to be that I will over-elaborate - more specifically that I will write a PHP/MySQL or JavaScript hack when the "right" solution would be a more elegant use of Symphony and XML/XSLT/XPath.

I am currently soaking up info from Rocketfoo, SymphonyExtensions and DesignProject X as well as the sources on this site.

Another couple of quick question?.... 2.2 (for more extensions) or 2.3? And Netbeans or something else as best development environment?

2.2 (for more extensions)

:)) The most important and useful extensions are updated for Symphony 2.3 (excepting just a few: Members & Email Template Manger). But by the time you will really need them, they will be ready for you.

And Netbeans or something else as best development environment?

Whatever suits you best. See this thread for some tools we're using. A few months ago I switched from Eclipse PDT to PHPStorm. I won't regret the choice. It's all in one. I mean ... ALL. Literally.

For custom stuff that can't be done with regular Sections, Pages, Datasources, Events and existing Extensions, Delegates are your friends. Be nice with them.

It may take some time to develop a workflow, establish some naming conventions, build the XSLT templates, but in the end it WILL be worth it. Just dig the forum. It's all there.

A key understanding in getting to know Symphony CMS is knowing how it differs from everything else. Where other CMS' provide narrowly defined functionality, Symphony CMS represents more of a toolset that can be used to create various functionality. You will often hear Allen (the father of Symphony CMS) describe his baby as a CMS framework.

And Netbeans or something else as best development environment?

http://www.sublimetext.com/

@VladG thanks for the advice and help. I just had a quick look at PHP Storm, nice, but I wonder if its a learning curve too many to change IDE when starting something like this. As a commercial offering rather than an open licence product, the useful extensions etc are all built in. (My biggest gripe in NetBeans is to find a great plugin and then the IDE gets updated and the Plugin fails to follow!).

As for the forum thread, I love IDE discussions! I have tried so many! I like Netbeans and the 7.2 release with (finally) decent FTP and GIT built-in is pretty sexy if a little slow in beta release. Aptana/Titanium is pretty cool too and SublimeText2 is very very quick.

But Netbeans is my weapon of choice right now, so I think I will "play safe".

Has anybody robbed a bank and invested in Altova or Stylus Studio? Worth it? Would be useful for some of the larger API's that I have to address.

Delegates

Oh wow! I didnt get that far yet, but "Come to Daddy you little beauties!"

I dont want to fall into the trap of translating everything to WP terms, but these little suckers are my "hooks to happy coding!".

The key thing to bear in mind here is the content model (sections), and how that content is going to interact with pages on the site (datasources, pages), and how those pages are going to interact with the content (events). Treat the sections are like database tables, but with a kickass ui in 2.3. You just have to keep in mind that they are interacted with by people as well as via events, so getting the balance of abstracted data vs useable data entry is a must.

The key thing about Symphony is it drives home the workflow of getting the content right with careful planning, as Lewis said. You can build some very powerful sites with a very simple setup in Symphony, or chuck in loads of extensions and add a wealth of extra features. The floor is yours to make things how you want them to be, which is always something I found difficult with Wordpress.

Just try and remember to keep it as simple as it can be with Symphony. When you think you have your content model right, go over it again. I always do. Only customise events and datasources when you really think you have to, although with the API available, it's not too hard to get stuck in. And don't be afraid to ask questions, we all love good puzzles to solve here, the forum is where the majority of the wealth of Symphony is.

@NeilC, welcome to Symphony CMS. I think you picked the perfect CMS for your project. We are glad you are here.

Here are a few threads the might be helpful

• Question about data structure
• Is Symphony right for me?
• Entity diagram
• Reference: Do you want to learn XSLT? Here's a few resources that might help… (Old thread, but should be useful)

@bzerangue Thanks for some great links. @Nick Dunn's Entity Diagram looks great and his project is very similar, so I will have to say "Hi Nick" at some point.

I guess the best thing about Symphony-CMS so far is the community and the willingness to share experience, ideas and knowledge. Thanks Guys (and Gals, for I am sure some exist!).