I have dabbled with Joomla a bit, but now want to build my first commercial website. Before I dive in, I would really appreciate peer review of my high level plan, and sanity check it with some experienced Joomla developers. I'm not sure this is the right place to do this, so if not, please move along and pretend I didn't post.


Basically I am wanting to create a subscription based website, selling access to the content for a small fee.

Where I differ from the norm is:
I want to sell different flavours of subscription into different markets groups, while about 70% of the content will apply to all groups, 30% will be unique to each, so I want to present a unique front page for each group (will also make search terms more specific), and filter the content based upon which group the user comes from from. I would also like to tailor the template (at least logo) based upon the user group.

I have attached a block diagram of my plan, along with the modules I am thinking about for each.
Basically, group specific front pages in php, login and payment using Ambra Subscriptions, content filtering via Juga.

My questions are:
Is this a sensible approach, or am I insane?
Would I be better (for maintenance, and SEO) to create separate websites per group, rather than filter one larger one.
Will this, many frontpages leading to main sight be bad for SEO?
Joomla 1.6 would seem to contain much of the content filtering I need as native, would I be better to wait for this, and for the other plugins to catch up?
Can a template be rebranded based upon user group?
Any hosting recommendations, currently I am looking at Rochen.

I realise this may be a lot to ask the forum, and would be happy to pay for good advice, but wanted to start the ball rolling somewhere.
Cheers Ben

Welcome Ben. Have a look also at OSE Membership Control extension. Based on a recent investigation (rather than hands on experience) I think it does much of what you want.

Was there a reason you wanted the separate landing pages outside of Joomla? I think these can be handled by OSE Membership Control though I am probably thinking of different landing pages once a user selects a subscription option. Varying templates according to page is relatively easy - maybe doing so by user group requires a hack.

I look forward to hearing others' responses on this one.

Best wishes - David

thanks
I did have a quick look at OSE membership control, but I stress the word quick. It ended up number 3 on my list.

Two concerns I had,
1: payment didn't include a paypal option, although I am sure one could be added.
2: I was unsure how many user groups it would support, the demo only has two.

One advantage I was with the Juga route was the it should play nice with the Subscriptions component, the affiliate program, and the support component, as they were all from the same developer.

With all the content filtering, I wonder about waiting until Joomla 1.6.


As to having the landing pages outside of Joomla, no reason, each page would be on a separate url, my primary concern here is making each landing page as search engine friendly as possible. If this is all achievable within Joomla, then rock on.

thanks again for the speedy reply
Ben

You seem to have done a more in-depth investigation than I did - I thought OSE did have unlimited user groups, but then I also thought it did have a PayPal option. What is number 2 on your list?

I think your logic of trying to stick with the major extensions coming from the same source makes a lot of sense.

I am guessing that it may still be at least six months before all the major extensions are available for J1.6. Maybe you can get a better idea from your chosen source. Six months might seem too long, but for me I would be counting as a negative any learning curve I had to climb that may be overturned in a short time period.

Hopefully others will chime in with their expertise.

David

I really doubt I spent the time with OSE to do it justice, just looked at there demo (I would be surprised if it is limited to two groups). since this is important to me I should really bite bullet and invest in a copy to put it through its paces. If it can do all I want in one extension, it would tick a lot of boxes.

Number 2, was Subscription manager, but that was because my main priority was the subscription.

A 6 month (possible more) wait isn't going to work, just hope much of what i learn will be transferable.

ta ben

OK, just to pick up a few points from the discussion:

I am using OSE member control on a site, including access control, paid content access, subscriptions (free/paid, recurring automatically), Paypal, Virtuemart and paid downloads/views on a credits system.

So...

OSE is not limited to 2 groups. I'm using more than that myself. You can create groups and attach them to subscriptions...etc and apply access control using groups to content, components, modules and menus.

OSE member subscriptions can go direct to Paypal - it's all there already. I put mine through Virtuemart as I'm selling other products too (e.g. paid downloads). This way, purchased subscriptions are still automatically activated on payment, as Virtuemart bounces it back to OSE on payment.

I have also used JUGA and I might say that OSE access control is quite a lot quicker and simpler to set up. But probably thorough enough for your use, based on what you've said so far. It also has a credit system, where punters can buy/be given credits to use up for viewing additional content. It has plugins for a number of other key extensions - see their site.

Probably too soon to think of using J1.6 unless your launch date is quite a ways out and you are prepared to update your system very frequently and re-tweak. It might be a bit soul-destroying!!

If you do use OSE, you can avoid Ambra and JUGA. Both of which are decent products, but hey!

I am a bit concerned about your home page. I'd put it in Joomla and have access-controlled modules in the home page by group. But that will affect your SEO.

Dont think you can pick template by group(roll on 1.6...) altho i'd love to hear from someone that i'm wrong on this..It's not apparent in OSE anyway.

Mind you, having a logo per group is easy. Just transfer the logo to a module. Then show module by group. Minor template edit.

And on hosting, persoanlly I recommend Rochen. Path of least resistance - great support, quality hosting, Joomla optimised and well priced. I went there and never looked back. And no, they dont pay me a cent to say this!!!!

hope some of that helped
good luck
Dex

Thank you Dex for your response,
Its great to get feedback from someone who has used the system, exactly what I needed, as I say, I only looked at the demo. Now I have the confidence to purchase OSE a give it a whirl.

I have set up a site with Rochen,and already put their support to the test, pretty impressive response time, and everything works fine.

So my only outstanding issue is how best to have a number of custom "Entrance' pages feeding to the same site. The major goal here is to maximize the SEO desirability of each page, if that means taking them outside Joomla, so be it, but being new to this I don't know the best solution.

thanks again to both you and David, its been a real help.
Ben

BTW, I think e met at the Melbourne Joomla day in 2009, the weekend Victoria set it self on fire.

Well as I said, the way you could do it is: if you have some home page content that will appear on ALL your home pages, put that in to an article and publish to home page.

In that article put something like
{loadposition homepage}
then create a custom module for each group and assign module position 'homepage'. Then just assign access permissions to those modules to the appropriate group and bingo, you have many home pages.

My concern about this is that Google wont see any of that content, because you'd have to be logged in (to your site + group) to see it. So it wont index.

In fact, even your punters wont see it until they log in.

If instead you need several landing pages, just create them and give the URL to your groups and make them the page the group goes to after login.

I think there are extensions that handle multiple home pages, but I myself have never used them. Can someone else help out here please?

cheers
Dex

Hmm. I am not completely clear here on teh landing page needs.

Are you wanting a user from google who types in keyword a to go to one page - and the user from google who types in keyword b to go to another.

Or are you wanting people whom are logged in to be redirected to a specific page - (because you have to lg in (therefore have already arrived first - at least the first time)

I don't quite understand in what way you need to redirect pages - becuase i 'm thinking some php in the template might do the trick - basically I don't know the condition and the difference in page -a re they fdifferent content only - or look and feel also.

Or if it's after login - you just need differetn groups to be redirected to different areas. Sorry perhaps I'm not concentrating.

But my question is if the viewer is ???????, then go to a page that ????? (fill in the ???'s)

Hi
I basically want a number of different landing pages with different content (but same look and feel), on different URL's, but when the user logs in they go to the same main site, just with different access settings.