I need a very specialized CRM
Do I
I want to recode the entire layout of sugar crm. whats the best way to start.
write a separate application and update SugarCRM via API calls
Can you be more specific about "very specialized CRM" ?
1.) You can customize all the field, drop down menus, layouts using the studio.
Check out:
http://developers.sugarcrm.com/docs/OS/6.1/-docs-Developer_Guides-Sugar_Developer_Guide_6.1.0-Chapter%204%20Customizing%20Sugar.html
Since you have decided to use SugarCRM don't develop UI outside SugarCRM. Since SugarCRM is very extensible and basicly every view in it can be replaced with any smarty tempalte/html page then there is no reason not to use it's functionalities especialy something like privilidges, home dashboards etc.
So my answer is go with SugarCRM customization.
If you are looking to re-write the whole MVC architecture of Sugar, I would write your own system based off a PHP MVC framework like Zend or CakePHP, if you are just looking to create specialized fields, and maybe tweak some layouts or something, I would recommend SugarCRM, because created fields and adding them to a basic 2 column form layout is quite simple. Even extending the current views is pretty easy if you have a solid grasp of OOPHP and the MVC architecture. Without knowing all your needs here, I'd be very surprised if you had to write a whole custom system. Almost Everything can be extended and customized in an upgrade safe way, which leaves you open to gaining the benefits of the new SugarCRM releases when they come out with out losing your custom enhancements.
Related
I want to ask expert joomla devs out there, about event handling(dropdown values etc.) On how is it coded? In .NET(VB/C#) there is a custom event handler for every control in the User Interface during development (e.g button1_click). Any references?
There are aspects to this answer.
Firstly, I need to make sue that you are comparing .net web development with Joomla web development here. I would be surprised that every click on a .net control can be hooked into with a callback architecture, but then again I am not a .net developer.
Joomla has an event trigger system, which can be used in conjunction with Joomla plugins, see here: http://docs.joomla.org/Plugin/Events
On top of this, many more complex components define their own events, good examples are jEvents and jSeblod
This isn't built in the core of Joomla! and you would need to write some JavaScript/jQuery to handle this.
Alternatively, you could look at the likes of RS Forms which allows conditional displays for many field types.
I see a lot of articles and posts on how to create a custom MembershipProvider, but haven't found any explanation as to why I must/should use it in my MVC2 web app. Apart from "Hey, security is hard!", what are critical parts of the whole MembershipProvider subsystem that I should know about that I don't, because I've only read about how to override parts of it? Is there some "behind the scenes magic" that I don't see and will have to implement myself? Is there some attribute or other piece of functionality that will trip over itself without a properly setup MembershipProvider?
I am building a web app, using a DDD approach, so the way I see it, I have a User entity and a Group entity. I don't need to customize ValidateUser() under the provider; I can just have it as a method on my User entity. I have to have a User object anyways, to implement things not under the MemebrshipProvider?
So, what gives? :)
No, you don't need it. I have sites that use it and sites that don't. One reason to use it is that plumbing is already there for it in ASP.NET and you can easily implement authentication by simply providing the proper configuration items (and setting up the DB or AD or whatever).
A RoleProvider, on the other hand, comes in very handy when using the built-in AuthorizeAttributes and derivatives. Implementing a RoleProvider will save you a fair amount of custom programming on the authorization side.
I'm in the middle of converting an existing app built on top of zend framework to work as a plugin within wordpress as opposed to the standalone application it currently is.
I've never really used zend so I've had to learn about it in order to know where to begin. I must say that at first I didn't think much of zend, but it's funny because the more I understand how it works the more I keep questioning why I'd want to remove dependency when it's a clearly well thought out framework. Then I'm reminded that it's because of wordpress.
Now I already know there are WP plugins to make zend play nice with WP. In fact I'm aleady using a zend framework plugin just to get the app functional within the WP admin area which is allowing me to review code, modify code, refresh the browser, review changes, debug code, again and again.
Anyway, I really don't have a specific question but instead I'm looking for advice from any zend masters out there to offer advice on how to best go about a task like this one.... so any comments, advice, examples or suggestions would be super.
One area I'm a little stuck on is converting parts of zend->db calls to work as wpdb calls instead... specifically the zend->db->select.... not sure what to do with that one.
Also on how to handle all the URL routing with automatic calls to "whatverAction" within thier respective controllers files.
Any help would be great! Thanks
You're probably facing an uphill battle trying to get some of the more major components of ZF to work in harmony with Wordpress. It sounds like you've got a full MVC app that you're trying to integrate into a second app that has very different architecture.
You probably want to think about which components handle which responsibilities. Wordpress has it's own routing and controller system that revolves around posts, pages and 'The Loop'. This is entirely different from Zend's Action Controllers and routing system.
It's possible you could write a WP hook to evaluate every incoming request and decide if it should be handled by WP or a ZF controller. However, it is doubtful you would be able to replace WP's routing system outright with ZF's or vice versa.
Same idea, where Zend_Db is concerned. There's nothing stopping you from using Zend_Db to access Wordpress's database, but trying to somehow convert or adapt Zend_db calls into wpdb calls sounds painful. If you have a large model layer, you probably want to hang on to it, and find a way to translate data from those models into the posts/pages conventions that Wordpress uses.
Personally, I would use ZF to build a robust business layer that can be queried through an object model via a Wordpress plugin, and then rely on Wordpress to do the routing and handle the views.
Zend_DB_Select is simple SQL query (but created using objects) that can be used like any other query. Just turn it into string. Ex.:
mysql_query((string)$zendDbSelectObject);
I am building a site in ASP.NET 4 and MVC2 that will have premium features, such as SMS notifications that will only be available to paid subscribers. I also have additional modules for things like Inventory, and Transactions etc
I am already leveraging the standard MembershipProvider, and am leaning towards using Roles tp provide this functionality.
ie: have an "SMSModule" role that the user gets if they pay for the add-on SMS service
This makes the controllers simple with a little attribute decoration, but the problem I see with this is that there will be a bunch of conditional code scattered through my views etc
Is there a better method of providing a "module" style approach in .NET 4 and MVC2???
You can add your conditional logic to view models, use the controllers to set the viewmodels appropriately and it should be fine... Sometimes you have to have the if statements inside the views even if not so ellegent. Unless of course you are using a view engine like spark then your if statements are placed in another unobtrusive location, but they still exist! You can always create HtmlHelpers and set the code to the serverside and based on the logic display appropriately...
FWIW I ended up using a combination of Descriptors in Spark View Engine, along with a custom Feature provider and associated ActionFilter
I've been thinking about this recently and I don't know a really nice and tidy way of creating a mobile version of an existing or new MVC2 website/app.
I think the easiest way would be to just use a different stylesheet depending on whether a mobile was detected but sometime you need to change the view content too if you have massive inline images everywhere or for other reasons.
What is a good approach for this? Is there a way of theming fairly easily in MVC2?
Well MVC is just your server-side technology, what you should ask to yourself is "what is the best practice to create a mobile web site, regardless of the server side tech".
In my opinion, creating a well-formed and semantic (x)html is the first step. As you say, the most logical thing to do is create different style sheets for different media types, and you're right.
As for the problems you mention, like inline images, consider this: are those images content or presentation?
In the first case, they should be present even in the mobile version.
In the latter, they are defined in the style sheet, so you can simply avoid them in the mobile css.
The only exception I can think of is when you want to provide different functionality on mobile, or if you're forced to, i.e. on pages that rely heavily on JS and those scripts wouldn't run on mobile browsers. In this case, you might want to create different versions of those pages and serve the appropriate version based on the user agent.
Check the source code for NerdDrinner. They've implementated a MobileCapableWebFormViewEngine class which inherits from base WebFormViewEngine class. The MobileCapableWebFormViewEngine uses the HTTPContext to decide which View to render in the client. This'll make more sense when you see the source code