I have a database in Filemaker Pro that manages details regarding how surgeons in our hospital do various procedures. Unfortunately, Filemaker’s pricing has skyrocketed and it is a cumbersome platform for serving content in a browser. I currently have several RW sites that use Armadillo for CMS, but I’m not sure that this is ideal for this project. Here is what I need:
CMS with password access. Some users will view only and some will edit. There will be at least 50 users, so an easy method of managing access is best.
Text, Video, and photo management
Robust Navigation. Users can select a category such as neurosurgery then select a sub-type of procedure such as laminectomy
Search function so users can search for laminectomy directly
I have some ideas on how to do this but I know there are products such as Total CMS that may be useful.
As regards the user-access I would look at Sitelok by Vibralogix. As regards the CMS there are others better qualified than me to recommend but Pulse 5 and Total CMS are the 2 that spring to mind (Easy CMS - the little brother of total - won’t fit the bill I don’t think)
You didn’t say anything abou the tvolume of procedures. Right now you’re using a Database management system, that would indicate that you probably have a significant amount of data that perhaps has multiple tables with complex relationships.
RapidWeaver probably isn’t the best tool if that’s the case. Armadillo uses MySQL, but uses tables built for the blog, extra content functionality and does a great job at this. But it’s not or is any CMS system designed to deal with complex data relationships.
The underlying database to Armadillo MySQL or other databases can be used to build something like what you’re looking for. But you would need to rebuild what you have in FileMaker, depending on how complicated the database structure is, it could take a lot of effort and might be more practical to keep FileMaker.
Now if the volume and complexity of relationships are small and straightforward, then cms might work. But what you have described with the search function, different users having different access, sub searching, etc. sounds like an RDBMS like FileMaker is the right tool.
Thanks for the input. Filemaker does provide the ability to present data and navigation based on relationships. This is useful for presenting a procedure as well as a list of surgeons who do the procedure; a simple relationship, and a join table and its done. However, the data is pretty limited with about 100 procedures total, the relationships are not that important and there is no data to crunch.
The pricing for Filemaker that would allow up to 20 users could be $400/month!! I’m willing to give up some functionality to save $$.
Armadillo could be used with a blog dedicated to each main category of surgery i.e. “Neurosurgery” and each procedure being a separate post. A problem is that the ordering of posts can only done by date. Presenting in alphabetical order requires manually changing the entry dates to create the proper order. I am assuming that since the data is in MySQL, a large number of entries won’t slow things down.
I have considered creating a page for every procedure and using Armadillo Solo to provide the data. This would make the site rather large but adding new procedures would require hard coding. Conceptually this would be simple. It would be nice to have navigation that could easily navigate from main category to a sub category on a single page.
The recommendation for SiteLok is great. It is inexpensive and provides access control that is certainly adequate for what I need to accomplish, It is also supported by my hosting company Chillidog!