Inventory Booking mechanism for Inventory

Now I'm getting into Joomla, thought I'd check out a few inventory booking extensions. Found one which looks excellent - JomRez

Here's a demo of it on their servers.

With this system I can visualise the situation working as follows:

1. Browse to the correct webpage
2. log in
3. if your a student:
1. search for the resource
2. book it out if it is free
4. if your staff
1. add resources
2. check booking status
3. sign back in
4. search for free resources

Questions

1. could it use Active Directory logins?
1. Yes, I think so. Found this forum on the topic although couldn't look at it
2. does it manage assets?

One thing I have read is that it is good, but to get it really customised you will probably need to buy the extensions. These generally start at £9.99 and go up to £29.99.

The next thing to do is to test it:

1. install MAMP
1. make a new database in myphpadmin
1. I named it "inventory"
2. install Joomla
3. download JomRez and install
1. found this article on how to install
1. download Download jomres_webinstall.zip or just jomres_webinstall.php
2. Place this in the root of the joomla
3. run the jomres_webinstall.php in the browser
1. this came up with:
1. We are unable to comunicate with the updates server, you might have a firewall preventing your server from communicating with the jomres.net servers. You should create some rules that allow your server to communicate with the domains "updates.jomres4.net", "plugins.jomres4.net" and "license-server.jomres.net"
2. I could ping all of these from my machine?
2. So, might as well just install it manually
4. Nope, can't find the manual install zip.
5. installed it on a server using the webinstall and worked fine
4. add assets
1. as it's geared for hotel bookings the only way I've thought of doing it is to add each asset as a room in a hotel.
2. I'd have to go into the database and find the room type and add a different room type for each different item we had.
5. test asset management
1. can't really manage assets
6. test booking mechanism
7. test logins

Well, to conclude, if I want this to work as an inventory management utility I'd need to buy plugins. It's ridiculously restricted.

The way I can concieve to make it work is to have the college as a hotel, and it have 'room types'. You can have a number of each room type, each bookable. Too confusing.

Had another look on Joomla and found only paid things! Doh! Can't get everything for free. I shall go back to Access Databases.

Joomla notes

Thought I'd best take some notes because I might just forget how I ever did it. So:

• Make a module for everything you want to place on the page, with exception to the articles
• Theres a Banner module
• theres a search module
• theres a menu module
• etc
• These modules require you to designate them a position. This is set out in the template you are using. If you change template you'll have to change all the position. (there always named differently)
• To view the positions, I found this forum. Basically in templates, go to options, switch on "preview positions" then whereever you are on the actual site, just put "?tp=1" without the speech-marks.
• When in the menu manager you can assign different menus to different modules. I think this is so you can have a few different menus for different areas. All you'd have to do is make another menu module and put that in a different position.
• To edit a templates stuff, I saw on a tutorial that there are lots of options which come with every template. I couldn't find these with Beez template, but with all you can edit the html, and also the css. So it's totally changeable!

I shall add to this list of useful hints over time.

which Content Management System to use?

What with all the new websites about these days, with constantly updating and interactive elements, it is too daunting to learn php or asp so why not use a content management system?

Well, I think I'll try some out and then I'll be more able to answer that question. I had a quick look around and found this informative blog, which gives a nice little list of free ones. Here are some of the most popular and nice looking, and almost most importantly, free:

• Joomla
• Drupal
• WordPress

I'll carry on here when I've had some playing about.


Well, I'm still having a good look at Joomla. Seems good but a little complicated when you first have a look at it. I'm finally getting there. Here's what the joomla site currently looks like.

I've just found this wiki which describes how to begin templating, which is ultimately how I will make the website. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but essentially all I'll have to get used to is using the special php references to put the content in. You then use CSS to style all the html you made in the template.

Whilst looking through the joomla wiki I found that it might be easier to start off editing the "beez" template, which they claim to be highly adaptable! Heres the wiki