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Russ in Vancouver
10-24-2012, 12:48 AM
Hello,

Looking for a platform that can offer an unlimited number of private groups a means of communication, calendars and possibly live video chat.
Very much like a VB forum, will a VB forum offer these functions? eg. If I had dozens of individual groups of people I communicate with, every group has its own confidential topics at different stages. Each group would have a Q&A in the forum over the following week after each in person group meeting or online meeting via live webinar or similar.

I am thinking it is possible right now with a few different types of software like joinme or gotomeeting etc. and then use a forum with private groups. but it would be nice to have a simple licence that works on all browsers and no software required on the customers side.

Thanks for letting me pick your brains.

jimr451
10-24-2012, 07:11 AM
Hi Russ,

VB is extremely powerful, and has a lot of user/group permissions available. So you can most likely do what you need to do with it. You can set up forums (and sub-forums) and restrict permissions to specific groups, then assign each user to the appropriate group.

Anyway, I'd explore that further, if you want forum capabilities. You'll have to manage the user groups, but you'd have to do that anyway.

-Jim

painperdu
10-24-2012, 07:40 AM
Check out a few of the open source social platforms like Elgg - Open Source Social Networking Engine. (http://elgg.org/) or even Pligg CMS | Open Source Content Management System (http://pligg.com/) -they each have private group functionality.

I also like Community Forum Software - Vanilla Forums Community (http://vanillaforums.org/) which isn't as popular as other forums but is well supported and feature rich.

Harold Mansfield
10-24-2012, 03:53 PM
Hello,

Looking for a platform that can offer an unlimited number of private groups a means of communication, calendars and possibly live video chat.
Very much like a VB forum, will a VB forum offer these functions? eg. If I had dozens of individual groups of people I communicate with, every group has its own confidential topics at different stages. Each group would have a Q&A in the forum over the following week after each in person group meeting or online meeting via live webinar or similar.

I am thinking it is possible right now with a few different types of software like joinme or gotomeeting etc. and then use a forum with private groups. but it would be nice to have a simple licence that works on all browsers and no software required on the customers side.

Thanks for letting me pick your brains.

This sounds like a job for BuddyPress. It won't run the webinar it self, for that you can use one of the solutions that you already referenced (why run that on your own servers?), but you could certainly run the promotion and sign up process. Even sell tickets or paid sign ups.

Mind you, BuddyPress all by itself won't do everything that you mentioned, but there are enough add ons and plug ins to help you integrate what you need.
The main functions of groups, member communications and forums are the foundation that you seem to be looking for.

It's open source, compatible, and runs almost everything that WordPress runs.
BuddyPress.org (http://buddypress.org/)

Russ in Vancouver
10-24-2012, 04:04 PM
Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback