Controlling and moderating user PM's

Hi There.

First post here. Also a first time user of Joomla and CB. Have found the learning curve quite managable.

I have a bit of a strange request from a client who has asked us to develop a website for a bespoke concierge service.

Basically he wants to be able to control the flow of messages between members of the site. Members should not be able to communicate with each other by default. Members will also not be able to see the services offered by other members. The administrator will then be able to create connections (enable pm's) between those members offering and requiring relevant services.

It seems a bit of a round-about way of offering your goods on a market, but it is a concierge service offering bespoke products, so my client wants to have strict control over who is able to contact who.

Does anybody know if uddeIM is capable of this, or if there is a similar prduct that can be used in this way, or even if uddeIM could be hacked to achieve something like this.

Thanx for reading
Emil

uddeIM is not able to handle this and also no other known PMS for Joomla.

It might be possible to add such a functionality in uddeIM (or other PMS) but since I am a little bit short of time there I have currently other priorities.

Nevertheless you can add a request on the tracker.

Hi

Thanx for the reply.

As I am pretty new to your module and Joomla, I was wondering if maybe you could point me in a direction of where I would start tinkering with the code, and also if you could give a rough estimate of how long you think it would take to implement a change like this?

Well, for a experienced PHP and Joomla developer a few hours maybe, since you need a backend to control the connections and some modifications in the compose message logic.

The biggest problem is that when you modify the code on your own you leave the development branch and all bugfixes and improvements must be added by comparing the complete code basis. uddeIM is the most complex PMS for Joomla, so I do not recommend to add patches without adding these to the main trunk otherwise updates/upgrades won't be possible in future.

For a service you describe are most features of uddeIM not necessary, so maybe it might be more wise to use a very simple component and add some modifications there?