Two questions

[slobizman]

1) I this new product intended to take hte place of your CMS, or do I still need that as well?

2) I see that you have something called "User Categories:

User Categories - Allow your users to create their own categories and, if you'd like, give them the ability to enable/disable viewing, ratings, replies, and new entries from other members. Also includes options allowing the user to password protect the category and, if desired, give them moderator abilities for that category.

Would this allow me to install on the site the ability for members to on-the-fly start up sort of "user groups" , where a group might be about a specific interest and others who might want to join in could do so as long as the originator let them in? Kind of like tribe.net or Yahoo Groups (obviously without all the features.

[Brian]

1). I would not say that it was *intended* to take the place of the CMPS. With the module system though it can be very dynamic and could replace the CMPS if it's something that works better for your site. I know some people have decided to use vBa Dynamics as their homepage in different fashions already, so I guess that depends on which is the right solution for you.

2). The user categories options are really just more to allow your members to create custom categories. It doesn't have anything to do with usergroups though, and there is not an option where the owner of the category could approve members before they could view the category. To see an example of how the user categories work, go to our main demo (http://vbadvanced.com/dynamics/), click on "My Stuff" and then "Manage Categories" in the drop-down menu.

[slobizman]

Regarding #1, can you, or should you, have both the CMS and the Dynamics on together? Can it help to have both, or conflict?

Just thinking if I started wit Advanced, would I be able to install Dynamics without having to undo any CMS stuff.

[eJM]

Brian, you meant, "I wouldn't say that it was *intended* to take the place of the CMPS." Right? I can't image being able to do all the great things I can with CMPS using only Dynamics.

Jim

[Brian]

Sorry, as Jim pointed out (thanks Jim!), I missed an important word in my reply. I would *not* say that it's necessarily intended to take the place of vBa CMPS. It could, and some members are using it more as a CMS, but the CMPS is really built more to handle content and pages, and has more advanced options in most of those areas. Dynamics is really more for displaying articles, allowing uploads, and etc. More like you would expect from an articles or file sharing product.
Both products can be run at the same time without any problems, and neither one is dependent on the other being installed.