CARMA or MAS ?
 

On behalf of someone else, I am looking for some advice on which is the better members CMS if its MAS or CARMA? And will this determine on what they want to do with the affiliate program so it works seamlessly with whatever affiliate system they go with later?

There are plenty of other options to use, none of which will tie you to an affiliate system.

That does bring up a good question: Is there a reason to tie the CMS in with the affiliate admin?

The only good reason that I can see, is that since Nats/Mpa also manages tour pages, it might make it easier for the webmaster to display their newest material in the tour. I'm not certain whether or not MAS or Carma even have this functionality though. Certainly other cms products can do the same thing. There may be some advantages in terms of statistics as well.

Three or four thousand dollars for a cms is just silly. You can have someone write one for you for a fraction of the cost, or purchase one of the existing other products for a few hundred dollars.

All of this is beside the point that a cms is intended to automate tasks that we all did manually. With only one or two sites, it's hardly necessary. We didn't move to automation till we grew to a point where so many manual tasks were impeding future growth.

I'm probably so wrong, but I thought carma was the software by the nats people for TGPs? I need to go look and see.

i was totally wrong. |yawn| manages members area.

Looks like CARMA does manage tours and both can provide the "whats new" feature, but also found out both are not fully functional for complex front-end tours if one decides to have different sections and features for the visitor. If a person keeps the standard (and boring) tours as every sponsor site out there does, then sure...lol

Anyways, I will be passing this on to the person I am collecting info for. It's their site project and ultimately will be their decision to make. THeir existing site is big and continuously growing so a small solution just becomes more cost in the long-run when they would need to upgrade again so it's best to do it right from the start if you've already been doing business for years and need that automation |thumb