Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

Fantastic Foreskin uses Elevated X and I was wondering if there were any other users out there. I mostly love it. I can schedule my updates and it does all my transcoding. There was a recent update that improved the look for the most part. AJ, the owner, is really nice and dealing with him is always pleasant.

On the other hand, there are some things I don’t like. The new upgrade made the photo sets pages less organized and less user friendly. I’m now paying them to fix it. Some of the other guys there are a lot less friendly to deal with. Some things are really easy to customize through their admin panel, somethings require and edit of the Smarty template (which is a bit beyond my skills).
And sometimes the documentation doesn’t do the job. It’s often hard to figure out what the software can and can’t do. It’s hard to figure out what it promises to do and what the customer is expected to customize on their own.

But I’m sticking with it until something better comes along. I was wondering if there was anyone else who wants to swap Elevated X tips, trade support or offer a shoulder to cry on when needed.

#2

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

How expensive is Elevated X?

#3

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

$500 setup + $150/month for the basic package

#4

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

A lot of people are going with Carma from Too Much Media. Keep in mind, it’s a hell of a lot more extensive than Elevated X. There’s a lot more coding that goes into it.

Unfortunately, we had it for about 2 years and then just got rid of it. We poured so much time and money into it and burned our asses. We had 3 programmers look at it for us, they couldn’t figure it out so we said the hell with it.

Since, we’ve created our own CMS’s from scratch. So we don’t use 3rd party any longer.

#5

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I’m thinking about getting my site custom at some point. The only thing that keeps me going with Elevated X is the scheduling and the transcoding (including Flash). But one more snarky message from their support team and I may start getting quotes! :wink:
Anyone using Mansion’s CMS software? Happy with it?
What do you think? Am I just better off with Elevated X for $1800 a year plus upgrade feels and customizations?

#6

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I’ve seen some really nice sites made with Wordpress. A blog doesn’t have to look like a blog. Wordpress can do 100% page width too without having to have a sidebar.

If you go with Wordpress I’d have 2 separate installations.
1 for the tour, preview videos, and join … and another one in the /members area. That way it’s easier to compartmentalize your members area from your tour.

If you go the free route, I’d start out with Wordpress and then migrate to Joomla before you got too many videos.

#7

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I’ve already got 75+ videos. Not sure if that’s too much. There was some talk about running a paysite from Wordpress at Phoenix Forum. Is anyone doing successfully?
I love Wordpress. They’re always making it better, it has a great support community and excellent plug ins.

#8

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

have you checked out MAS?
http://mansionproductions.com/mas/
not cheap, but very full featured, and when last i worked with sites that used it, it didn’t slow down pages loading, either.

#9

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

[QUOTE=basschick;96056]have you checked out MAS?
http://mansionproductions.com/mas/
not cheap, but very full featured, and when last i worked with sites that used it, it didn’t slow down pages loading, either.[/QUOTE]

I think that MAS is overpriced. From what I remember the price is about $4500-5000 and you have to add the money for integration and interface customization. Isn’t that a bit too much?

Life is expensive in my Country but I can hire a very skilled university student for $600 to do a custom script. A pro developer probably would cost about $2000 to do the same.

#10

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I’ve used 5 different CMS systems, just look for the things you want, with Elevated x, you drop a video in a folder and it converts the video for you anyway you want, thats a plus

#11

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

Another kinda snarky response from Elevated X today. Guess I’ll stick with them until I can find something better or can get someone to do my site custom and work out a transcode solution. My pal at Alternadudes.com had his site built on Wordpress and it looks great!

#12

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

You’re paying these people $150 a month and they’re being rude to you? Damn…I’d be gone in a hearbeat if that was the case. Sorry to hear you’re going through that. It always sucks.

I second using Wordpress as your members area CMS - and tour as well if need be. I do and am currently at 70 videos with no issues. And due to being quite familiar with WP themes, I created something nice and unique for my site.

Best of luck with whatever you decide. I hope you start getting some good support for the money you’re paying out.

#13

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I would NEVER use WP as a member CMS. Never ever. Wait until you get 10,000 members and see how it goes. Load balance WP over three servers and have fun. WP is one big resource hog.

NO CMS is perfect. They all try to be a one size fits all script. You really need to have a good programer do your customizations. We are on Crama and I drool at the features that ElevatedX has. But then I think what a hassle it will be to change over.

#14

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

Thanks you guys for the feedback. Who knows where Wordpress will be a year from now. Maybe it’ll be strong enough for a members site.
Lloyd, you are probably right. Maybe Elevated X is the best there is right now. It’s just really hard for a new site to afford that much customization. I don’t really expect them do do a ton of stuff for me. But there is a nicer way to point a newbie in the right direction. I’ve recommended Elevated X to a lot of people. It’s an awesome system if you know what you are doing.
It’s just tough when one is starting out and has invested so much. A little kindness goes a long way. That’s why I’m on this board every day. You people are very kind, helpful and patient!
But having to deal with 10,000 members is a problem I’d love to have to deal with! :wink:

#15

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

Just thought I’d throw Drupal into the mix. We use it for the members area in our site RateTheseGuys.com and whilst it took ages for our web designer to first understand, and then custom it, it has ran smoothly and hassle free since. Never need to contact the support team so I can’t say if they are good or not.

We went the CMS route, because of the youtube style video streaming with rating and commenting functions that we wanted to give the members. And our designer opted for Drupal.

Has anyone here used Drupal? How does it compare to the other CMS mentioned?

#16

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

[QUOTE=RateTheseGuys Wayne;96150]Just thought I’d throw Drupal into the mix. We use it for the members area in our site RateTheseGuys.com and whilst it took ages for our web designer to first understand, and then custom it, it has ran smoothly and hassle free since. Never need to contact the support team so I can’t say if they are good or not.

We went the CMS route, because of the youtube style video streaming with rating and commenting functions that we wanted to give the members. And our designer opted for Drupal.

Has anyone here used Drupal? How does it compare to the other CMS mentioned?[/QUOTE]

Never used Drupal, but have used Joomla! and to be honest, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are good, for sites just starting out, but not so great when you’ve got a few thousand members all trying to stream HD videos, aswell as guests streaming trailers and some guy in indonesia brute forcing you.
Another huge aspect is security, hunfreds of hackers are going to be trying to take down WordPress’s security, as probably half the sites in the world run on it; so keeping it up to date is a must- but do you really want your secure area running on an opensource platform?

On the other hand i have used Carma too, and i also think it sucks! - the features are outdated and its clunky. But it serves its purpose.

If your really going to do this, invest the $350 a month your gonna pay to hire a CMS, and get one developed.

2c

#17

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

The site, and me, are new to CMS, so thanks for that Richard. Lots to look into and plan for the future!

#18

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

I had Carma from TMM for years and ElevatedX for years as well.

Carma was just a nightmare to code for and I had a heck of a time working with the staff on getting it to do what I want. After getting it installed and paying someone to help me, I was out the door a couple grand and still had the monthly to pay. Mind you, this was 4 years ago. I will say it was stable and fast.

ElevatedX I did like, but it didn’t have everything I wanted. If you’re happy using their default layout, i think it’s a great CMS. lots of features and the default members area is satisfactory. The owner, AJ, is definitely great to work with. I just canceled my plan this month and as always, he was cordial and easy to work with.

We’ve had our own custom CMS written and I have to say, it ended up being MUCH more expensive than I had hoped. That being said, it does everything we want and now I have no monthly payments, which is awesome. The problem you run into with custom CMS’ is down the road, if you’re coder goes missing, supporting it can become a real nightmare. So know your coder, make sure he does clean well commented work that’ll be easy for a new coder to hop in and fix if something goes awry.

I saw wordpress mentioned so I thought I’d mention WP Remix which I had seen banners for http://wpremix.com/ . I can’t say I’ve checked it out but it claims it’s a CMS, maybe it’ll work for your purposes? I, too, am a big wordpress fan so if you can find a solution with wordpress I’d roll with it. TONS of developers out there to support it or customize it.

Another that I didn’t see mentioned, but for todays market you may want to consider mechbunny. Everyone on the net knows how to use a tube and now they have image support so you can build galleries. It also has a community feature etc. For $1300 out the door, unlimited license and open source code, I honestly think it’s the best deal out there and I could see it being used as a members area pretty easily. Never the less Konrad will code in whatever you want, but bear in mind that means you can’t take future updates (since you’ll be customized) AND they are busy as hell over there. Could take a long time before you see your work completed. I do know a coder who is experienced with mechbunny so if you need someone, lemme know. FTVStream.com is using mechbunny in a different sort of way for a paysite, that’s pretty cool. I think it’s a strong contender.

#19

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

[QUOTE=zbuckz_lloyd;96116]I would NEVER use WP as a member CMS. Never ever. Wait until you get 10,000 members and see how it goes. Load balance WP over three servers and have fun. WP is one big resource hog.

NO CMS is perfect. They all try to be a one size fits all script. You really need to have a good programer do your customizations. We are on Crama and I drool at the features that ElevatedX has. But then I think what a hassle it will be to change over.[/QUOTE]

I disagree with you Lloyd, you can load balance Wordpress. Specifically with caching plugins that significantly reduce database load. You can even use Memcached, and store the most requested objects in RAM. I think you’re talking about video downloads, which can also be load balanced on Wordpress. Wordpress powers some huge websites and if it was truly a resource hog, that wouldn’t be the case. I use Wordpress everyday from my own servers and I know, when configured correctly is not a “resource hog”.

#20

Re: Elevated X: Anyone use it to run the CMS on their site?

You are correct in that WP does power some very large websites. Extremely large websites. But, some of these guys spend a small fortune in customizations to both the WP core and to server setups. Sure. You can load balance WP. You can put your content on a CDN. You can get 32 gigs of ram and do memcache. You can get a mysql server as well. But…

How much money are you going to spending doing all that? How easy is it for WP to handle multiple membership areas where you want to spread out content? How easy is it to interface with a biller and do limited trials? How easy is it to upload one source video and have WP transcode it into various formats and spread it out to various member areas? What about auto creation of fhgs for affiliates? The list can go on and on and on…

The bottom line is WP is a great CMS, but it wasn’t designed specifically for porn sites. There are CMS’s that were designed with porn in mind that have all the features and more that I described right out of the box. By the time one gets done with all the hosting configurations and customizations that I described, they would be better off to just have a custom CMS done. It would be cheaper and would be better suited to their needs.

Then there is the security issue.

I would love for someone to show me a network of paysites that have 10,000 members running WP as the CMS. I would love to know the server setup that they use and how much they spent on customizations.

Off the top of my head, I wonder how much it would cost me to get a limited trial plugin for WP developed that interfaced with the handful of billers that we use and the 17 different member areas all at the same time?