Difference between Article Manager System, Showcase and Ressource Manager?

[snoopy5]

Hi,

i am planning for one of my boards (XF 1.5x) to add a very basic article system. Not all users shall write there, only a few selected people.

As far as I can see, there are 3 options currently available. One of them is not listed in the RM (why? AMS); I do not know why because the very similar looking addon "Showcase" of the same developper is listed here.

So what are in your view the most important differences between those 3 options for you? Why did you decide for one and not for the other?

I am not planning at the moment to upgrade to XF2 until 2019 by the way. So this is no limitation, if one product has no XF2 version out yet.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mouth]

So what are in your view the most important differences between those 3 options for you? Why did you decide for one and not for the other?

Here's an abridged differences discussion recently posted by the author of 2 of those addons, @Bob ...

Showcase and AMS are based on a hierarchical category system as its base framework. A piece of content (Showcase Item, AMS Article) has a 1 to 1 relationship with a Category (a Category is its Parent). An Item/Article can only be in a single category (this is the same as XenForo Thread to Category or XenForo Resource Manager Resource to Category).

AMS is designed as an ARTICLE Manager (hence its name). It has functionality specific to Articles (like multi page articles, delayed publishing, original source etc). Its use case is based on TEXTUAL content (articles, guides, howto's etc), however, it does have the ability to do VISUAL content as well via uploaded attachments. AMS has Series functionality (a popular word press feature). A series is a collection of Articles.

Showcase is the opposite of AMS in that it is designed for VISUAL content (to show things off visually). Use cases for this are the very popular "garages" that transportation (cars, bikes, motorcycles, planes etc) like to have so that members can create showcase items for their Cars and other members can rate them and discuss them. Its a very flexible addon that has literally 1000's of use cases. Another popular use case is as a "reviews" addon.

ALL of the addons have things in COMMON. Tons of XenForo integration. They all have the same Multiple Layout Types to choose from for presenting content. They all have review functionality, altho, each one is slightly different. Showcase and AMS have Comments. Showcase and AMS have discussion thread integration.