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Need CMS suggestion

Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 3:02 pm
by alex.barylski
I've searched for a few months now and have probably seen every open source CMS there is and I can safely say I really don't like Mambo or Jambo or any other knocks offs...

Way to much bloat and what a complicated interface...if it takes me more than a few minutes to learn an interface...I am sure my clients too will struggle and loose interest...

I have only ever tinkered with phpWCMS and although it's GUI was amazing...it's codebase was the worst hack I've ever seen :P

Thats what you get when your a designer first and later become a developer out of interest or requirement...but hey...it's still a nice application...easy to use...but had some issues...

I'm currently designing a CMS of my own from the ground up model after phpWCMS...but I can't wait to get things up any longer...I've decided I have get things rolling now...or ASAP anyways :P

Soooo...

Considering the following criteria:
- open source
- threaded articles/resources/images/etc
- Multiple users with role based permissions
- XHTML/CSS support especially for frontend web pages (absolute MUST)
- Extendable...so like a new module or a realty listings module can be added easily or at least well documented...

Like I said...it's important that all pages generated by the CMS are 100% W3C compliant....if they dont' validate everytime...I'm not interested...

Extendable is another very important issue...I want a basic CMS which provides authentication, access control, resource (images/files) management, article management (pagination, etc) and the very minimum and using extensions of some sort I would like to provide additional funcitonality
- Search
- Realty listings (both backend and frontend)

Powered by smarty, would be nice too so I can easily change the appear of everything :)

Both backend and frontend powered by Smarty :)

So...does anyone have any experience using exsiting CMS's which would possibly meet my needs???

Cheers :)

Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 3:09 pm
by alex.barylski
I should also note...

For articles, documents, files, etc...

It would be cool if there was some form of CVS/rollback feature to prevent changes being *forever* :P

Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 3:36 pm
by Christopher
I have heard great things about Drupal but never used it.

Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 4:11 pm
by alex.barylski
I've played with it...and didn't like it...

I'm not sure I can say why as I only played with it very briefly...

But it looked very awkward to modify the layout of a front end web site...and the backend also looked awkward and kludgy...

I really dont like CMS which offer more than simple interfaces at a very minimum...

Drupal distinguishes between a static page or a article which I assume means paginated support...

Thats acceptable for me...but offering the plethora of options in writing a static page, such as binding a page to a menu item 8O

Bong...way to far...whose says I want Drupal to control where the link to that page goes...

I could misunderstanding how Drupal works (as I don't use it) but testing it out...and discovering that made me close the window promptly and scratch Drupal off my hit list :)

Cheers :)

thought about CMS

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:30 am
by jimthunderbird
I think there's no such CMS as "one-size fits all". I found mysql itself is the best "CMS"!, and php, html, css, javascript add the salt and pepper on it!

I think instead of writing such big things as CMS, we should focus on small components.

For example:
Template Engine --- I found smarty is a good one.
AJAX component --- I found Sajax is easy to play with but if it's little OO is better
Some other components might be:

paging component, multi-level category manipulation component...

I remember someone say that most users in the world only use around 10% of all windows functionalities. I think CMS nowaday is just like Window. So huge..., too complex...

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:23 am
by matthijs
I've read some very good stories about Expression Engine. I would use wordpress myself, but it might lack in the extensibility with "modules", depending on what you need. However, if you look at what people do with plugins (galleries, mailforms, forums, etc) it shouldn't be too difficult to extend it in the way you want.
Another system you could take a look at is Typo3

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:51 am
by dolphin713
e107.org ;)
easy, modular, great support and many pluggin/modules

tired of choosing CMS

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:46 pm
by jimthunderbird
I got to admit that up to this point, I'm tired of choosing a CMS.

As a php and mysql developer approaching 3 years, I found myself more productive to write code than to use CMS to satisfy client's needs.

Most clients I deal with just want to have a simple CMS that suites their using habits. They don't want to change their working habbit to learn how to use a CMS. Also, I found that "All CMS's module changes are always fall behind the clients' requirement changes".

Maybe I'm wrong with all states above, but that's my feeling at this point. I guess one exception might be OSCommerce, I did not delve too much into it yet, I guess when doing shopping stuffs, people might want some trustworthy system. But I also think that maybe any Commerical System in PHP might be decomposed into the followings Components:

1. User Management
2. Category-Item Management
3. Payment Gateway Management System

I found myself more of a coder than system administrator.