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What’s the best all round PHP based CMS

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:02 am
by matboz55
Hi everyone

I have recently gone freelance and would like to offer clients the possibility of a fully fledged CMS. I only have time to learn one and want to choose a system which is going to be easy for the client(s) to use and is easy to integrate with other systems such as shopping carts and forums.

There’s a lot out there and I don’t want to waste time on a CMS whch turns out to be poor. Drupal and Joolma seem to be mentioned a great deal but I don’t know the strengths and weaknesses of both systems.

The ability to have a Word like interface for creating content is important too (Java live edit is an example).

If anyone can give me an objective opinion I would be really grateful.

Thanks

Matthew

Re: What’s the best all round PHP based CMS

Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 1:18 am
by volomike
If you're driven by a someone who already gives you an XHTML page template and says, "Make this work for the new site design," then I'd say TextPattern CMS is your ticket. However, with TXP (TextPattern), you need to install hak_tinymce and Aeron MyAdmin:

http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=26231&p=1
http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=13089

One plugin gives you a WYSIWYG editor. The other gives you a beautiful, polished admin interface.

What's cool about TXP is that it's easy to install, runs fast, has all the features you need, and you can take any XHTML page template, insert TXP tags inside, and you automatically take advantage of its publishing system. They also give you a custom gadget tag so that you can have it load other PHP pages on your backend that draw content into those content spaces in your XHTML page template.

On the other hand, if you can start with a template theme you found on the web geared towards a particular CMS, and then customize that, then I'd say your best bet is WordPress. I recently had a client pay me to customize that and I liked it better than Drupal or Joomla.

Still, on the other hand, sometimes your needs are driven by what kinds of free gadgets you need for a given CMS, so you might be considering Drupal or Joomla, instead. For instance, VirtueMart eCommerce has a plugin for Joomla.

Another suggestion I have for you is to get a copy of phpBB, and then find ways to integrate that in with your favorite CMS. Why? Well, eventually you'll get a customer that wants that. (Right now, I have a customer who's asked me to integrate phpBB and TXP, and make them look very much like each other.) He also wants me to find a way that moderators in phpBB can flag forum posts, edit them, and they automatically appear inside the home page on the TXP CMS.

Still others, and these are guys who like the CodeIgniter platform, they prefer paying for a copy of ExpressionEngine. They are absolutely bonkers about this thing. I just don't know how much it stacks up to my tastes, however. I also see that EE is being written in CodeIgniter framework, and that CI will include jQuery and AJAX inside, which will then bleed back into EE. So, even if you like EE and CI, they're about to get a major overhaul, which makes me nervous to get clients on them yet.

Re: What’s the best all round PHP based CMS

Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:33 am
by matboz55
Thanks for the advice, really appreciate it. TextPattern looks great, it’s simple to use and does the job. A lot of these CMS systems are OK if you’re technically minded but useless if Joe Blogs is going to be using the end product.

Know what you mean about PHPBB, a recent client asked me to integrate the registration and login functions for the forum with a bespoke website http://www.tkdpress.com – I managed to get the registration integrated, but the login function just wouldn’t work. You have to login twice, once to access the main website and then once again when you go through to the forum. Tried a couple of PHP classes that clam to integrate the two but had no luck.

Like your site by the way, nice and simple with some impressive work in the portfolio.