Content Management Systems

[Foamcow]

I wonder if people would like to share their experiences and opinions about the various Open Source Content Management Systems that are available?

There is a forum for Web CMS, but the last post was November last year so I think some discussion here might be good.

My reason for starting this is that I am about to undertake a mid size project that will require, more or less, full CMS capabilties. It seems a bit daft to reinvent the wheel and write my own if there is something out there that might do the job.

I'm particularly interested in Typo3, so if anyone has experience of that let's hear about it.

Plone is another contender, but I'm not sure I have the time to get in that deep. Possibly one for the future.

So... take it away!

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Joomla is quite comprehensive, I believe:

http://www.joomla.org/.

It is written by the same team that created the Mambo CMS (so presumably is a newer, rebranded version?)

However, it may be too big (too manny tables, too much to customise, etc) for your needs.

We've re-invented the wheel several times, but only because we didn't know of any simple, small open-source CMS (CMSes? CMSs? CMS's?) out there. Are the ones you mentioned fairly small and compact?

Dan

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[Foamcow]

I've looked at Mambo and Joomla in the past and agree they are pretty neat. But I think you're right in saying that there would be too much to change to get it to output HTML like I would want it to.

Typo3 is a bit heftier and I'm concerned about the learning curve.

Likewise with Plone, but even more so... plus it's Python based.

Heck I even thought that Ruby on Rails would be an option for this sort of thing because it's so quick to get stuff working.

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[chrissie1]

how about sharepoint services or dotnetnuke both asp.net based. and the first being microsoft and needing iis6.0

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"Time for a new sig." - Me

 

[Foamcow]

Needs to be PHP/MySQL based.

I've used PHPNuke and similar CMS's but they don't really cut it for what I need.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
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[chrissie1]

Ah well, ask better question get better answers. ;-)

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"Time for a new sig." - Me

 

[Foamcow]

Good point.

I thought I'd included that because just before I made this post I emailed Jeff and I think I put that info in there.

You should have just known Chrissie

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[smah]

There are many - try several at

http://www.opensourcecms.com

Typo3 is very capable but does have a steep learing curve. Website Baker is clean & intuitive, but my be too simple. I've been rather pleased with Modx.

Steve

http://www.advancedheaters.com

 

[Xaqte]

Never used, but I've heard good things about it:


phpwcms:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpwcms/

Let us know your results!

X

 

[Foamcow]

I've looked at a few at opensourcecms in the past.
The one's that stuck in my head were those I mentioned.


I actually bit the bullet and started work on my own system last night. It's actually gone rather well and I already have a rudimentary system that pumps out XHTML 1.1 compliant pages with CSS layout.

For now I think I will go down that route while I get to grips with something like Typo3 or Plone.

Many thanks.

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[Rieekan]

Just being nosey, but what's the language you're using to create this CMS system?

 

[Foamcow]

PHP with a MySQL database

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[Rieekan]

Cool... I'll watch for it then...

 

[Foamcow]

I wouldn't if you are in any sort of a hurry

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[feherke]

Hi

Foamcow, I thinked a lot to the possibilities to create my own CMS ( or at least, an imitation of ). I am interested in theories and to see their practical realization. If your CMS is open source and freely available in beta ( or alpha ) state, I would be happy to watch at your work.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[Rieekan]

Oh, not in any hurry... Just like to see differences in solutions out there. For instance, most CMS systems out there are the full package (Content Management Application (CMA) and Content Display Application (CDA) combined in one) where most limit the layout of the page. It'd be great if there was a CMS out there that had both components, but the CDA was something that could be turned off for a user that wanted to build their own front end.

I just like having the ability to completely revamp the CDA without having to look for a new provider. Call me crazy.

 

[Foamcow]

Well feherke, I only started it last night so I guess it's pretty much alpha stage

For now I just wanted to create something that allowed the creation of hierarchical pages. The main priority was that they were presented in nice clean XHTML and CSS.

Hopefully I will be able to add more features as (a lot) of time goes on. It's never going to be a Joomla or Typo3, but hopefully it will be a nice simple system I can use to add basic CMS to some sites I build.

Simlpe flexibility is minimal. I'm not bothered about using a templating system or the like as I am happy to manually modify each implementation to fine tune it for each job.

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[glg1]

Hi Foamcow,

Sounds like I may be a bit late since you've started building- but I ran across this open source cms system - webGui. I will be investigating it further along with several others, but webGui has gotten high marks and has lots of nice capabilities - including security, compliance and commerce. Wrapped around mySQL and perl.

One of the questions I'm pushing around this decision is the ease of use for the end user. webGui claims to be very easy for non-programmers to use, and this is important for my folks. This may not be an issue with you, but the last thing I want to do is to hold a lot of physicians hands - and they won't use it if it is hard...

A little testing is in order, and I will report back.

http://www.plainblack.com/webgui

Cheers, G

 

[Xaqte]

glg1,
That is a great suggestion, and I was going to suggest the same thing (b/c I use it alot)... however, Foamy wanted a PHP solution.