I just need a god damn CMS! :)

DeVore

Maybe some of you can offer some some suggestions or solutions...


I want to build a site with several contributors and several sections (there is no correlation between sections and contributors).

The system must be able to accept various common types of content (text, attached files and youtube jscripts basically).

It must allow the contributor to categorise their "article" into various sections (so a piece on football would be put in the Frontpage section and the Football section, for example). An admin should be able to create new sections as needed.

There should be a facility to create a "taster" with a read more link. So the category page would be a list of these "tasters". The "more" link would go to the full article.

Thats the basics.
Nice-to-haves would be stuff like comments from signed in users, designability/skinability and granular control but I'm really just looking for the points above.

It can be ASP or PHP (ideally PHP).

Anyone got a suggestion? I was thinking Drupal but I've had lots of bad experiences with Drupal and I am not sure it does the categorisation. (to be honest, drupal is such Userability disaster and so non-intuitive when configuring, I could easily be wrong).

Isnt there an E-Z-CMS out there?

DeV.

Goodshape

DeVore wrote: »

Isnt there an E-Z-CMS out there?

Yes, there is

But you probably don't want that.

The first thing that comes to my mind from your description is plain ol', simple ol' Wordpress.

You probably wouldn't need anything more than a customised theme template to get all the features you need, and to have it not *look* like a Wordpress blog.


Other options, aside from Drupal, would be Joomla or Expression Engine (if it's non-profit or you're willing to pay a bit) but it sounds like they might be overkill tbh.

I recommend Wordpress.

Bob the Builder

I think the problem with wordpress is thats it's a bit tooo simple. it just isn't as expandable as other CMS's, and once a blog, always a blog.

Expression Engine is nice, I haven't used it, so I can't give you the run down on it, but it is very good.

Joomla! 1.5, as Goodshape has already stated, maybe be overkill. It's full of wonderful stuff, but for the administrator(and I don't doubt your ability for a second DeV), has a steep learning curve. Be prepared to template it yourself(it's not that hard really), because all the good templates are either (1) common or (2) €70 upwards. It does everything that you want it to do and anything you want, you can either build a module for(not too hard) or download one of the ready made extensions.

as you've probably guessed, my recommendation on this one is Joomla.

drupal - It's like a lighthouse in a bog - brilliant but useless.
There's a few other's but, I think the one's that would be of even half use to you, are already listed.

EDIT: and dont go for EZ-CMS, just dont do it if you dont wanna regret it.
/PM sent.

Trojan

Goodshape wrote: »

The first thing that comes to my mind from your description is plain ol', simple ol' Wordpress.

I recommend Wordpress.

Same as that.

mneylon

Unless you have the time and energy to keep up with the security updates avoid Wordpress like the plague.

Evil Phil

Aye, wordpress isn't secure.

CMS Made Simple sounds like it might fit the bill Tom, I started using it after giving up on Drupal. Its allows content updates, articles, blogs. Multiple accounts with user permissions. The News module has a summary text field with a more link and categories which fits what you want.

It has designability through page and section templates + css.

Comments are available but I don't know at the moment if you can limit it to signed users in but its so flexible I'm sure you'd get it working. In fact I'm going to see if that can be done over the weekend. It's php/mysql based too so customising it shouldn't be a problem for an old hand like you.

Downsides: There's a bit of a learning curve but only a bit mind you. The available documentation is community based in a wiki and is slim shall we say. But I've managed so I'm sure you will.

I should have my first commercial CMS based site finished next week, its for a freelance journalist. I'll post it here if you want to see what I've done.

Trojan

Evil Phil wrote: »

Aye, wordpress isn't secure.

CMS Made Simple sounds like it might fit the bill

I just checked it out. There's some irony in the fact that they pushed out 2 security fixes in the last 3 months

I still stand by WordPress on the basis of simplicity, power, customisability and the vast numbers of extensions available.

forbairt

wordpress ... I've made a few sites with this
cmsmadesimple ... I'm working on about 8 sites with this at the moment
joomla (not really big on it as I've stated in other threads ... hence I scrapped a number of sites I was doing with it ... started again with cmsmadesimple ... haven't looked back) ...

The bug fixes were very simple to update with cmsmadesimple ...

I've one site that I just went live with ... and another that the customer is working on ... and they love it in terms of ... how easy it is to work with.

From a templating point of view ... I find it amazingly simple .. there are a number of cache plugins as well which are a godsend

Moveable Type would be the other suggestion ... I've not done that much with it I'm afraid to say ... but I do love the publishing system of it.

I'm about to start work on another site using it for the main body of the site ... and vbulletin for the forums.

I can't remember the last time I used drupal ... I have heard good things but it may be overly complicated.

DeVore

Ok, thats terrific feedback guys, thanks a million.

Some more info based on the feedback:

Money isnt a huge issue, I mean a few hundred isnt out of the question.

Publishing time would be nice, I would like the site to be kinda of "episodic" with all the new content going live at one time, three times a week, say.

I dont know much about PHP/MYSQL nor all this CSS malarky so I wouldnt be up to tweaking it much but ftping files, installs and patches etc worrries me not.

It would be sweet if it could post to vB too but thats like, extra credit (I know vbDrupal does this, but I'm not that desperate!)

DeV.

EKRIUQ

If your hoping for your site to be scaleable and hoping to grow over time Joomla would be worth considering as it has hundreds of extensions and components that can be added to the existing core framework

As for publishing options you can start the date to be published and the finishing date if needed and is part of the core files when writing an article. Connecting a bulletin board can be also easily accommodated.

DeVore

Ok, have had a good look at Joomla and I really like the look of it.
Next I have to check the prerequisites for it on my server but that should be ok.

Thanks all for the help, expect a ton of questions about Joomla over the next while

DeV.

Bluefrog

Have a look at ModX - been using it recently and think it's really great.

Bob the Builder

I was expecting Forbairt to come out and diss Joomla!, and i suppose he knew I was going to write something good about it.

I like CMSMadeSimple. Does the job well.

If you're new website is anything to do with hacking, dont use wordpress.

Sometimes the best CMS's are the free ones. Expression Engine, imo, is the one to go for if you're paying for it.

tomED

Typo3 too - can do all you require!

They are also releasing a new framework which will be handing for developing your own applications!

Tom

GoneShootin

+1 for CMS Made Simple. I was left ADDLED with how quickly turned around a funtioning CMS site.

barrymccaul

Am I the only one that thinks CMS made simple is DOG slow?

I have used in in the past, and was appalled at the speed. Even the admin section crawls. The folks at hosting365 told me it was a big issue with lots of the CMS's out there, but that CMSMadeSimple & Joomla! were real hogs... (even with their caching systems active)

If your site isn't going to be huge, there are millions of wordpress templates out there for about 45 dollars... and even more free ones. it's hard to argue with that. And it will FLY compared to some of the heavier ones.

mneylon

barrymccaul wrote: »

If your site isn't going to be huge, there are millions of wordpress templates out there for about 45 dollars... and even more free ones. it's hard to argue with that. And it will FLY compared to some of the heavier ones.

WP by default does not cache and is a pig in terms of SQL queries

GoneShootin

barrymccaul wrote: »

Am I the only one that thinks CMS made simple is DOG slow?

Well I can't speak for the entire human race, but I've not found any speed issues with CMSMS.

And of the millions of templates for WP you speak of, how many of those port nativly to the latest versions of WP?

cgarvey

On the subject of CMS..

Does anyone know of any web-based CMS that publishes HTML files to the local filesystem (for web server to serve up normally)? I use a mix of Joomla/CMS/Wordpress/a couple of others on a host of small websites that really use more CPU than they're worth. Even with caching plugins/tweaks of each CMS, they're still slow for what is reasonably static content. So, I want Apache/lighthttpd to serve 'em up instead.

I've hacked my own scripts together to do this, but is there any decent CMS that does this already without much effort?

mneylon

cgarvey - MovableType writes files out to the file system. When I hit the frontpage of Digg a few months ago the server didn't flinch - it just kept serving good old fashioned HTML quite happily

edanto

+1 for typo3

TomED and the crew at 2bscene installed it for us and it's dead handy to use. Depends on your priorities though - my #1 was "easy for staff to update content without lots of training", and I was happy enough to pay for the setup since no one in here speaks any web language. www.suas.ie is entirely typo3 and you can see how the features on your wishlist are implemented...

The system must be able to accept various common types of content (text, attached files and youtube jscripts basically).
http://suas.ie/eventsanddiscussion.html
http://suas.ie/gatoto-video-feb-08.html

It must allow the contributor to categorise their "article" into various sections (so a piece on football would be put in the Frontpage section and the Football section, for example). An admin should be able to create new sections as needed.
We have a plugin for news which works grand, we have different types of news displated in different areas of the site, but I suspect you have more in mind than the news plugin allows.

There should be a facility to create a "taster" with a read more link. So the category page would be a list of these "tasters". The "more" link would go to the full article.

Here is a page with a bunch of sites made with typo3, so you can get a sense of what's out there. http://typo3.org/index.php?id=2224

Some issues I've found with it - I'd like to improve the photo gallery, the plugin I'm using (BAHAG) is a bit ghastly and the news articles have an empty column on the right hand side of the page.

On the Pro side - it's ridiculously easy to use, especially for someone with an idea of how software should work (there are multiple routes to achieve the same result). Get in touch if you'd like a little look at the back end.

forbairt

barrymccaul wrote: »

Am I the only one that thinks CMS made simple is DOG slow?

Define the past ?

We've just moved one install from their old host to an irish one on the basic hosting package and the thing is FLYING .... I'm shocked by how fast its running to be honest compared to their previous system

cgarvey

blacknight wrote: »

cgarvey - MovableType writes files out to the file system. When I hit the frontpage of Digg a few months ago the server didn't flinch - it just kept serving good old fashioned HTML quite happily

Excellent .. I gave MTOS a spin last night, and it does exactly what most small sites need (a few static pages, including folder support, and a decent blog). All with the added bonus of publishing to file, so apache httpd / lighthttp can do what it does and do it well, no need for WP-Cache SuperCache or Super-all-you-can-eat cache, out of the box. My only gripe (the manual and time-consuming publishing process) is being addressed in the next version. I can see a move to MTOS once I get spare time to get templating.

p

From what I hear, things like Joomla, Drupla and Typo3 are all great, bit are quite large and can take awhile to get around.

Expression Engine is supposed to have a few less features, but sounds like it would be good for your needs. I'd check it out if you're still looking, I've heard great things about it.

frost

DeVore wrote: »

I want to build a site with several contributors and several sections (there is no correlation between sections and contributors).

The system must be able to accept various common types of content (text, attached files and youtube jscripts basically).

It must allow the contributor to categorise their "article" into various sections (so a piece on football would be put in the Frontpage section and the Football section, for example). An admin should be able to create new sections as needed.

There should be a facility to create a "taster" with a read more link. So the category page would be a list of these "tasters". The "more" link would go to the full article.

Thats the basics.
Nice-to-haves would be stuff like comments from signed in users, designability/skinability and granular control but I'm really just looking for the points above.

It can be ASP or PHP (ideally PHP).

Anyone got a suggestion? I was thinking Drupal but I've had lots of bad experiences with Drupal and I am not sure it does the categorisation. (to be honest, drupal is such Userability disaster and so non-intuitive when configuring, I could easily be wrong).

Isnt there an E-Z-CMS out there?

DeV

Ok maybe I'm a voice crying out in the wilderness, but I really like Drupal. I've developed about 20 or 30 sites with it over the past couple of years, using 4.x, 5.x and 6.x (the latest version). I can't compare with other CMS's as I've had limited experience with them, but Drupal has a good community around it, good support including security updates, ok documentation for developers & admins. There are also a few good online "step by step" videos out there. Overall I'd consider it a good open source community. If I understand your Use Cases correctly, it would be able to do what you want.

Being honest, the caveats with Drupal are:
* It has a learning curve, both with figuring out functionality and terminology (e.g. "taxonomy" means "categorisation")
* The core system alone is never enough. You have to spend time learning which modules can do what you need, and which are actually worth using (hint: you'll ALWAYS want to use CCK and Views).
* There is no backward compatibility maintained for modules & themes between major versions. Your data will be fine, but you can't upgrade core until your modules are upgraded by their maintainer(s) or you do it yourself. As you can imagine, this stance causes regular disagreements on the forums.
* The drupal.org website itself has so much info it's sometimes hard to know where to start. Best way is sometimes to just do a search and start reading what looks useful until you get a feel for the site.

Overall these negatives may seem a lot to overcome, but once you're past the initial curve it is extremely easy to get working sites up very quickly.

If after all that you still give it a try, I'm happy to answer questions or point you in the right direction with it

Pixel8

CMS Made Simple is the easiest CMS ive used so far. Its template and module support are the best ive ever seen. You can use a completely different template design for every different page if you like. It literally has 1 click installs for modules, no messing with PHP code at all. First system ive used that uses SmartyTags which is great. The formbuilder is very powerful, as are some of the add-on modules ive tried.
I've only used CMSMS once coz i mostly do e-commerce stuff with osCommerce and Zencart but i will defo be using it again and again for other CMS sites!