Author Topic: The Hunt for the Best CMS (Read 38725 times)

mouser · « **on:** May 16, 2006, 04:15 AM »

I go on a hunt for the best CMS once a year.. it feels like i lose a bit of my mind each time.
Still not found anything perfect.

In particular for dc it's daunting because there are conflicting desires.

In the past I have liked Drupal. Or maybe a wiki cms would be best? Mambo/Joomla has good integration with smf (forum software we use), TinyPortal is built around smf so that's really appealing.

But then i'm also thinking a static page generation cms using templates would be best for low-cpu usage (having every page access go through a dynamic cms is a big hit on cpu/memory because of database stuff).

And I like having the main site content be in flat files that i can easily edit from home.

But tight forum integration is a must..

And we want a system that provides:

good clean organization for website admin to edit files by hand with custom html
but ability for other authors to write articles/long reviews with an easy onsite editor
ability for coders to be able to host their software nicely
tight integration with smf forum so people can leave comments on reviews, etc. through the forum and have it listed on the page
php would be preferred since most everything else on this site is powered by php
good search features.
looks clean and supports our sidebar theme.

there is nothing that meets all of these and i expect lots of customization and modification is going to be needed no matter what we choose, but i'm still hoping to start with something instead of starting from scratch..

any other thoughts and recommendations?

Currently im thinking of trying to find an easily extensible cms that works with flat files and creates static html pages from templates when needed. And from there add lots of custom template parsing code to integrate with the forum. Any suggestions? It still needs to have reasonable user management functionality..

TucknDar · « **Reply #1 on:** May 16, 2006, 08:55 AM »

you can't go wrong with e107 - www.e107.org

Tons of plugins, active development. Highly recommended!

mouser · « **Reply #2 on:** May 16, 2006, 09:28 AM »

not found a satisfactory cms, but in the progress i came across this really nice wiki comparison page:
http://www.wikimatrix.org/

try this wizard to find the best wiki for you: http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #3 on:** May 16, 2006, 09:51 AM »

What happened to the integration project/competition that was started a while back?

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** May 16, 2006, 09:56 AM »

person working on it got half way done and then gave up.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #5 on:** May 16, 2006, 10:01 AM »

crono · « **Reply #6 on:** May 16, 2006, 07:20 PM »

I have worked in the past with a lot of CMSs (Mambo, Typo3, Rainbow Portal (=ASP.NET), Drupal...) - and I have to tell you that none of them would meet all of those requirements...

But then i'm also thinking a static page generation cms using templates would be best for low-cpu usage (having every page access go through a dynamic cms is a big hit on cpu/memory because of database stuff).
-mouser (May 16, 2006, 04:15 AM)

This could be done with Typo3 easily - you can cache Pages or even create Static HTML files after changing a page

And I like having the main site content be in flat files that i can easily edit from home.

Hmmm... this is more the wiki thing - or the Flatfile Version of Mambo (It was a Fork from the original Mambo - dont remember the name right now

) - on the other Hand - if you would like to change the layout form home, you could just modify the templates and if you want to create content just use a text editor and pasting it the next time your on the cms

But tight forum integration is a must..

This is not trivial - in fact I think the tight integration is the killer argument for the choosen CMS - on www.tutorials.de (one of the biggest german it-help-communities), which is very forum "centric" we tried to integrate the forum on Typo3 - we failed - so we built the "content" pages around the forum - I think this is the same way you do with the current version of this page...

good clean organization for website admin to edit files by hand with custom html
but ability for other authors to write articles/long reviews with an easy onsite editor
php would be preferred since most everything else on this site is powered by php
good search features.
looks clean and supports our sidebar theme.

this can be done with Typo3 out of the box

ability for coders to be able to host their software nicely

this is imo more a conceptual thing - when you can define what "nicely" means, than you could do it in most cms (building seperate sections with different layouts and so on...)

tight integration with smf forum so people can leave comments on reviews, etc. through the forum and have it listed on the page

I know no CMS which does this well...

It's more a Blog thing I think - This feature will be a hack - regardless which cms will be chosen

there is nothing that meets all of these and i expect lots of customization and modification is going to be needed no matter what we choose, but i'm still hoping to start with something instead of starting from scratch..

You are 100% right - there is nothing which offers all of those points and building from scratch is no option - it would grow way to complex. I personly would do this project on a Typo3 (dont hate me Carol

) basis with some self coded extensions and I would drop the flatfile requirement... Yes - T3 has a huge learning curve, but it is so incredibly powerfull - it's the C++ in the CMS space

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #7 on:** May 16, 2006, 07:29 PM »

(dont hate me Carol Wink)

No probs - it isn't me having to sort it out

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** May 17, 2006, 07:36 AM »

I would drop the flatfile requirement... Yes - T3 has a huge learning curve, but it is so incredibly powerfull - it's the C++ in the CMS space

this might be acceptable; going to try typo3 now, though i am still hoping for something more minimalistic.

mouser · « **Reply #9 on:** May 17, 2006, 07:41 AM »

where's allen!!!
if we all hold hands maybe we can wish real hard and he'll make a custom cms for us

crono · « **Reply #10 on:** May 17, 2006, 11:43 AM »

If you need help with Typo3 just let me know...

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #11 on:** May 17, 2006, 12:17 PM »

where's allen!!!
if we all hold hands maybe we can wish real hard and he'll make a custom cms for us
-mouser (May 17, 2006, 07:41 AM)

Maybe you could offer him a bespoke Cody-mug

Bitwise · « **Reply #12 on:** May 18, 2006, 04:45 AM »

I'd recommend Spip. This is widely used in France but little known elsewhere. For example, the sites of Le Monde, the French Government and the French Post Offic are all Spip-based. It is superb for hierarchical sites (e.g. a magazine divided into sections), is fast and very highly configurable. I have tested out all kinds of CMSes and Blogs (for a blog, by the way, I recommend Pivot www.pivotlog.net - much nicer than WordPress). I nearly decided to use Joomla but when I discovered Spip, I knew that was the one! I've just put my first Spip site online at www.sapphiresteel.com and shall be adding a Spip sub-site to www.bitwisemag.com soon.

You can download Spip from www.spip.net . It has excellent documentation in English (and many other languages).

best wishes
Huw

VSiAQ · « **Reply #13 on:** May 19, 2006, 04:30 AM »

For serious CMS, i think Joomla is good.

For a simple, easy-to-use but powerful CMS, I recommend TextPattern.

housetier · « **Reply #14 on:** May 19, 2006, 01:11 PM »

Well I can recommend drupal. And I can safely recommend it because like every other recommendation it does not meet all the criteria

Renegade · « **Reply #15 on:** May 19, 2006, 05:16 PM »

1) good clean organization for website admin to edit files by hand with custom html
2) but ability for other authors to write articles/long reviews with an easy onsite editor
3) ability for coders to be able to host their software nicely
4) tight integration with smf forum so people can leave comments on reviews, etc. through the forum and have it listed on the page
5) php would be preferred since most everything else on this site is powered by php
6) good search features.
7) looks clean and supports our sidebar theme.
-mouser (May 16, 2006, 04:15 AM)

DotNetNuke - Good, but won't be suitable without major porting work.

1) Yep - Very clean, but you never *need* to edit files, which is nice
2) You can create roles / groups
3) Yes
4) Nope

You'd pretty much have to port the existing system to the DNN/ASP.NET way of doing things.
5) Nope - ASP.NET - and you'd need a Windows box for it

6) Excellent - Built in search works very well.
7) Very good - you can create templates

While DNN works very well, porting the existing user base would not be fun. There's just about nothing that you can't do with it as you've got the power of the .NET framework behind it, so you've got a full-fledged programming language to work with. On top of that, with com interop you can consume com servers. You can even program a custom module to pull in PHP content if you like.

However, in my experience PHP and MySQL really kind of suck on Windows. I've tried them, and honestly, while they may run big sites on Linux servers, they just plain do not cut it on Windows.

Anyways, just an irrevelant consideration...

housetier · « **Reply #16 on:** May 19, 2006, 05:34 PM »

mouser let's build the DCMS (donationcoder (content) management system) wot say?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #17 on:** May 19, 2006, 06:01 PM »

4) Nope You'd pretty much have to port the existing system to the DNN/ASP.NET way of doing things.
5) Nope - ASP.NET - and you'd need a Windows box for it
-Renegade (May 19, 2006, 05:16 PM)

Dumb question (which I guess I know the answer to) but I presume ASP.NET is restricted to running on Windows Servers?

If this is the case why would anyone really develop for it when the majority of servers these days seem to be based on Apache and Linux?

Aside ...

I have just installed the Windows IIS server on my box (just to play with setting up a server to see how it works) and can't even open webpages in firefox - I have to use Internet Explorer for some reason that I don't understand. If I try and use Firefox I just get either an error (page not available type thing) or else get asked to log in - which given that it isn't set up with user names and passwords is a bit difficult - I have set it up to use Windows authentication but the firefox login prompt doesn't accept any of the windows user ids and passwords???

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** May 19, 2006, 06:08 PM »

carol i wonder the same thing..
even if asp.net is better, wouldn't it have to be a LOT LOT better to make it worth developing on at the risk of breaking compatibility with most servers?

Rover · « **Reply #19 on:** May 19, 2006, 10:47 PM »

At the risk of promoting .NET (which I hate) Linux servers can run .net applications using a thing called Mono. It was developed by the same guys who did the ...umm.. err... it was either the Gnome guys or the Evolution guys. Anyway, it seems to run about everything.

But please, if you're going to write a CMS, do it in a real language.

Eóin · « **Reply #20 on:** May 20, 2006, 06:55 AM »

Rover is right, mono is an excellent opensource .NET implementation. However I've read there are some legal ambiguities over its attempt to implement ASP.NET and the Windows.Forms as they are not part of the documented open standards core of .NET (such as C# and the System modules).

I had read this in a Linux Format Interview: the men of Mono however the snippet online doesn't contain the relevant parts.

housetier · « **Reply #21 on:** May 22, 2006, 10:24 AM »

Since I still like Drupal I was very pleased to find a review. Although not as enthusiastically as I would have written it, the review highlights drupal's strong points.

I use drupal 4.7 myself, but I have to admit that integration of smf won't be trivial.

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** May 22, 2006, 10:31 AM »

drupal feels a little different from most cms, in a good way (they seem to have taken a more unified approach to content and it feels a little less "hacked together" than most). but drupal seems deliberately more difficult to integrate with other systems to me.

i can't believe how many cms i've looked at recently and not been thrilled with any.. i'll try to give a more elaborate report on my conclusions at some point. but it must be fairly common that people keep thinking they haven't found the perfect cms and that's why so many new ones keep getting built.. everyone's needs seem to be a bit different.

latest one im looking at is http://tikiwiki.org/ which has some nice features in terms of using a wiki system as the foundation of a cms.

Rover · « **Reply #23 on:** May 22, 2006, 09:17 PM »

i can't believe how many cms i've looked at recently and not been thrilled with any..
-mouser (May 22, 2006, 10:31 AM)

AMEN! I pretty much gave up on finding a good CMS. One of these days, I'll look again. There were/are several that need a few more versions to be ready... I'm just not going to run them while they grow. Besides, we need to see if they become abandonware or not.

tinyvillager · « **Reply #24 on:** May 22, 2006, 10:50 PM »

I find http://pmachine.com/ pretty nifty.
They just released a new version with a wiki http://pmachine.com/products/wiki/

They also have a forum module,for $50,though i know you'd never switch forum software.
And i'm pretty sure their is no migration script from "whatever forum" to pmachine's forum.

Code Igniter
http://www.codeigniter.com/
On a side note one of their main developers offers a PHP framework,Code Igniter.I've seen
through their forum,users being able to create blogs,etc.An example-http://www.commonsdesign.com/

I thought Simplemachines was supposed to come out with a CMS,they polled their members
about the topic a couple of years back if memory serves me correctly.