The not so big CMS thread

Sevenupcan

Like Kosmo says, phpwcms is quite good. I remember using it about 7 months ago and it seems pretty good, I bet now it's improved a hell of a lot.

Also I've heard a lot of good stuff about MODx. But haven't had chance to try it out yet.

Another alternative is sNews because of it's simple framework it is supposed to be really easy to customise. It only uses one file.

lech

I recently tried out MODx, and after messing around with it, I wanted to claw my eyes out at the plethora of options associated with the damn thing. It's a bit like that photo of the two switch boxes describing men and women. Except that MODx would have buttons, knobs and switches on every suqare millimeter of the surface and then a couple switches upon other switches and ARGHH!. yes, in short, it's over-kill. So far, I'm still on the hunt for the worlds most brain dead simple CMS. Something that holds inner pages under one or a couple templates, and the main index is something totally different from the rest. I was about to give JetBox a shot, but installing it appeared to pose a few problems from the start, I'll have to give it another shot.

3stripe

I hate the bloody hassle of trying out CMSs... so boring. sNews looks good. Not going to bother with MODx if it's that annoying. Wish someone would do a decent CMS plugin for Wordpress that stripped back the control panel and added better category and image support.

aloicious

Hmm, if "simple" weren't on your wishlist I would recommend Drupal, I love it. Learning curve is a tad vertical.

3stripe

sNews templates are looking pretty fine and dandy! http://www.solucija.com/home/css-templates/ (Think I tried Drupal for about 10 minutes way back)

MadeMyDay

Well, I discovered MODx the past 2 months and it´s awesome! If you´re looking for a flexible CMS where you don´t have to learn an own script language (like for Typo), but need a real flexible output (not as Joomla, which is a fallback to 2000 with core generated tables and so on), then you´re right ;) It´s a little confusing yet, I am agreed, because lots of names for things which do nearly the same. But the development team is wiping these issues out, so keep an eye on it. I am currently trying to figure out how vanilla works and will try to integrate in my MODx site. Greetz Marc

3stripe

So is this a Fairly Big CMS thread now?! Ok maybe I shouldn't write off MODx so fast...

MadeMyDay

Well, it depends on what you will do with a CMS. If you just want to publish some content, need countless extensions like forums, community stuff, gallerys, lots of templates and so on (all of which not that good coded), joomla is your friend. BUT if you need a clean code output, possibilities for flexible design and are willing to spend some time discovering the features (without hacking any core functions) take a look at MODx ;) What I see till now, vanilla is a clean and simple possibility to make conversation. If an integration to MODx is also clean, I will come back more often ;) Do you have experiences in integrating it to a CMS?

3stripe

I don't actually need a forum on the site! Just some static pages and news articles, with options for sidebar modules or mini-adverts for other parts of the site, and possibly something to help with integrating quicktime trailers...

aloicious

My god, I think I'll be converting a couple of sites over to sNews. They don't need 90% of the functionality they currently have...

lech

Given modx gives you total control, it's just the biggest fuckbomb of options that most users may not need or even know what to do with. Personally, it's not for me, but for others it might be perfect. I'd try drupal, but I already know what it consists of and really don't need half of what it offers. Basically, there's nothing out there that I can find to manage a site that is pretty much set up magazine style. For example, the front page being radically different from the inside pages which would be static for the most part. But templated enough to change when the entire site gets an update. With a simple blog-style news feed.

emergent

I'm a huge fan of phpwcms (http://www.phpwcms.de). I think I've done somewhere around 40 sites with it. It isn't one of those php-nuke-ish systems with weather, traffic and poll modules built it. It's made for pure content editing. I think the clowns at opensourcecms just deleted it, although it is still being actively developed. You can see more info at http://www.phpwcms-docu.de. By the way, I think it's well suited for CSS layouts and such.

Kosmo

I really have to side with the current top dog blogging tools, WordPress and Textpattern, and the main reason for that is that they just offer everything you need for running a fairly complex site but still making it simple enough to let take off from the ground (instead of jumping off the roof and trying to fly). WordPress is awesome when you just need a site, but when you need some more complex things and extra you should go with Textpattern. If you want to check out my current project direct your browser to www.greenrock.fi and check it out, it all runs on textpattern, and I have actually taught few not-so-computer-savvy people from the office to manage the artcles and such on the site. I tried Drupal, Typo3, Modx and many many more including phpwcms but I didn't have the time to use it because of the tight schedule. But I guarantee, that you can take any CMS and put it against WP and TXP and they will be easier, faster to learn with enough depth to amaze you from day to day and still be more powerful than many of those CMS' My only regret is that I don't know how to code with PHP I could have made my own or perhaps if and when Mark releases the Lussumo Framework I would have made the site using that.

NickE

>But I guarantee, that you can take any CMS and put it against WP and TXP and they will be easier, faster to learn
Well, I don't know. CMSimple dosn't have 'simple' in it's name for nothing.

Kosmo

I actually tried CMSimple and I agree, it's simple to kickstart, but either it is very robust and lacking features, or it has more features but they are hard to use. I could make a very simple page manager and news system that would be as easy to use as anything, but it wouldn't have alot of features, keeping it feature free adds to the simplicity.

AnotherDan

Im a bit surprised Etomite ( http://etomite.org ) havent been mentioned... Its a fairly easy and flexible OS CMS...

Kosmo

I actually tried Etomite too, but I don't remember how it was, I guess I didn't have the time to learn it, the same with Drupal, if I had the time to play around with it I bet it would have been great for my project. But I can see from my Mint that people have visited the site www.greenrock.fi and I would like to have your input, especially the few who have visited it with Camino and Safari (I can see youuuuu). Neat BTW, there are some people who have visited the site with IE as old as 5, I hope it's one of you guys testing the site out because the idea of someone still using poop like that in regular basis scares the shit out of me. So poop your input, I appreciate it and I know about the small glithc, the picture isn't perfectly aligned in Opera, I don't know why it does that but I'm fixing it asap.

mattisfrommars

if you want to try out a cms go to http://www.opensourcecms.com

guest

If you want good control of what your CMS produces and have no qualms with digging under the hood, I would also suggest textpattern. You can blog 'out of the box' pretty quickly. But it comes into its own if you want to develop more complex blog or non-blog scenarios – you have complete control of structure, interaction, templating, code, image management and css and you can develop custom projects quite easily. The 'forms' allow you to make site or section-wide snippets a la PHP-include without having to delve into PHP yourself. It doesn't come with a huge amount of bloated features but many extras are available as plugins. It's also free. Shortcomings and limitations? * E-commerce situations (tho' some have hooked it successfully onto paypal) * Community sites with front-end guest writers (lots of authors are no problem and can be issued different rights, but require a back-end login) * Quick template switching is not possible (if that's your thing) * Officially two-levels of categories only possible, though recently a few plug-ins have been developed to support tagging too. * has a learning curve, but also an active and helpful community. Magazine site? http://www.uxmag.com runs on textpattern

3stripe

That's interesting... UXMag is a site I keep referring back to because I love how the homepage is put together - ok it is very busy - but the grid is clever, and the key articles always highlighted cleverly.