Content Management Systems

[Andy]

I posted ages ago about Mambo which seemed like a very cool way to maintain an interactive website. It is what's known as a CMS (Content Management System). A bit like forum software but aimed at all aspects of a website. I was going to use it but didn't after I found it didn't, at that time have nice keyword  friendly urls. Now I found a new version called Joomla

But, oh dear  I was about to post the link and they have got the dreaded server message:

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.joomla.org Port 80

 

I use their free Mambo Standalone Server (MSAS) to test my webpages since it's an easy way to simulate Apache web server, MySQL and PHP on your PC.
However their is a bug that needs fixing as per my blog post.

Hopefully when their sites are up I could post some links to these free open source sites

[Jamie Walker]

Andy, CMS's are great tools for site creation.  I use 2 in particular [Joomla! and Xoops] for about 80% of the sites I create.  You can see a site I'm currently working on here:  Silver Rain Weimaraners [temporary location].  It's created using Joomla! [you have to add the "!" at the end, it's part of the name].  If you look at the original site, you can see the advantages of using a CMS.

Also, a totally awesome website that I've been using of for a few years now is OpenSourceCMS.  They have reviews, articles, previews, and live installs of all of the most popular and not so popular CMS out there.  You can learn more about a lot of different open source software out there today and get to test drive it before you download and learn a new script.  Not just CMS either.  On their site, you can find:

- Portals (CMS)
Back-End
CivicSpace
Clever Copy
CMS Made Simple
Contenido
DEV
Dragonfly CMS
Drupal
e107
EcwCMS
Exponent
eZ Publish
Geeklog
JetBox
Joomla
LucidCMS
Mambo
MDPro
MODx
Netious
OneCMS
Ovidentia
Papoo
PHP-Fusion
PHP-Nuke
phpSlash
phpwcms
phpWebSite
PHPX
PLUME CMS
Postnuke
Props
Siteframe
SPIP
Tikiwiki
toendaCMS
Typo3
Website Baker
Xaraya
YACS!
- Blogs
bBlog
BLOG:CMS
Blur6ex
boastMachine
FireBlog
LifeType
Loudblog
Nucleus CMS
Pixelpost
Serendipity
Simplog
Textpattern
TruBlog
Wheatblog
WordPress
- e-Commerce
CREloaded
osc2nuke
osCommerce
phpShop
Zen Cart
- Groupware
ACollab
dotProject
eGroupWare
more.groupware
NetOffice
phpGroupWare
PHProjekt
PMtool
WebCollab
- Forums
FUDForum
miniBB
MyBB
Phorum
phpBB
phptb
PunBB
SMF
UNB
UseBB
Vanilla
W-Agora
XMB
- e-Learning
ATutor
Dokeos
Interact
Moodle
Site@School
- Image Galleries
Coppermine
Gallery
Gallery 2
LinPHA
MG2
Plogger
Singapore
Snipe Gallery
SPGM
WEBalbum
yappa-ng
Zenphoto
- Wiki
DokuWiki
ErfurtWiki
MediaWiki
PmWiki
QwikiWiki
UniWakka
WackoWiki
WikkaWiki
WikkiTikkiTavi
- Lite
AngelineCMS Lite
CMSimple
CuteNews
EyeOS
GuppY
Limbo
Nodez
Pivot
PluggedOut CMS
SAPID
TML
- Miscellaneous

[Andy]

Hi Jamie, thanks for your reply, I just spotted it.

I can understand the attraction for CMS based sites for clients since you can easily provide them with a site that they can maintain without a great deal of support from your side.

I'm still using custom design myself since I want to be optimized for search engines but if I was handing over a dynamic site to a client, I can't imagine any better way than via the CMS route unless I planned to charge them for support and updates to maximize my revenues.

[Andy]

It seems like Joomla and Xoops are the top CMS scripts.

For my own needs, I developed my own system and hope to make it open source soon 

I described the philosophy in my Blog here: http://blog.urgentclick.com/2006/03/25/simple-cms-system/

[Andy]

April fool:

WordPattn and Yahoo! to take over the world http://wordpattern.org/ 

[Andy]

I have coded the world's most simple CMS, check it out here:

http://urgentclick.com/cms/

[Hope]

My company has decided on the Ektron CMS. It works best for us. It is actually pretty good for a design and hosting company like we are. This gives more control to the actual webmaster instead of the end user.

[Andy]

I think CMS is the way forward for all webmasters and design companies.

Once you go beyond a few webpages and want to change things, you quickly appreciate a CMS approach rather than re-coding the whole site and editing content. However, I guess if you have expensive web-authoring tools like Macromedia products, these tools probably do big changes quickly and easily anyway. But you can't expect all your clients to be happy to invest in and use these tools.

With so many CMS systems around now, I wonder when one will be bought out by a big name company to take over as the standard 

p.s. big sites are already using their own custom CMS systems. Like UEFA.com Theirs is based on Microsoft .net

I think my next experiment will be to make my CMS into a database-driven site with url re-writing and a template system. It will be very simple and light-weight compared to the usual CMS solutions since I don't want to include online content editing or community features.

[Andy]

My company has decided on the Ektron CMS.

I found their own site a little flakey with poor audio in the presentation and an erronous graphic on the home page. Hopefully, you had no problems with client solutions.

[Hope]

I didn't pick the platform, but will give you a full evaluation once we have worked with it a bit.

[donecweb]

I think CMS is the way forward for all webmasters and design companies.

Once you go beyond a few webpages and want to change things, you quickly appreciate a CMS approach rather than re-coding the whole site and editing content. However, I guess if you have expensive web-authoring tools like Macromedia products, these tools probably do big changes quickly and easily anyway. But you can't expect all your clients to be happy to invest in and use these tools.

With so many CMS systems around now, I wonder when one will be bought out by a big name company to take over as the standard 

p.s. big sites are already using their own custom CMS systems. Like UEFA.com Theirs is based on Microsoft .net

I think my next experiment will be to make my CMS into a database-driven site with url re-writing and a template system. It will be very simple and light-weight compared to the usual CMS solutions since I don't want to include online content editing or community features.

I don't know anything about CMS systems but using php includes and CSS will definitely make incorporating new content and changes much easier like 90% easier as far as I have seen.

[Andy]

I don't know anything about CMS systems but using php includes and CSS will definitely make incorporating new content and changes much easier like 90% easier as far as I have seen.

This is what they use but also a database to facilitate online management and updates.

A template is another key part that defines the layout of the content blocks and stiches everything together.

The CMS I proposed on my website is exactly like you said using PHP includes and CSS. It's kind of obvious once you get experience with these technologies but always worth teaching the concepts to new people to help them speed through the learning curve. Simple CMS