Linux.com

If you are more interested into ever-growing content and a more WWW-oriented web site, you might further want to check out <a href="http://www.wikimatrix.org/" title="wikimatrix.org">http://www.wikimatrix.org/</a wikimatrix.org>

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You are so right about Typo3, I tried it out and got mixed results, found it ipossible to get to work right, and it is downright ugly what I created with it.. I have seen it used well, but I believe to get into that kind of shape would take months... I found mambo / joomla to be much easier and well doc'ed.

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Well I've spent 4 hours to get basic quickstart site going back then; and that would be 15 minutes at most *if* I wouldn't decide that half a page of README/INSTALL was boring and would skip over the second half-page, where the notice to import the quickstart DB dump was sitting.

After wiping things clean and do-reading the FM, everything went off with flying colours.

Right now I have 1 (that is, one) problem with TYPO3 which awaits for the more experienced developer to look at it -- some cache "stuck page" problem, I believe. Otherwise, on a few instalations with a dozen of sites in total it works very well, and powerful changes are possible that would take a lot of effort with some of the inferior CMSes I used to employ before.

--
Michael Shigorin

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For me CMS' should have clean URLs. In this way users can remember the urls and avoid fuzzy urls with alphanumeric codes. I think in this aspect WebGUI is the right stuff. Are there any other PHP/MySQL based CMS which offers this feature ?

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Drupal CMS is SEO friendly. If you need help contact us at devportals at gmail dot com

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Every CMS/blogtool I've tested has this feature. Some are on by default, some you have to explicitly set the option.

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I have tried some cms's, and what I found out was that they all had serious drawbacks, most importantly almost all of them either were hard to make custom templates for, or they forced you into table-based layout.

I personally prefer MODx (<a href="http://www.modxcms.com/" title="modxcms.com">http://www.modxcms.com/</a modxcms.com> now, earlier on I used to use exponent (<a href="http://exponentcms.org/" title="exponentcms.org">http://exponentcms.org/</a exponentcms.org>. Both of these has easy templating systems. This translates to using more time on making the site nice and accessible, and less time on coping with awkward templating systems. (Of course this means you need to know html and css, but I guess thats no problem for you.) And I also find those two cms's easier to deal with once they're set up.

The reason I prefer MODx over exponentcms is friendly URL's, friendlier forums (exponent forums were nice to users but there has been a big conflict between some of the developers, and almost no upgrades for a year.)

Of course this is my opinion. I'm still young and have less experience than many of you, but these two have been my choices. So if you're like me, still searching for the perfect cms, there is a chance you'd like MODx or exponent.

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Pligg is an open source Content Management System that works like digg. Pligg gives users the ability to collaboratively submit and dismiss articles.

<a href="http://www.pligg.com/" title="pligg.com">http://www.pligg.com/</a pligg.com>
<a href="http://www.pligg.com/forum" title="pligg.com">http://www.pligg.com/forum</a pligg.com>

Why was Pligg missing from this article?

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Pligg is not a CMS per se. It's a Digg clone based on Meneame. It doesn't manage content like CMS's do, it's a community supported "content aggregator" - a social software - a community bookmarking system.

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Pligg can be used both as a content aggregator or for publishing your own original editorial content, without the need for linking to external articles. Just because the initial design was for a system like Digg doesn't mean that it suffers from some of Digg's limitations. Because of this ability to write editorial articles Pligg could be considered a CMS.

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How about a smaller CMS with no database? And I don't mean using a flat file (which for some reason seems to be what lots of people think of when I suggest not using a DB). Obviously some features would not work so well without the DB, but for smaller sites (just a few blogs or a mini-portal on one server) there is a definite plus to keeping things simple. Just make good well-thought-out (or is that a skill that's been lost these days) use of filesystem hierarchy and a few templates to convert simple posted text into usable HTML, RSS, etc.

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I have been using CMS for a bit more than 4 years now, both personnally and for clients.

I have tested and used a lot of them. They sure have changed the way we build and manage websites, but for a long time we have been suffering from a lack of flexiblity due to insufficient content/presentation separation. Elements of presentation and style were (and still are for a lot of systems) hardcoded into the core application and/or extensions. A lot of us webdesigners have painfully experienced this, having to hack core code to build a custom layout with decent code structure ! I am not event talking about those table layout and hardcoded styles we had to endure !

I think webstandards and the standards compliancy "wave" has been a ground to build standard compliants, accessible CMS. CMS in which content and presentation are really well separated. I am talking Drupal, Textpattern, WordPress, CMS Made Simple...etc, and last but not least MODx. Older CMS are trying to catch up, but the weight of an old codebase make the struggle really hard (take Typo3 for example...)

I'd like to elaborate about MODx (<a href="http://modxcms.com/" title="modxcms.com">http://modxcms.com/</a modxcms.com>), since it represents (IMHO) what a modern CMS should be.

Templating

Just like Textpattern, MODx gives you a lot of freedom as far as templating is concerned. You won't find presentation elements inside the core code, requiring you to hack your way into templating. Even more powerful, MODx uses "micro-templates" for granular control over content which allow you to control precisely how and where you want to place the output of a Snippet.

Dynamic stylesheets

No-one would challenge the fact that dynamic web pages have brought a revolution to the web. To this date, dynamic stylesheets (a.k.a server side css) are still rare. With its flexible document types, MODx is able to parse stylesheets and allow you to add dynamic elements to your css, via tags and snippets : pretty handy to have a dynamic path for images when moving from test to production server, or randomize a background : whatever you can imagine is possible !

Forget rigid content structure

MODx is not a CMS, but a real content management framework. Most systems have a rigid way to structure content. Usually, content has a limited structure: Title, Summary, Body. Extensions (plugins, modules or the likes) sometimes offer to manage different types of content (images, products, job offers…): but again, they force you to use a predefined content structure which does not necessarily fit your particular needs. When they do offer a way to create custom content fields, they are either limited in number or in types. MODx has no such limitations.

You can create any type of custom content fields: text, rich text, number, date, images, checkbox, dropdown, email, url… with no limitations whatsoever. The best part: you can do so directly from the backend, without ever having to alter the database structure manually.

Each custom field is linked to a given template: that’s why the custom fields are called Template Variables in MODx. It allows you to define which templates can use the custom variables, and possibly define several content structure if needed (need a product catalog ?

You can use, style and place those content field easily: a simple tag, [*my_template_variable*], and you can display the content wherever you like, the way you want it displayed. Better yet, if you need to make it available for frontend editing, just add a # before the variable name [*#my_template_variable*]. Pretty easy, uh?

What's the catch?

The selling pitch is nice, but what’s the catch here, looks too good to be true!

Well of course no system can be everything to everyone. Flexiblity and power has a price. Unlike most CMS, you won’t find a template installer, nor will you find a module/plugin installer. Though it’s quite fast to learn if you have a decent knowledge of website design, MODx is not a “one-click” foolproof system. Why is that?

Because being built by professionnals out of frustration with existing solutions, it naturally aims primarily professionnal webdesigners (also pro-ams – geeks – power users) who are looking for a tool to build highly customized, accessible and standard compliant dynamic websites.

Now does that mean MODx doesn’t care about the end-user? Sure not! It aims the end-user but as content managers or editors, not websites builders. Many opensource content management project have chosen to try to satisfy the end user first, focusing on the range of built-in features and one-click-install systems which in the end makes the application less flexible.

The MODx team has made a different choice, that I think is worth testing.

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Looks like a really great CMS for larger sites. And I'm glad it's not Perl based. But it's not for my smaller sites because it does use a DB. That's what I want to avoid.

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It sounds to me like what you're describing is blosxom which *relies* on filesystem hierarchy, but perhaps you should check out ikiwiki[1] instead!

1. <a href="http://ikiwiki.kitenet.net/" title="kitenet.net">http://ikiwiki.kitenet.net/</a kitenet.net>

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You could do worse than <a href="http://www.freeguppy.org/" title="freeguppy.org">Guppy</a freeguppy.org>. I've used it for a couple of sites, and not had any complaints from non-technical admins!

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Note to the moderator : I have mistakenly posted my comment as a reply to the last comment, while I intended to post this as a comment to the article, please erase the other post. Thanks

I have been using CMS for a bit more than 4 years now, both personnally and for clients.

I have tested and used a lot of them. They sure have changed the way we build and manage websites, but for a long time we have been suffering from a lack of flexiblity due to insufficient content/presentation separation. Elements of presentation and style were (and still are for a lot of systems) hardcoded into the core application and/or extensions. A lot of us webdesigners have painfully experienced this, having to hack core code to build a custom layout with decent code structure ! I am not event talking about those table layout and hardcoded styles we had to endure !

I think webstandards and the standards compliancy "wave" has been a ground to build standard compliants, accessible CMS. CMS in which content and presentation are really well separated. I am talking Drupal, Textpattern, WordPress, CMS Made Simple...etc, and last but not least MODx. Older CMS are trying to catch up, but the weight of an old codebase make the struggle really hard (take Typo3 for example...)

I'd like to elaborate about MODx (<a href="http://modxcms.com/" title="modxcms.com">http://modxcms.com/</a modxcms.com>), since it represents (IMHO) what a modern CMS should be.

Templating

Just like Textpattern, MODx gives you a lot of freedom as far as templating is concerned. You won't find presentation elements inside the core code, requiring you to hack your way into templating. Even more powerful, MODx uses "micro-templates" for granular control over content which allow you to control precisely how and where you want to place the output of a Snippet.

Dynamic stylesheets

No-one would challenge the fact that dynamic web pages have brought a revolution to the web. To this date, dynamic stylesheets (a.k.a server side css) are still rare. With its flexible document types, MODx is able to parse stylesheets and allow you to add dynamic elements to your css, via tags and snippets : pretty handy to have a dynamic path for images when moving from test to production server, or randomize a background : whatever you can imagine is possible !

Forget rigid content structure

MODx is not a CMS, but a real content management framework. Most systems have a rigid way to structure content. Usually, content has a limited structure: Title, Summary, Body. Extensions (plugins, modules or the likes) sometimes offer to manage different types of content (images, products, job offers…): but again, they force you to use a predefined content structure which does not necessarily fit your particular needs. When they do offer a way to create custom content fields, they are either limited in number or in types. MODx has no such limitations.

You can create any type of custom content fields: text, rich text, number, date, images, checkbox, dropdown, email, url… with no limitations whatsoever. The best part: you can do so directly from the backend, without ever having to alter the database structure manually.

Each custom field is linked to a given template: that’s why the custom fields are called Template Variables in MODx. It allows you to define which templates can use the custom variables, and possibly define several content structure if needed (need a product catalog ?

You can use, style and place those content field easily: a simple tag, [*my_template_variable*], and you can display the content wherever you like, the way you want it displayed. Better yet, if you need to make it available for frontend editing, just add a # before the variable name [*#my_template_variable*]. Pretty easy, uh?

What's the catch?

The selling pitch is nice, but what’s the catch here, looks too good to be true!

Well of course no system can be everything to everyone. Flexiblity and power has a price. Unlike most CMS, you won’t find a template installer, nor will you find a module/plugin installer. Though it’s quite fast to learn if you have a decent knowledge of website design, MODx is not a “one-click” foolproof system. Why is that?

Because being built by professionnals out of frustration with existing solutions, it naturally aims primarily professionnal webdesigners (also pro-ams – geeks – power users) who are looking for a tool to build highly customized, accessible and standard compliant dynamic websites.

Now does that mean MODx doesn’t care about the end-user? Sure not! It aims the end-user but as content managers or editors, not websites builders. Many opensource content management project have chosen to try to satisfy the end user first, focusing on the range of built-in features and one-click-install systems which in the end makes the application less flexible.

The MODx team has made a different choice, that I think is worth testing.

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You should have submitted this as an article. Might have made some cash.

MODx looks interesting. Plus I like the fact that it "...is 100% buzzword compliant."

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The Open Source CMS site lets you demo a working default installation of just about every open source CMS system in existence

please look at
<a href="http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2132&Itemid=167" title="opensourcecms.com">http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=com<nobr>_<wbr></nobr> content&task=view&id=2132&Itemid=167</a opensourcecms.com>

that site ONLY features php/mysql based systems, which leaves out a lot of the more interresting ones, and makes the site very incomplete and biased towards one specific technology.

greetings, eMBee.

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The "we're trying to choose a CMS" scenario I seem to encounter most frequently is an amalgalm of the different examples you shared but it always seems to go one (or two, or three) steps further: what I call the "Silver Bullet Syndrome". I've worked on a number of projects and with a few different groups (both for- and non-for-profit, some corporate, and a couple academic) and - without fail - I'll find that there's a mythos that's somehow built-up around the layman's concept of what a CMS is, what one can do, and what any CMS is not and will never be.

Besides being simply expectation management and keeping a tight rein on scope creep, there've been quite a few instances where clients and/or fellow team members had somehow come to the conclusion that a CMS can solve interal political problems, is the perfect way for an organization to streamline and fix niggling problems that've persisted in their business processes for years, and - like a bullet - can be fired and forgotten since it's already solved the problems of politics and process which will never pop-up again.

And, although I can't point to any specific empirical proof of this, my own personal experience has been that the severity, tenacity, and pervasiveness of the "Silver Bullet Syndrome" is almost directly proportional to the amount of time and money an organization is devoting to a CMS migration project.

In one case, members of the client's development team openly admitted they knew a CMS wasn't going to solve all their problems and had begun making things quite a bit worse. Unfortunately, marketing, sales, and corner-office people-in-charge, refused to listen to reason and chose to throw increasing amounts of money at the problem.

Like they'd already been doing in order to try and solve all their problems rolling out SAP company-wide. The CMS project had been tacked-on quite a bit into the SAP project as a way to try and manage it.

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Seems like these days everything that lets you edit content is a CMS. How about Word?

I think the article is missing an essential ingredient: the scope. Its an article about how single users that want to publish content can do so.

The article ios not meant for anyone that is coming from an enterprise perspective, where integration, standards, scalability and professional support are the cornerstones of success.

Incidentally, thats exactly what <a href="http://www.magnolia.info/" title="magnolia.info">Magnolia</a magnolia.info> provides, which is why its powers web-sites, intranets and extranets around the world like the main site of the Spanish Government or the new <a href="http://www.infoq.com/" title="infoq.com">InfoQ</a infoq.com> site, poised to become one of the leading enterprise technology community sites.

Cheers
Boris

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One of my requirements is web standards: XHTML and CSS. Will it validate? Is is a goal for the CMS? Many of them will meet my feature requirements. This removes alot of the choices.

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Our business, <a href="http://egressive.com/" title="egressive.com">Egressive</a egressive.com>, builds XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 compliant sites on Drupal 4.6 and 4.7 - we believe that adhering to web standards is paramount. After investing a significant amount of time investigating the options among PHP-based CMS and web application frameworks, we selected Drupal due to its HUGE and active community, its underlying architecture, extensibility, sound devel leadership, the massive selection of modules, the fact that it ran on LAMP, and it produces XHTML-strict compliant code. The fact that there are at least 182,000 implementations "in the wild" is a bonus.

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On a first approach I trust Python much more than PHP (or Java or Net) since it favors "good practices" and clear code so I favor Python solutions -yes, there are big talented PHP or Java or Net developers but it has nothing to do with the language but with its brain -.
Amongst those Pythons solutions, Plone (Zope) has always been my favorite and I feel it's one of the best, more mature open source products around (in pair with "top ones" like Postgresql, GCC or the Solaris and Linux kernels).

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Seeing "Does it speak my language?" I was dissappointed when it didn´t mention internationalisation - really a crucial issue for many people. Can it handle multiple languages, left-to-right? Is it available in my language, or easily translatable?

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mojoPortal is a C# portal framework that runs on Mono
<a href="http://www.mojoportal.com/" title="mojoportal.com">http://www.mojoportal.com/</a mojoportal.com>

Worth considering

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Dont forget about Campsite...it is a CMS made specifically for newspaper and magazine style publication, where you have a staff of people working on an issue. Especially useful if you have a multi-lingual publication (where you publish articles in multiple languages).

Check out the full list of features here:
<a href="http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/670/" title="campware.org">http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/670<nobr>/<wbr></nobr> </a campware.org>

and the home page is here:
<a href="http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/" title="campware.org">http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/</a campware.org>

Enjoy!

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Only for blog, of course<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)
<a href="http://www.dblog.it/" title="dblog.it">http://www.dblog.it/</a dblog.it>

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How about a cms which can be set up to be a free/paid classified ads site, similar to the big kahuna, CL., but not necessarily with the feedback/blog portion?



I was searching for a while for some pre-built software which can be used to run a free classified ads site, with either php/mysql or preferably perl/postgres. I was planning on setting up a site for free classified listings of classic and muscle cars, with some features (feature ad, extra pictures, bold, extended listing, etc.) costing a bit (multiples of $0.25) to cover bandwidth costs.



Other than cms type of software, I haven't found any FOSS software that includes classifieds capability. One software setup was a real estate listings software that was Free Software but became proprietary. Found a couple more that may have included classified ads capability but appeared abandoned.



Joomla, according to the cmsmatrix.org comparison site appears to have classifieds as a "free add-on", and since I was previously thinking of trying Joomla for other reasons for another site, I might give that a try. Anyone have experience with Joomla and classifieds? Any idea on scalability? Will I run into a brick wall very soon if the traffic gets too heavy? Is the classifieds add-on any good?

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