How To Choose An Open Source CMS 191
An anonymous reader writes "Content management specialist Seth Gottlieb has written an easy to understand how-to on selecting an open source CMS. Gottlieb is also responsible for the whitepaper 'Content Management Problems and Open Source Solutions' which summarizes 15 open source projects and distinguishes between open source CMS and proprietary software selection."
Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:5, Informative)
If you know in advance you must be using PHP, and you're not sure whether you want a portal, CMS, weblog, etc, then this is a good site.
However, if you have other languages in mind, or are open to a good CMS in any language, you should check other sources. One good reference site is CMS Matrix [cmsmatrix.org]. Another good source of CMS information is CMS Watch [cmswatch.com]; even though it concentrates on the entire spectrum of CMS systems (including commercial ones) it occasionally has very good articles or pointers to articles about open source products (like this one [blogspot.com] which I just found).
Re:Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:3, Informative)
There are many good F/OSS CMSes that aren't based on PHP, and probably some that don't run on MySQL.
Best CMS (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Best CMS (Score:3, Funny)
Just add (setq suck nil) to your
Re:Best CMS (Score:2)
Dude, what a weak troll. Everybody knows Emacs is better than VI. There's not even a debate!
Re:Best CMS (Score:2, Funny)
Emacs is good, but I didn't found the sufficient support of keystrokes like C-x C-e in modern browsers. That's why I didn't choose the Emacs for the front-end for my newest and brightest CMS.
But I hope that they will evolve to be at least as supportive for ten-strokes-in-one commands as the Emacs was twenty years ago...
Re:Best CMS (Score:2)
Funny or not, I used them (and Notepad on occasion) successfully for years to manage content, using pages built on SSI. Toss in a couple of Perl scripts to move content around and there you were - just load content to be posted into a special directory structure, have the script look for content in that directory structure, and move content accordingly, archiving the current content. No fuss or muss, with only the occasional headache when someone would hand you some odd-sized piece of content that would mangle a page somehow.
Re:Best CMS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Best CMS (Score:2)
Re:Best CMS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Best CMS (Score:2)
http://qadcms.networkboy.net/cgi-bin/QAD_CMS.pl [networkboy.net]
It's close and easily hackable.
-nB
Re:Best CMS (Score:2, Informative)
ftp://mylogin@myisp.co.uk/
in the file requester, give your password when asked, and you should be in! If you have a shell account, try fish:// instead -- this uses an SSH connection and so everything is encrypted. If you accidentally muck up the password entry, try entering
ftp://mylogin:password@myisp.co.uk/
to fix it, but obviously don't do this if anyone is watching. The password will disappear when the URL is redisplayed.
This is not just confined to Kate -- it works with all the other KDE applications, too. You can even open an ftp or fish directory in Konqueror, and just drag-and-drop files into it.
Re:Best CMS (Score:2)
There is a talk about it there : http://drupal.org/node/35036 [drupal.org]
I too would find this useful.
Other CMS systems may be more advanced in that regard.
Killer features (Score:4, Informative)
Different CMS shares a lot of features, but some features are unique from one to another and might influence your choice...
Re:Killer features (Score:3, Funny)
You're such an asskisser. ;-)
Re:Killer features (Score:2)
Re:Killer features (Score:2)
Of course there are some highend oss cms systems as well. I'm not criticizing them all. But most of the usual suspects that surface in this type of discussions (wordpress, cocoon, etc) are pretty low end systems: good for simple websites and nothing else. They can be adequate if you don't need the highend features but making a conscious decision about that should be part of the decision process. A common mistake is assuming you don't need the high end stuff and then doing a lot of custom development to keep the customer happy.
There's companies making some good money out of CMS system customization. Often they are a better option than inhouse development. If you're going to use OSS because of the cost aspect that's fine but as soon as bunch of your employees need to spend more than a few days of work to get the thing going you've probably made a mistake.
Trial and Error (Score:5, Insightful)
I settled on Drupal only because it was the "hot thing" at the time and I enjoyed the fact that you could put php code into "blocks" and have it run custom code w/o much hassle. At the time I wasn't all that much interested in working on the actual code so the "blocks" allowed me to get some of my bash shell scripts onto the site w/o doing too much hacking.
Drupal for me too! (Score:4, Informative)
Druapl is also very configurable, even without having to write any code at all. It is all done with PHP, Apache, MySQL, which most GNU/Linux distributions seem to have already on the distribution media. Install your favorite distro, and Drupal fits in quite nicely.
Re:Drupal for me too! (Score:2)
Drupal is quite a refreshing and welcome change.
OTOH I'm currently looking into theming it; my own skills in that regard, dating mostly from the HTML+ days, need a bit of brushing up and all the available themes look the same to me.
On the module side, there are bits of code that can be used as they are or can be customized to do pretty much anything. It feels a bit like Firefox and its extensions.
Of course anyone shopping for a CMS should still try as many as he can get his hands on before settling on any particular package. There is no universal solution.
Re:Drupal for me too! (Score:2)
The stock Drupal themes tend to be a bit on the bland side, but that's IMO largely because good coders don't necessarily make good designers.
Re:Drupal for me too! (Score:2)
Thanks for the link to your site, it's encouraging to see that nice things can be done with the engine
I reckon that I'll probably have to find some kind of infographist to deal with the pretty pictures though. I'm ok at manipulating existing images but creating them from scratch is something I've never been able to do
CMSes are going the way of the dodo.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for everything.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:CMSes are going the way of the dodo.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:CMSes are going the way of the dodo.. (Score:2)
I highly disagree. If you're able to get by with that then you either...
1. Don't have much content to manage
2. Don't have to worry (too much) about training new editors
3. Don't have to worry about integration with other business systems
CMS solutions are not easy to implement and rarely do everything that you want, but putting that much power in editors hands will inevitably get disorganized. Maybe I don't know that much about nPower, but that's my initial impression.
Re:CMSes are going the way of the dodo.. (Score:2)
Re:CMSes are going the way of the dodo.. (Score:2)
Etomite (Score:2, Interesting)
Good points so far:
- Simple to setup
- Easy to develop templates for, our template (http://www.intellipool.se/ [intellipool.se] took a work day to put together.
- The back end is easy to use and provides nice editing features directly in the browser.
Drawback:
- If you are looking for something that can do "everything" and be extended left and right, Etomite is not for you.
www.etomite.org
Re:Etomite (Score:2)
For that, my friends, you need to call Dolemite [amazon.com] with his all girl army of Kung-Fu killers!
Tech Support. (Score:2, Informative)
Structure (Score:5, Interesting)
There are other choices that can quickly filter CMS's, but many of the choices have alternatives or can be hacked around. Only rarely will you find a CMS that can handle both navigation structures.
Re:Structure (Score:2)
That was pretty standard when i was building sites a few years ago.
Re:Structure (Score:2)
That being said, this is more of a web content management platform than a ready-made CMS with comments, registration, etc. out of the box.
Too Many (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too Many (Score:2)
I worked for a state agency. I did some web development for them, but ultimately I wasn't the guy calling the shots on the web site. They evaluated a bunch of CMS's when it came time for a redesign, but they ended up shelling out a ton of money for Microsoft's CMS because they were worried about support. I've long since moved on, but I'm still scratching my head about it.
It's the same reason commercial software will always have a place. Those of us with confidence in our skills are happy to try something free and cool and new and cutting (or bleeding)-edge, but managers just want to know that something's going to work, and if not, there's a number they can call.
Re:Too Many (Score:2)
Re:Too Many (Score:2)
Exactly. Besides, the lack of support for FOSS is the main reason for choosing non-free software.
Re:Too Many (Score:2)
Also, there are a lot of FOSS projects that give commercial (as in with support) version of their programs. MySQLor QT are not CMSs, but good examples, maybe a good example in the CMS arena could be Typo3.
Too few (Score:2)
My first criterion for an open source CMS was that it not be based on PHP, because PHP is a bloated security-hole-ridden crappy language.
My second criterion was that it support something other than MySQL--both for licensing reasons, and because MySQL doesn't meet the basic standards of database integrity you'd expect from a relational database.
Once I'd imposed those two criteria, there were only a few options, and I didn't like any of them very much.
Re:Too Many (Score:2)
Sadly, most of the open source CMS's are just variations on the same theme. Limited support, limited scalability, limited features, etc...
Some people don't want to use mySQL. Some people don't want to use PHP. Some people don't want a runtime CMS (where the pages are built dynamically from the database and when you database goes down, so does your web site).
What I want is a content agnostic (PHP, ASP, HTML, whatever), database agnostic, structure agnostic (i want XHTML dammit, and don't want to be dictated to as to how the site can be designed), non-runtime or so called "publish" model (possibly with a runtime option) and a powerful and flexible user contribution management system.
So many of these systems are just accidents waiting to happen.
Drupal gets my vote (Score:2, Interesting)
Drupal is what you make of it (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but Drupal is dog ugly (Score:2)
www.OpenSourceCMS.com invaluable (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com] works as a nice Sandbox environment that auto-refreshes every hour or so (ie: each CMS is automatically reset to a clean install, so though you lose anything you try out, you can't mess things up.)
It's a great way to get an initial feel for various CMS's in one tight place.
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/ [gmailtips.com]
CMS is less important than people (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, I like a comercial solution: ClearCase, (paired with ClearQuest) as it allows me to enforce a certain percentage of behavior through the tool. And when you have people who feel it's their duty to violate process because it "won't work" (they didn't write it) it's nice to have the tool lock them down.
Re:CMS is less important than people (Score:3, Informative)
ClearQuest is bug tracking (like bugzilla), ClearCase is versioning (like CVS or Subversion)
Totally wrong group of tools.
On that note, I happen to be in a RedDot training class as I write this... Their tool (while not free) is super easy to use. I am traditionally trained in Documentum.
One pet peeve is when people condsider things like Nuke or SlashCode CMS systems. They are really just blogs in my opinion. Not nearly as sophisticated as a real CMS system.
Re:CMS is less important than people (Score:2)
Some admin here got sold on Microsoft Sharepoint and set up a server internally. It's such a joke. No one uses it because 1) there's been no training, 2) it's not obvious at all what benefit you'd get from actually using it, and 3) email, IM, and the corporate shared folder hierarchy work.
Until you get people trained on how to use it and understanding why they should invest their time in it, it's not going to be worth the investment.
Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:4, Informative)
There's been an ongoing discussion about this same topic over at Macintouch [macintouch.com].
Personally I'm a fan of the Zope [zope.org] / CMF [zope.org] series of content management systems; the built-in CMF is quite powerful and flexible (and actually fairly efficient -- don't be fooled by the slowness of some CMSs built on top).
There are many such systems. There are some in private use (like Boston.com [boston.com] and Saugus.net [saugus.net]. There are also some commercial options (like Icoya [icoya.com]). Most though are free and open source, like Plone [plone.org], Infrae Silva [infrae.com], and Nuxeo CPS [cps-project.org]. Each has its own focus and tends to do certain things better than the others. Each has its own special plug-ins and extensions, but since they all utilize the same underlying base framework, it's usually a doable thing (although typically not trivial) to port a product from one to another.
The capabilities of Zope's built-in CMF are also good enough that it's not at all unreasonable to fashion one's own CMS on top of it if none of the existing products seem to suit one's own particular needs.
Re:Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:2)
We used Zope at our college and after much research decided to go with Plone to update it. I was a little leary of Zope's ZODB at first, but I like it now, though I really like MySQL. I looked at the myriad PHP CMS solutions and none of them did what I wanted them to do. the Python CMS market has very few players whereas the PHP CMS market has dozens and dozen to choose from and I would say fragmented.
I discovered that I could do in PHP what took far longer to do in Perl though I'm a big Perl fan. I'm still learning Python, Zope, and Plone but it's worth it.
For big projects Plone is a good choice. It's highly modular and you can override or rewrite the modules to customize it. For personal websites WordPress is a good choice. It does everything I need and can be used as a poor man's CMS though it is primarily a blogging tool.
Re:Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:2)
Last year, the company that I am working for had an interest in implementing a CMS system for in-house purposes. I ended up evaluating both the Plone/Zope and MSFT's SP/CMS application stacks. I used to work for a portal infrastructure ISV so it was not a big stretch for me to do this.
I was amazed at how lacking the proprietary (and fairly expensive) stack was and at how wonderfully feature rich and complete the open source stack turned out to be. It was a no-brainer to pick Plone/Zope over SP/CMS yet the CEO balked over the OSS choice because of the perceived lack of support. We ended up dropping the whole thing.
Re:Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:2)
Re:Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:2)
I just did. Thanks for the idea. Here was their response.
1) We don't build any Plone-based systems, so if that's a requirement, you needn't bother sending the RFP to us.Re:Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:2)
Anyway Plone support, mmm, let me see. If I were you I would give http://zettai.net/ [zettai.net] a look.
For Java Freaks (Score:4, Informative)
http://java-source.net/open-source/content-managm
Re:For Java Freaks (Score:2)
In particular, this list summarizes [sun.com] the offerings quite well, to include their Portal Server [sun.com].
Re:For Java Freaks (Score:2)
Processing of requests is handled by Cocoon's XMAPs, which is XML that decides which "pipeline" matches the requests, aggregates XML files, does XSL transformations, and "serializes" it as a HTML response. It is relatively easy to see the current results so you know exactly what XML you are processing.
Presentation is handled by XSL. Lenya provides several standard navigation elements such as menus (tree and tabbed) and breadcrumbs. Use XSL to place them in the HTML. You could use XSL for formatting, but most Lenya sites use CSS.
Form processing is usually handled by JavaScript (although simple stuff can be done with just the XMAPs and XSL.) The JavaScript typically uses the Java classes: all the declarations are "var", and the class names are prefixed with "Packages.".
Occasionally you use XSP as an XML Generator. XSP uses Java within XML. I use an XSP of 8 lines to add today's date to the XML.
You can program in Java. You have access to all the code in Cocoon and Lenya, and most applications can use the code provided by those projects, but you can write Java for that one thing you just must have.
CMS Made Simple (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:CMS Made Simple (Score:2)
PHPwcms is excellent (Score:2, Interesting)
That said what CMS you choose - open source or otherwise - is entirely predicated on the project. Got a community site? Take a look at Drupal or Mambo, maybe something smaller if it works. Need a small content site? Check out PHPwcms, CMS Made Simple, or LucidCMS. Someone else mentioned Etomite, but Etomite is quirky, visually unsophisticated (the admin tool looks a little garbagy), and lacks some of the flexibility provided by other tools.
PHPwcms' management of content as small objects that can be easily called or reused in secondary locations (allowing you to have a repository of "global" content was a huge argument in favor of it for my project. Its only major weakness is the lack of robust entitlement capabilities... its been on the books for a year, but no one has developed it further... you can only set-up an all Admins or vry weak content administrators (who can't edit content).
-rt
My Plug For Geeklog (Score:3, Informative)
I use is for the base of many commercial web sites, utilizing the WYSISYG (FCKeditor) page editor and the news manager. It provides an excellent frame work for developing sites on top of, especially if you need a basic website with some extras thrown in.
It also runs sites such as http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net] and http://worldmusiccentral.org/ [worldmusiccentral.org]
By changing the templates or config to eliminate links to the parts you do not need, (example, links pages, polls, etc), you can use the user login, edit, and admin parts to allow your web clients to edit their own pages, saving you the trouble and saving them money in the long run. The templates are completely separate from the code, allowing you to design graphics for the site separate from the code.
Updates are pretty easy if you keep your custom code out of the main install, a process that is pretty easy if you put your code in lib-custom.php. The code is well written and clear enough for a person with basic php knowledge to hack if they like
The software is all php/mysql and run efficiently on most linux shared hosts. There are also a wide variety of plugins.
The forum and developers are responsive to support requests.
just my two cents from a fan of geeklog,
it is also available for demo at http://opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com]
"Best" (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are some things that greatly helped me:
There is NO awesome templating system. If you have web designers and you have programmers, don't expect something to drop into place with little hassle. We have been deploying html + mod_perl applications using a simple in-house templating system. This is actually elegantly simple compared to some of the systems I looked at. It's all very relative to the staff you have. Personally a JSP taglib solution works best for us (so far)
There is no one "best" system. People claiming X or Y is clearly superior are either not deploying CMS for a group of users, lack experience as a developer/designer/user, or are just crazy. I know of a Major Company(tm) who management told to the developers use X system for some inscrutable reason after reviewing a lead dev's evaluation list. While on paper X is great, there are a few very annoying problems for the template designers, and they don't have the mandate to go modify the code, which is open.
Part of the evaluation MUST include every level of person using the product. Developers,designers,managment (reports n such), and end users (archetypal secretaries). I tried to let people know what was happening a few times a week with my evaluations, keeping a blog would be great maybe. Other people accepting your choice is super-duper-key. I got some great feedback from docs on a few occasions that helped me steer my choice.
Get a clear set of requirements and wish list items established early on. CMS systems can be minimal or very very comprehensive, it's easy to get lost in nth's implementation of webDAV or whatever.
Blog systems may have elements of CMS in them, but are not (usually) full blown CMS systems. CMSmatrix.org and other great places for data lump all the products together. In my opinion there are about a dozen open source products that are clearly way beyond the blog.
Last piece of advice which you won't hear very often: if you think you may not need a CMS solution you probably don't! If you have a single site, with some updating you need to do frequently or maybe you want to have a team of designers working on it, check out subversion first and maybe that alone will give you enough of what you want. If you just need templating check out apache's tapestry or cocoon projects.
Go Native among the Users (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so true. End user input is critical, they will make or break the project.
My dad (rest his soul) was lead programmer (maybe the only programmer, I dunno) for the Star Tribune newspaper, back in the seventies. I was a teenager at the time, he taught me about For-Next loops and so on. Along with the coding, he emphasized:
The smart programmer
(a) Listens and nods his head while Management says "We want this, We want that"
(b) Sits down with end users (secretaries, etc.) for a while, every day, staying out of their way but watching them work, and asking the occasional question;
(c) Figures out what the end users really want, need, will accept;
(d) Codes for the end user, then spins the thing so Management thinks they're getting what they (foolishly) asked for.
Dad called this "going native among the users" (he took his degree in anthropology).
-kgj
Re:Go Native among the Users (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Go Native among the Users (Score:3, Interesting)
The most critical feature for our choice of a CMS was the interface for the content editors. My customer is a small company. The content editor was basically a secretary with few technical skills. I could program anything, but the editing interface had to be simple to use. (The second critical feature was the price. Part of the reason we won the contract was the budget did not include any commercial software.)
We chose Apache Lenya. It comes with two editors: Kupu and BitFlux, and there are several others that integrate easily. We chose to standardize on Kupu because the interface looks like MSWord. (It also has a "View Source" button so I can fix whatever the editor breaks.) There were a few support calls in the first month, but a one page cheat sheet solved that. A new editor took over, and the only support call was for a copy of the cheat sheet.
software and empathy (Score:2)
Agreed, this has been my own experience as a developer.
In my original post I poked fun at Management, but really the same applies to me -- at the outset of a project, my own preconceptions, illusions etc. get in the way.
It takes time (very preferably face time) with users (and management) to really figure out the score. Software is linguistic, but it's not all symbolic
As with most things, I suppose -- done with love in one's heart, it turns out better.
-kgj
The only perfect CMS (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The only perfect CMS (Score:2, Insightful)
DotNetNuke (Score:2)
Determine Criteria Before Selecting Tool. (Score:5, Informative)
A few starter questions:
1. What content do I have or expect to have? (web pages? documents? discussion forums? image galleries?)
2. Where does this content come from? (departments? users? myself? Internet sources? databases? third-party apps?)
3. How should the system manage this content? (workflows? editors? fine-grained access control?)
4. How should this content be displayed? (xhtml/css? pdf? print/paper? cell phones? xml? rss?)
5. How much separation of content and design do you require?
6. How extensible should the CMS be? (in-house development? modular? out-sourced development? completely opensource?)
7. What are the administrative requirements? (*nix? mysql/postgresql? apache? php? python?)
8. What is the anticipated load and can the CMS manage that? (quite different from a 5,000 hits/day site vs 20,000,000 hits/day)
9. What is the estimated lifetime of the website? What changes to the site are forseeable and should be considered?
Assuming your doing something more than a personal blog site, most likely pre-existing workflow processes and organizational resources already exist and those should be analyzed when making a CMS choice.
Don't get overly focused on initial setup times. The cost of administration, development and resources will far outweigh the initial setup costs on all but the smallest of sites.
Re:Determine Criteria Before Selecting Tool. (Score:2)
Modern CMS are all web-based. Even Lotus Notes provides much of its functionality through a browser. (Lotus Notes is probably the oldest CMS still being developed, but it is proprietary and commercial. I mention it as the baseline that all younger CMSes are trying to reproduce.) Any decent CMS software should handle discussion forums (now called blogs), and file repositories (for image galleries, but also PDFs and other files.)
2. Where does this content come from? (departments? users? myself? Internet sources? databases? third-party apps?)
Most content is input by users. During setup, there is usually a batch migration. A good platform should be able to pull data from other programs. Lotus Notes has LEI to transfer data between most programs. Apache Lenya can pull XML from any URL.
3. How should the system manage this content? (workflows? editors? fine-grained access control?)
I think security should be a top priority for all software (but do not tell MS.) Lotus Notes has the ultimate system; total security at every level. Apache Lenya can set security on each content file; if you need different security on different parts of a document, cut the document into pieces and let Lenya put them together again.
4. How should this content be displayed? (xhtml/css? pdf? print/paper? cell phones? xml? rss?)
All CMS platforms should be able to output any format. Convert to XML (or in Lenya's case, store everything as XML), then apply a stylesheet.
5. How much separation of content and design do you require?
The usual. Do not let the end users touch the design. Developers should not need to touch the content. Only the smallest sites created for job security of the developers would mix content and design.
6. How extensible should the CMS be? (in-house development? modular? out-sourced development? completely opensource?)
This depends on who you are. As a consultant, sometimes I lock the code, sometimes the customer gets everything.
Lotus Notes is extremely extensible. I can give applications to the customer. We can hide the code; it depends on the contract.
Apache Lenya is completely open source. Everything is readable, and everything is extensible. The only method to hide the code is to host the software ourselves.
7. What are the administrative requirements? (*nix? mysql/postgresql? apache? php? python?)
Lotus Notes and Apache Lenya run on *nix and MSWindows. Both have easy installers for MSWindows. Both are pretty easy to install on *nux. Both can easily be proxied by Apache httpd. Lotus Notes includes a proprietary document-based database. Apache Lenya 1.2 uses XML on the file system. Apache Lenya 1.4 will use Jackrabbit, Apache's Java Content Repository (JCR) for XML.
CMS tend to low quantity, usually less than 10,000 documents. If you need more, the content usually needs to be segregated better. Lotus Notes 5 performs well to 50,000 records; newer releases can handle more. Apache Lenya 1.2 uses the file system, so should handle very large quantities. Apache Lenya 1.4 will use Jackrabbit; I know the developers are performance testing with over 10,000 children of one document, so it should scale very well.
8. What is the anticipated load and can the CMS manage that? (quite different from a 5,000 hits/day site vs 20,000,000 hits/day)
I have websites on both Lotus Notes and Apache Lenya that receive 5000 hits/day. For 20,000,000 hits/day, you will use caching servers in front of the CMS. The CMS is for managing the content; nobody edits 20,000,000 documents in one day.
9. What is the estimated lifetime of the website? What changes to the site are forseeable and should be considered?
Always plan for forever. All software has a tendency to be used long after any initial expectations. If the software
Content Management (Score:2)
Most Open Source CMSs aren't much more than blogs or forums on steroids. Very few deal with real content management problems. I still haven't found one that I'm crazy about. I'm trying to work with Apache Lenya [apache.org] right now but it takes a lot of work. Zope/Plone is similar. The power is there for both of them but the initial learning curve is steep.
Oh, and my biggest pet peeve for any CMS site (or any site) is unreadable URLs. It's OK for some applications but for a site where people will be returning to the same page frequently, it should have a sane URL.
Not very in depth (Score:2)
There's also a lot of difference between types of CMS, from blog-level packages to easy site builders and Mambo/Joomla-esque packages which are missing any real enterprise-ready features such as versioning, workflow, and fine-grained access control (more advanced than Unix permissions please!), to mid-level packages which vary greatly within themselves as to their focus (marketing/SEO, publishing, or traditional content/document management), to high-end enterprise packages. There's also a big difference between a CMS that includes a content server/content publisher and one that doesn't. An easy comparison of these in the open source world would be Midgard vs any of the Midgard-based CMS packages. The no-content-server packages are more flexible, but require a lot more implementation effort as well.
Really, it comes down to defining your goals. And often people find that some commercial CMS still solves them better than the open source ones, while many find the opposite to be true. Different goals. (note: I'm the lead developer for the open source Sitellite CMS [sitellite.org] that also has a commercial counterpart -- dual-licensed).
A few articles I found interesting related to CMS selection:
Tire Kicking and CMS Shopping [econtentmag.com]
Will your chosen CMS vendor go bust? [steptwo.com.au]
Re:Not very in depth (Score:2)
I tried Sitellite for a while and was impressed that it was easy to set up and get going. But, one of the deal breakers for me was the URLs. They just don't make sense. I consider URLs to be an important usability issue. Otherwise, it's a pretty slick CMS.
Re:Not very in depth (Score:2)
Not sure what you mean though that the URLs don't make sense... They're SEO-friendly (ie.
Here's some info on the full workings of our URL scheme:
http://www.sitellite.org/index/tutorials-story-ac
Cheers,
Lux
Re:Not very in depth (Score:2)
That URL is a good example of what I don't like :) Specifically:
In my experience, users read URLs -- even novices. URLs should reflect how content on the site is organized especially on sites have a lot of static content.
ZDnet.au (Score:2)
It's interesting that the Australian publication has so much Open Source coverage.
chucking the lot (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the logic:
1. A very basic site (read: a blog) with a very basic CMS is generally not hard to set up.
2. The technical issue: as sites get more complicated, the level of sophistication required by the user to install and maintain them increases. (In the extreme case, I submit Xaraya [xaraya.org], a CMS so complicated that trying to create a site as simple as "I just want a page with our contact information on it!" becomes an exercise capable of inducing intra-cranial hemmorage). Additionally, any templating system required grows more and more arcane, until it is essentially indistingushable from the actual programming language in which it's written.For example: the easiest way of getting a Drupal [drupal.org] site laid out and usable quickly is to use the PHPTemplate plugin - in other words, to just write PHP code. David Heinemeier Hansson, no stranger to controversy, went a step further than this and labeled general-purpose CMSes "pipe dreams," [loudthinking.com] and said "I believe the time has come to mark a date in the not too distant future for celebrating the death of the general-purpose content management system." (Not like he doesn't have his own thing to push [rubyonrails.com], but that's as may be. See also Jeff Veen's frustration with open source CMSes [veen.com]
3. The social issue: as the content management system grows more and more complicated, they become more and more intractable for the average end user. Responsibility for day to day site updates is pushed to the IT department, which is absolutely not where it belongs. (Once again, I give you the one, the only, Jeffrey Veen [adaptivepath.com].)
CMSes suck, universally (Score:2)
If you're a special person that believes pain is necessary by all means use a full-fledged CMS for your site.
Good multilingual support? (Score:2)
* UTF-8 everywhere.
* Templates/autogenerated strings are i18nable.
* Able to i18n all user-created content. System understands the relationship between alternative versions of posts, etc.
* Able to choose default language through HTTP content negotiation (get the browser's default).
* Able to override browser default with cookies.
* System use nice, strict XHTML and mark all multilingual content with the proper xml:lang attribute.
Am I the only one who cares about that?
Re:Good multilingual support? (Score:2)
Re:Good multilingual support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only does it have multilingual support, the workplace is pretty well localized (english, german, japanese, etc)
It is a java application, so if you want all this in php, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content (Score:2, Informative)
Another article on this topic:
Linux Journal: Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content Management Systems [linuxjournal.com]
Geeklog! (Score:2)
When setting up my geocaching website [cachegurus.com] I evaluated about 10 CMS systems, including Drupal, phpWebSite, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, TYPO3 & Xoops.
In the end I found that Geeklog was the one with the most intuitive (to me) templating system and was the easiest to add your own code to. I found that most CMS systems are great out-of-the box solutions for doing what THEY want you to do, but adding custom modules and functionality is a nightmare!!
I wasn't expecting geeklog to be as good as it was!
Sheesh, I sound like a fanboi...sorry!!
Re:Dokuwiki ! (Score:4, Insightful)
How to install SomeProject - This article is a stub, but you can help by writing it!
No thanks.
Re:Avoid PHP for Web-accessible CMS installations. (Score:3, Insightful)
Security is a function of the developer, not the language. To be sure, some languages have inherent security features that can help, but if you honestly think it's that much more difficult to muck up a Perl program than a PHP program, I've got some land near Baghdad you might be interested in purchasing.
Security does depend on the language. (Score:2)
Many languages offer security benefits over others. C is often vulnerable to buffer overflows, while the runtimes of other languages explicitly check for such issues.
Now let's focus on PHP. When you consider where it is mostly used, the often hostile World Wide web, one would expect security to be very high on its list of concerns. But alas, that is often not the case. Go check out the many security bulletins issues by various parties. PHP more often than not does suffer from serious security-related issues. When it comes to constructing serious web sites, that is just plain unacceptable.
Re:Avoid PHP programmers for CMS (Score:2, Insightful)
While PHP is a truly awful language that strives against every programming principle and the very act of writingin maintainable code, the problem is not the language.
The problem is the sort of people that PHP as a language was designed for. It was designed for non-programmers and kids to easily hack together vaguely working web applications for pocket money or sweets. It excels at this, cast your eye around the uncountable fray of PHP programming forums and the people using them. (Witness also that people outside this set avoid PHP with great vigour).
However, people who like PHP are most definitely not the people you want to have writing a CMS that holds actual data. MySource is a great example of this. Because the people who designed MySource are basically idiots, a site with 5000-odd pages comes up against issues where on each page render every child page (And its children) has to be individually checked for access rights so the side menu can be generated. As a result, for the above-mentioned 5000-page site, on a fast 2-processor server with gobs of memory, serving a single page takes about 3 seconds.
3 whole seconds.
PHP programmers are the sort of people who write these ridiculous piece of code, and leave the issue scattered through the whole source tree without any hint of abstraction so that fixing it becomes a major rewrite. PHP programmers are the sort of people who release a 'commercial grade' CMS without having ever tested it with 5000 pages.
PHP programmers are great for small websites paid in sweets, but don't use anything they've touched for a CMS.
Re:Avoid PHP programmers for CMS (Score:2, Insightful)
PHP is a fine language if you're a strict programmer. People, by and large, aren't strict programmers: And thus you get things like older versions of Mysource Classic. Even completing second year computer science should expose you to enough good practices to identify badly-written, poorly-scaling code with poor abstraction.
Unfortunately there's not a lot of good programmers out there and they're working on rather large PHP projects - which leaves us unfortunate sods having to maintain their stuff when it doesn't quite scale the way it was intended.
Re:Avoid PHP for Web-accessible CMS installations. (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically, you have some well-intentioned but not experienced person with a good idea, and they sit down and hack together an application while learning PHP at the same time. Do they even know the definition of "SQL Injection Vulnerability" - probably not.
And a lot of the issues that I see on places like bugtraq are application specific, and I usually haven't even heard of the app. "The PHP app, Lyrus Extreme version 3.2 has a remote exploit." In your head, you subconsciously tally that up as "one more PHP problem" and if someone is gathering statistics on PHP problems by searching bugtraq for the string PHP, this one will be counted. But really, it's not a PHP problem, it's just an amateur programmer.
OpenSourceCMS.com covers only few systems (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately OpenSourceCMS.com only showcases the lightweight CMSs, usually categorized under the low-end collaborative portals label.
Paul Everitt from Zope has a very good blog post about Open Source CMS positioning [weblogs.com]
Re:cms (Score:2)
Re:Non open-source CMS no good ? (Score:2, Informative)
I understand what you are saying, but there are other options instead of setting up your own server running Linux, Apache, MySQL, Php, etc. There are many ISP's and webhosting companies that will do almost all of the work for you. I worked with a friend to setup a website for our chruch and our ISP uses a web based admin interface that installed Joomla, configured MySQL for us. All we did was click "install joomla". Additionally, checking that interface periodically give us the opportunity to install updates with one click.
Not that everyone here needs that much help, but it sure beats having to maintain servers for friends, associates, or organizations who don't have the time or skills to do it themselves.
Re:How about static content (Score:2)
Absolutely! Nothing beats good old XML data, with interchangeable XSL files to generate static content of any kind! I used to prefer pure ASCII text files, but (sparingly) throwing in some XML structure improved usability quite a lot. You also don't have to dump everything (XML, Stylesheets, Images etc...) into MYSQL or ZODB -- even though it could be done if need be and the infrastructure permits it.
Re:How about static content (Score:2)
Re:Trying not to have to write my own! (Score:2)
Re:Trying not to have to write my own! (Score:2)