Content Management System

[Sir MMPD Radick]

I have been wanting to bring this up for a while, but I have been too busy, and I am still too busy but I wish to bring it up anyway.
What is everyones' preference on using a content management system for the front end?

I think it would save alot of coding on my part to avoid reinventing the wheel when it is already right in front of me.

I know of two popular management systems... Joomla and Nuke... I am sure there are others and that is why i am bringing this topic up in part because there may be a better one that I am unaware of.
Please vote which one you would perfer and post why you made this choice.

Or if you do not want either post the alternative.

Also, this management system will be seperate from the forums, in part because if forums are integrated it creates a whole new mess for future upgrades.
That being said down the road I will need some more help from you guys in the graphics department, as I have no talent in this area.

[Skyfaller]

I don't know much about CMS ... I only use a text editor to create static HTML sites. Usually, they're quite ugly, and I don't know how to fill them.

[klgr]

Hi!

PHPNuke and Joomla are well known, but if you prefer an easy to use yet powerful system I would suggest Drupal.

http://drupal.org/

This CMS is well suited for building a simple website, but furthermore it offers many features aimed at community building, like collaboration tools, weblogs, forums, and so on ...

The basic features are not so overwhelming, you can use "Pages" or "Stories" (pages which can have comments), but there are a lot of plug-ins, so-called modules, the webmaster can install and use, see:

http://drupal.org/project/Modules

With Drupal you will be able to bring a small website online in very short time. On the other hand, large corporate sites use Drupal, for example:

- http://www.ubuntu.com/
- http://www.popsci.com/
- http://research.yahoo.com/
- http://www.mtv.co.uk/
- http://myplay.com/

Other references can be found at:

http://drupal.org/cases

and

http://drupal.org/success-stories

There a many CMS out there, but when it comes to code quality (php source code and html output) and ease of use, I consider Drupal one of the best.

[Sir MMPD Radick]

I must admit i forgot about drupal.
I tried it in the past though, and I really was not impressed.
I will add it to the list though.

[klgr]

Hi!

A few more words about PHPNuke/Joomla/Drupal:

First of all I'm no expert in using one of these CMS, most of the time I work with and develop for a proprietary Content Management System, created for in-house use.

But I'm currently evaluating different OpenSource-Systems, and so far Drupal is my favourite.

At least three OS CMS Systems are widely in use at the moment: Typo3, Drupal and Joomla.

Typo3 is a great system - if you plan to create an enterprise-scale website. It has tons of features and there is probably nothing you can't do with Typo3. But IMHO you can do about nothing without a training seminar or reading 1000+ pages books. It's just too complicated for "normal" use.

Drupal or Joomla ..

I tried it in the past though, and I really was not impressed.

That is not surprising, I guess. As someone has pointed out in his blog [1]:

Joomla provides a good first impression, which wanes the deeper you dig. Drupal, on the other hand, provides a poor first impression, which improves as you dig deeper.

As far as I've found out, Drupal offers better PHP code quality, stability and also better, standard-conform HTML output. It wins when it comes to content-management (not exactly nonrelevant for a content management system, I think), for example you can nest pages like:

- Mech Software
-- Mech Editors
--- Windows
---- Stable Apps
---- Apps in Development
--- Linux
---- Stable Apps
... and so on

which seems (to my surprise) not to be possible with Joomla.

Also, Drupal's templates are very flexible, on the one hand you are not limited to simple placeholders, on the other hand there is no need to learn a new templating language, Drupal uses simple HTML and PHP for templating.

Drupal also offers a lot of community related features in the basic install, like stories (pages with comments), forums and alike.

Another point is the much more granular access control, which gives you more flexibility to control who is allowed to do what on your site.

I don't want to bash Joomla. Both systems are Open Source and have a large development community. But from my point of view (as a webdesigner and developer) Drupal has more advantages than disadvantages.

There is much discussion on the internet about these two CMS, just google for example for: "drupal vs. joomla" and you'll find a lot of useful information.

There is also a (bit old - from 2006) series of articles written by the folks at IBM:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/o ... index.html

which might be useful.

Concerning PHPNuke: I don't know it, never used. But as far as you can read in forums and even the wikipedia: it seems that is has at least several serious security-related flaws. And if you google for "PHPNuke joomla" or "PHPNuke drupal", a considerable large amout of hits is about moving from PHPNuke to Joomla/Drupal, I've not found a page about moving to PHPNuke. And - quite interesting - the German PHPNuke website (phpnuke.de) seems to use Drupal ...

Best Regards,
Klaus

[1] http://blogs.radified.com/2007/05/conte ... rupal.html

[Sir MMPD Radick]

alright i think you sold me; I will try it again soon as the semester completes.
So klgr, do you play netmech? or how long have ya played?

[klgr]

Hi!

So klgr, do you play netmech?

Not yet, but I will try to get it running next weekend or so ...

or how long have ya played?

I've played MechWarrior 1 and 2 a lot as they were new ... offline of course ... a long time ago ...

I'm looking forward to be in a Mech's cockpit again ... given that my vista machine isn't failing to run the software ...

Best Regards,
Klaus