Which Content Management System CMS ??

hi

I am a volunteer for healthwrights trying to implement a system where people from around the world can update a website with stories of helping people in developing countries. i need a content management system that is capable of letting a writer input a story, then an editor approve the story if the editor likes it. once the editor approves it, it is published to the website. this story can be associated to a particular category that is defined by the user.

Ultimately this is a good collaboration site that manages files, pictures, articles, etc. If you know of a good free open source solution, I would appreciate your experience with one.

Any help you could provide would be invaluable to our nonprofit.

Thank you
Manu

About HW:
HealthWrights is a non-profit organization committed to advancing the health, basic rights, social equality, and self-determination of disadvantaged persons and groups. Guided by David Werner, renowned author ('Where There Is No Doctor', 'Questioning the Solution') and social activist, the non-profit is developing a knowledge-sharing tool for an international audience. The online resource, titled Politics of Health Knowledge Network, aims to bring together voices from around the world, in a showcase of case studies, published data and reference materials to provide the 'big picture' on policy and health work.

Hi Manu.

I'm Rob, and I'm a business analyst currently looking at a content management system purchase here at Compumentor. I think I can help you.

Realistically, with the requirements you've listed, almost any open source content management system will do. I ran into this same situation here: our requirements were so ordinary that pretty much any CMS would meet them. Open source systems in general tend to focus on the sort of informal collaborative features that you've described.

We got around that problem by looking at other factors, such as how well does the CMS fit our existing technical skillset? How much support is available? How well will the development commmunity work with us?

There are two open source CMS lists that I know of:[ULIST]
[*]Open Source Content Management System List includes information about various systems, and[/*]

[*]Open Source CMS includes much the same information, as well as demos of each CMS.[/*][/ULIST]

There's also an email listserv about CMS:
CMS List

Of the open source systems I looked at, Drupal remains on my short list. This is because Drupal is the only one that I can find that works with MS SQL Server database.

A few generalities about the open source world:
[ULIST][*]the support community behind the open source project is as, if not more, important than the code itself; unless you intend to do a lot of development and bugfixing yourselves, check the pulse of the community - how many people are involved? how active are they? do they respond to your questions?[/*]

[*]expect the systems to be a little less 'user-friendly' than commercial systems. You won't find a lot of top-notch documentation, and system-level administration is usually very technical.[/*]

[*]Professional (for fee) integrators and implementors often spring up around open source projects; if you can find a team of these that you like and is near you, that would be a compelling factor.[/*][/ULIST]
So, in summary, unless you have very esoteric needs, the system itself is less important than the variables around it, so feel free to make your decision based on company fit, location, temperment, attentiveness, technological fit, and so on.

Hope that helps, and if you have any further questions, feel free to post them here.

Rob Prideaux

APC ActionApps is an open source CMS developed by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to help NGOs publish and share information online. More information is available at http://www.apc.org/actionapps/ , including a basic interactive demonstration.

Ann

Those websites you suggest are very helpful. Yet with over 25 open source systems highlighted, it's quite overwhelming to know where to start. Does anyone have a short list of say, the 5 best systems for newbies?

Also, I'm assuming that most commerical CMS systems are priced way beyond the reach of most non-profits? For example, I recently looked into the Tomoye Simplify system, but balked when the sales rep told me the price was $50,000!

Thoughts?

Mark Smithivas
Independent tech volunteer
Chicago, IL

For a fantastic resource we recommend http://www.opensourcecms.com/

The site has user reviews and you can even view and test the admin functions of many CMS including:
AWF
bes-cms
DCP-Portal
Drupal
E-Xoops
e107
eNvolution
ezContents
Geeklog
LDU
Mambo
MD-Pro
myPHPNuke
Ovidentia
PHP-Nuke
phpSlash
phpWebSite
phpWebThings
PHPX
Postnuke
PrattCMS
Props
vportal-S
xaraya
XOOPS



Best of luck!
http://www.enonprofits.org

Lens2000:

It's true, 25 systems is overwhelming. I started with about that number, and researching them to any degree of detail is exhausting, and really, nonproductive.

In all likelihood, almost any of them will probably do for you, because they're all content management systems. As I noted above, know generally what you need. I'll put it another way:
[ulist]Know your platform: your database, your webservers, your operating systems. Do a quick pass on those 25 to see which work with your platform.
[/ulist][ulist]Know your needs: if you have some nontypical needs, identify them. During that quick pass above, see if any of the 25 meet those needs.
[/ulist][ulist]Just decide: use your instincts. During that quick pass, if any really excite you, keep them. If any give you the willies, toss them.
[/ulist]
I'd say you could go through the 25 systems on the list in about four hours, and end up with your own five. From there, you can start to look in greater detail, and if you discover that none on your short list fit, it's pretty easy to go back and pick five more (with a greater understanding of the process).

To the question of commercial systems, the price range varies greatly. The one you mention is in the middle...the high side is about a half a million, including integration costs.

But the good news is that the low side is actually sub 10K. Having no idea of your needs, I can only tell you about the prices for the following products.
[ulist]NetCorps is a nonprofit consulting firm whose Web Management System can be as low as $10,000[/ulist]
[ulist]LogiCreate is a commercial system that runs 1500-5000[/ulist]
[ulist]Community Enterprise is another nonprofit offering that costs 7-15K[/ulist]
[ulist]There are a number of hosted solutions (the company hosts the CMS and your website) which are usually cheaper, but offer less flexibility. You might investigate these. (Atomz comes to mind; I stopped looking at hosted solutions early on, so I can't remember many of them. If you want to know more, let me know, and I'll dig through my records)[/ulist]


Of course, the 'sale price' is one thing, and you'll have to get into integration costs, add-on modules, maintenance contracts, and so on with your sales representatives. The price of the software is just a starting point.

Finally, many commercial companies will offer non-profits a discount, or even a donation. It's often hard to get a discount or donation once you're entrenched in the sales process (because the salespeople think of you as a 'sale'), so if you can't afford the system without a donation, make your initial contact at the company someone who can arrange such a thing, and then start working with sales.

There are some big suggestions here, so I figured I'd offer up a more modest solution. Check out Moveable Type. It's $150 for a commercial license which is quite a steal for such a robust collaborative publishing system.

Here's a brief list of features:
[*]Support for multiple weblogs/journals[/*]
[*]Comments [/*]
[*]Categories[/*]
[*]Multiple Authors[/*]
[*]Trackback[/*]
[*]Public Search Engine[/*]
[*]Pre-date or post-date entries[/*]
[*]Publish, Draft, or Delete posts[/*]

Plus, MoveableType has very active user community, so you'd never be short helpful advice or support.

I spent quite some time looking for myself and I decided on Plone http://www.plone.org/ I had read reviews that stated that you can't purchase a better CMS and yet Plone is free. I also got an Mac OSX version from http://www.tyrell.com.
A great example of a plone site is http://www.aarp.org There is a great list of site examples at the plone site.

I spent quite some time looking for myself and I decided on Plone http://www.plone.org/ I had read reviews that stated that you can't purchase a better CMS and yet Plone is free. I also got an Mac OSX version from http://www.tyrell.com.
A great example of a plone site is http://www.aarp.org There is a great list of site examples at the plone site.

I can say that Postnuke is a great CMS program. I use it and is quite simple to setup. And the modules for postnuke are great forum, picture gallery, user groups, submit news, mail all users, topic section, article section, and much more. With a little know how you can go a long way with it.

For a less complicated solution, I use firstchair from www.dock72.com - but our developers have also installed what is known as a "newspaper" style CMS for two clients - I don'tknow what the name is, but if you email me I'll be happy to share it with you

This isn't an ad, so I won't say more -

for more information, email me at stevef@pwpllc.com or call 570 237 0124

Projects with a Purpose is a multi-media services company dedicated to nonprofits. The mission of our company is the mission of the world. Peace. Prosperity. Success. Only we define success as making a living helping sustainable causes and projects succeed. Everything we do is examined with that goal in mind...does it support the cause of sustainability?

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I am a start up nonprofit planning to launch a Web site next year. Since we don't have anyone on board initially to deal with technical aspects of an open source content management system, we are exploring application service provider models. I see you mentioned Atomz and said you had looked at others. Can you give me some additional names to check out that are application service providers (ASP, subscriber based) I would appreciate it. I would like to find out if they will be cost prohibitive for us. Thank you.

Although, I haven't used this service, it looks like a decent CMS. Its from www.bcentral.com

link to sample site:
http://accounting.wss.bcentral.com/default.aspx

Although not strictly speaking Open Source, a very affordable and flexible web based alternative is Manila from Userland. Working on the back end with Zope, you have a lot of tools for posting almost anything, maintaining message boards, documenting organization lists, etc., etc. See www.userland.com .
TONY WHITE

A complete and ready to use solution is here http://www.esitesbuilder.com

You can get more then just only professional CMS system. Professional-quality templates, complete and ready-to-use web sites with ecommerce, ad-free hosting and free domain registration.

This solutions is perfect for non-profits, self-entrepreneurs, individual users and small bussiness