Which Content Management System CMS ??

I recommend going with webEdition CMS. They have a ready to go system and easy to use are well they have a nice live demo of the full bone system plus it's the best price in twon i been using them for the last year it great it's so much easyer to update my site's

check them out at.
http://www.webedition-cms.com/

our site http://www.operationsamahan.org use XOOPS http://www.xoops.org

quite easy to setup very clean, lightweight (compared to postnuke or phpnuke). I also once used phpwebsite and it's also simple but somehow give me problems with the pugins.

We set up a portal for our school using php-nuke 7.3 -- www.stfrancishighschool.com/nuke -- fairly quickly. As a CMS, php-nuke is well supported by an active community and has many add-ons available, but it takes some technical know-how to keep it running smoothly. Familiarity with HTML and a little bit of php helps.

There are also security add-ons, which I would recommend to keep your site from being hacked.

I'm the owner of a company which provides a CMS- application services provider, so it only lives on my server. I provide the web site hosting and email services for nonprofits ONLY. The cost is minimal at $35 per month (incuding support), usually only $200 set up. The tools all work with your current design, or I have some templates we can modify to suit your organization. I currently have 55 NPO clients in 18 states. There are many great features, but you should look at my web site for more details.

I'll add another endorsement for Plone (http://www.plone.org). I use it for my intranet site, and will be moving my external web site to it later this year.

Plone is an open source project that doesn't have the limitations of most others: it has extensive documentation, including a published book ("The Plone Book" - available on Amazon). It has a large and active developer community, and there are third-party consultants who can set it up and customize it for you.

We use Postnuke for a CMS. It has a permission feature that is perfect for allowing people from all over the world to add content to your site. Basically what happens is, (we do this on our site) you make a group of users called reporters. Then when they login their menu has a link different to it that no one else has access to. This link then takes them to a page where they can add a story. It's all automatic and very nice.

Postnuke has extensive 3rd Party addons, and forums that are very helpful for every aspect of the software. It is Php based for an apache server, simple to set up, and very flexible. If you would like access to the site to test it for your needs I can set you up as a reporter or grant you full administration to a test site.

Rick Blanton
www.horsetown.org

I've also been looking for a *web-page* mgmt system. I get stalled by the fact the CMS people are always talking so esoterically that I soon am snowed over.

There seems to be a large gap in the middle between very simple systems designed for bloggers, and massive CMS engines suitable for CNN or such.

I don't need objects, skins or such. I have pages, I need a system that allows the import of those, has some template scheme to keep them shaped up, finds bad/orphan links, has private previewing and such.

It's possible plone might do this, but it's hard to get there midst "Acquisition is a Zope mechanism for inheriting object properties. Zope Object hierarchy is built using Acquisition, and makes heavy use of it." wording....

Is there an opensource WPMS that's Linux-based and handles large [100-1000 static pages] sites easily?

We too will probably be looking into a CMS.

Any reason for why Macromedia Contribute 3 was never mentioned? Is there an obvious reason that I have overlooked?

Seems like the nuke wins the lead. Why not find/start a poll of "Top 10 CMS"

I work with NativeWeb (http://www.nativeweb.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to using the internet to disseminate information from and about Indigenous peoples around the world. I am working specifically on a project to help organizations develop a presence on the internet (see http://www.nativeweb.org/hosted/). I have built many of these sites myself, and almost all of them are very basic. I am looking at installing a system so that people in the organizations with a minimum amount of training & aptitude can update information themselves on the sites. It seems that a CMS system would do this, but I am running into a lot of problems. Many of the CMS systems seem to be designed around a community rather than a brochure format (which is what we really need at this point--publishing info rather than discussion boards, etc.). Many of the groups I work with are in Latin America, so multi-lingual support (esp. Spanish) is critical.

Our server is on a hosting system that uses cpanel, so the easiest systems to install are Drupal, Geeklog, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, and Xoops. I've played around with a couple of these and people here and elsewhere rave about how easy they are to use, but I am having a lot of trouble getting my head wrapped around the mindset of the people who designed them. It seems like these sites should be highly modifiable so that each site looks unique (or at least that is what other people manage to do), but my sites just look like they come out of the box. I feel like I'm really put in a straightjacket in terms of what the designer wanted the site to look like. For example, see:

http://www.conaie.org/
http://www.ethnicityrace.org/

I've wasted so much time trying to figure out how these CMS systems run that it would have been much easier for me to design the pages myself in HTML, but that does not help me achieve my goal of implementing a system where someone can login & upload new content w/o knowing HTML (ideally similar to the box I'm typing this in to right now--with the bar across letting me bold stuff, etc.)

So, I'm looking for suggestions how to kick myself up to the next level in terms of figuring out how to install and configure something that organizations can use to update info easily on their website w/o knowing HTML. I have RTFM and still get stuck, so maybe it is just me!?

Thanks! marc.

Good question Marc--I think a lot of people get to where you are and get stuck. I think the key is to invest some time in applying graphic design skills to the template structures of the cms sites you're working with. It requires learning some css, getting to know the skin or template structure carefully, and figuring out the tips & tricks to get beyond the cookie cutter looks. You have to think differently for each design to achieve different looks, and it can take more time than you might think it should. A good example are all but the top website shown on http://www.onenw.org/bin/page.cfm/secid/178 , which are sites all built with plone.

Plone is GREAT!!!

BUT, if you have your site hosted on a *nix, Apache, MySQL, with Perl or PHP, then I would suggest Mambo as the way to go. Most web hosts offer this package for less than $200 a year. Most web hosts will charge you more for plone/zope hosting (just as they tend to charge more for hosting on a windows box).

Mambo server (mamboserver.org) is a powerful cms that is FREE and good enough for Porche in Brazil and Mitsubishi in Venezuela.

The only reservation about mambo is you will have to dedicate time to learn the structure of content. I would also suggest finding someone to make you a couple themes. But if you want something fast, easy to install, and very scaleable, go with Mambo.

Good luck.

Marc,
Great questions. You might also want to consider how a system will allow you to design and develop different looking sites. As you saw, some of the tools constrict you to a certain look and feel and are difficult to get out of.

I too think Plone has a forte in this regard for its use of Web standards. If you have a general format of the brochure sites you are producing, you could develop a design. By leveraging the CSS code, you could easily tweak look and feel and even organization of content pieces.

We have employed this in our development methodology. We develop the designs so that we can "install" them onto a Plone site (just like any of the "products" for Plone). So in a couple of seconds, we can transform the out-of-the-box feel (see http://www.greenalliance.org ) to a more customized look (see http://www.cpsr.org or http://www.ifpeople.net ).

It is not perfect, but it is a powerful tool that can enable you to do a ton of things easily. The interface comes in 30+ languages (it detects your browser language setting and will switch automatically if you have one set).

Hope that helps. Email me if you have any questions about using Plone.

Cheers,
Chris

web (a) ifpeople.net
--
ifPeople - Innovation for People
www.ifpeople.net

We updated our website last November, and chose to go with Mambo, since it fit well with our current webhost (php, apache, mysql) and they didn't charge extra for installation and setup.

Mambo has a large active community, many 3rd party addons and the flexibility to customize the look and feel. There are also many, many templates available, some free under the GNU/GPL licensing, and some are available for a fee. it also has many template development/hosting companies/consultants to help you get started.

I was able to modify a template for our website, and I knew little about CSS and even less about PHP.

It saves us so much time and $$ updating the content now, as we used to have to send any updates to the webhost which would make them for a fee. We now can login and add/update content (cut/paste, wysiwyg editors) very quickly and at no cost.

I've been very pleased with it so far...

Mark,

Mambo is fairly easy to use, as with all of the CMS there is a learning curve. THe Template is actually easier than it looks. I am working on Mambo for my company as we speak. Take a look at http://ahana.org. We should have it fully functional in two (2) weeks.

Thomas

hi marc,

mambo (mamboserver.com) can accomplish what you want (and more) with your site. its so flexible that you can design and structure your website any way you want. and yes, you can enter new content in an online form similar to what you've used to type your message in this forum. no html knowledge required. if you can manage to use a webmail service (yahoo, etc.) then you can readily upload content with mambo (with proper privileges of course). want to have unique design for each site you host? using multiple templates is the key.

i must admit though that in order to freely modify mambo you must be fairly knowledgeable with graphics design, html and css, among others.

you can opt however to have someone set it up for you. there are a lot out there who can do this for you. find one that fits your budget.

i live in a third world country. our fees will prove cheaper if you're based in the states or europe. besides, we work with non-profits primarily. (sorry for the plug.)


vik sapar
freelance ict consultant