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What OotB* CMS do designers prefer?

*OotB = Out of the Box

So as I've mentioned before, I've had it up to *here* with CMS and blogging platform options. I mostly frequent web dev forums where the membership is more code-oriented, so more often than not, the CMS they prefer is the one they've built themselves. Frankly, I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel or learning to roll my own (especially given the attention that must be paid to avoid PHP security exploits) when there are so many existing freeware, open-source options.

My professional experience is thus far limited to Movable Type, and it's very much a coder's friend, very much *not* a designer's friend. I'm reluctant to use it to set up one of my clients' web site because there's a pretty steep learning curve associated with getting them to maintain the site on their own after I'm done with it. Further, even as a code monkey, there are things about it that irritate me, notably its "guts" and resource usage. Custom templates are definitely doable, and not really difficult, but I'll admit that getting them in place isn't a particularly pleasurable experience.

I'm increasingly attracted to Ruby, and I've begun looking at frameworks and CMSses built with it. The nice thing is that they're not plentiful, which means I have fewer options, which is just brilliant.

So anyway. I'm curious to put this question to a community with probably a higher percentage of visual geeks than I'm used to. What do you guys use?

I'll leave you with an invaluable CMS-related resource:
OpenSourceCMS: try before you install

Posted by justG on Apr 05, 2007 in Blab | 31 comments

iconmaster on Apr 05, 2007

Hmmm, interesting questions. I've built Movable Type into a couple sites, one of which had to be maintained by non-technical people -- I actually thought it was likely to be the easiest way for a non-coder to update a site. Maybe there are easier ways out there, though.

If you're looking for a Ruby-based CMS, you might take a glance at Radiant.

justG on Apr 05, 2007

Radiant's definitely on the list, thanks! I'm not tied to a particular application, nor even to a particular technology at the moment. This particular project that I'm mulling over at the moment is a magazine. It's published twice a year (online) and what they've got in mind is "look #1" and "look #2." What I'd want is a set of #1 templates and a set of #2 templates, with the ability to publish a mag using one of the sets. I'll be going through the options at OpenSourceCMS, but was hoping to get some recommendations here that would narrow my focus a bit. I'm not keen on being there demo'ing installations forever. =)

Anyway. Thanks for taking the time to drop in!

Niels on Apr 06, 2007

I was actually thinking about ExpressionEngine for a client's site. Does anyone have any experience with EE?

crunnells Vip-micro on Apr 06, 2007

I've actually been asking this question at work, and trying to do some research. The problem is most blogging software badges itself as CMS, but not all CMS are blogs. What my clients want is to be able to edit all of the pages on their site, they don't want to blog.

The feature set I want boils down to this:

Inexpensive
Easy To Use
Easy To Skin/Template/Theme
PHP/MySQL
Page based editing, not post-based editing
Outputs valid XHTML

So far I've been looking at ExpressionEngine and Typo3, but I haven't tried or installed either one yet.

Anyone else got anything?

Novak on Apr 06, 2007

Crunells has a good point about CMS != Blog software, nevertheless I've used Movable Type and WordPress for small projects that need some type of content management. WordPress is gradually becoming my favorite over MT because of its ease of use for both designers and developers. Much less of a learning curve than MT.

I'd recommend taking a look at Drupal -- I haven't used it myself (seems unnecessarily complex for my purposes), but it might be of use to you.

justG on Apr 06, 2007

I looked into Drupal and Joomla back in the day, back when Joomla had just split off Mambo and gone its own way. From what I understand, Drupal has matured quite a bit since then, and v5 is supposed to be quite snazzy. I've heard great things about Typo3, in that it's extremely flexible and can basically be what you need it to be, which is cool, but that it has a steep learning curve. Worth a look, though.

Without turning this into a WP vs MT thing, I would be interested in hearing how you found WP easier, Novak, from a design standpoint? I've done several MT installations, custom from the ground up, and only one WP one, so I've not had a lot of experience there.

I was looking at Expanse and it looks intriguing, but their purchasing system seems to be down. Anybody have any experience with it?

Novak on Apr 06, 2007

I think it's easier to work with WP templates than MT ones. You can get by with defining a minimum of templates, or create specific ones for almost any configuration you can image -- specifically, I think it's easier to do per-category templates in WP. I also like that you can create a template and dump it into a theme without having to set it up -- i.e., in MT, you have to configure template files through the control panel, whereas with WP, you just need to name your template appropriately.

I guess to sum up, WP seems less restrictive. Others experience may differ...

mhayes on Apr 06, 2007

WordPress

meggan on Apr 06, 2007

Wordpress! It's easy to start up, and it seems like it's good for people that know code and people who don't. I've been using it for about two years so I might be a bit biased, but I really do think it's great.

That said, I don't have any experience with MT other than trying to install it and having the install fail 95% of the way through. So take that as you will.

Jen on Apr 06, 2007

Between wordpress and mt, I much prefer wordpress; for the same reasons Meggan mentioned.

michaelkpate on Apr 06, 2007

I feel compelled to recommend my personal favorite, Textpattern. It definitely matches up pretty well with Crunnells' list.

mitten on Apr 06, 2007

Wordpress. It is so easy to build a page-based site on it - you don't have to blog at all if you don't want to. And beyond just editing, if the client wants to add another content page, it appears automatically in navigation and so on. It is a terrific platform with lots of extensions (calendars, media players, etc etc etc) and you can do some very cool things by playing around with categories and so on to make things appear (or not appear) exactly as you want them.

DENiAL on Apr 06, 2007

I would recommend sNews. It's built for the template really simple, not bloated, nice code, a really active development community behind it. Bottom line, it just works. Definetly worth checking out.

justG on Apr 06, 2007

If anyone's interested in following up on DENiAL's post, here's the corrected link for the sNews web site.

Thanks for your input, everyone. My single experience with WordPress was like meggan's experience with MT. MT has been kind of a pain, but I've wrestled with it and gotten it to work how I want 100% of the time. I can't say that of WordPress, which made a terrible first impression on me, and I'm inclined to give some of the other suggestions here a try before I consider WP again.

gswd on Apr 06, 2007

Just to let you know the kind of stuff that I have to deal with at my employer, we use Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 for most of the pages on our site. Not only the obvious ecommerce side of it, but press releases, events and store happenings, and even job listings. They have been working for the past year and a half trying to find someone that can deliver a new backend that is as easy to update (for those other departments) and so far 2 have tried and failed.

twopeak on Apr 07, 2007

I stopped making sites a while ago, in the past I created my own cms, because it puts crackers on a wrong start: it's easyer to exploit known holes than find new ones (specifically on small sites)

Now I've chosen WordPress because it's so easy to customise for me and easy to use for not-internet-oriented people!

twopeak on Apr 07, 2007

BTW; typo3 is not worth it to me: it's faster to learn php and roll your own... typo3 is good if you are the one maintaining a lot of sites and you know the ins and outs of it.
But me, I've struggled so much with it that I just uninstalled it...

justG on Apr 07, 2007

Thanks for the feedback on typo3, twopeak; just the kind of thing I'd like to know to help me narrow my search. Appreciate it!

Winnopeg on Apr 07, 2007

WordPress is perfect. Mephisto seems nice too, but I haven't played with it yet.

LoopyMind on Apr 09, 2007

Typo3! ...ow wait..OOTB...eeeh Wordpress!

WebSiteGuru on Apr 09, 2007

I really have no preference in CMS, but the current one that I Make templates for FREE currently is DragonflyCMS. I seen some other ones and end up usinging this CMS.

christopher on Apr 10, 2007

I use blogger.
Cos on many servers i have no php etc so i use that. Its easy to implement.

extrarice on Apr 10, 2007

I'm dabbling a bit with Joomla at the moment, and have been impressed with it so far. Might be a bit more "industrial strength" than what most people need, though.

wotan on Apr 13, 2007

I use Joomla for clients (up to now 5) who want to 'play' admin (I do the workshop for them too :-) and for my blog and business site I use WordPress - it's fast to set up, easy to manage and themes are done in a second (depending on the functionality). I understand that typo3 is 'the' thing - didn't have time to try it out yet...

cbest on Apr 17, 2007

I've had a lot of the same experiences that you have, JustG. I use MT pretty much exclusively. I think a lot of people find it a pain in the butt, but I've been using it as a CMS for all of my clients' sites for several years, and it's just really easy and familiar to me.

I hated Word Press. I think whatever you start out with and use the most is easier, though, you know what I mean? If I had started with WP, I might feel differently.

I've played with Joomla, Mambo, Typo3, Global Moxie's Big Medium, phpWebsite, pMachine, Drupal, Xoops, and phpWCMS.

From a web hosting stand point (I have several dedicated servers) joomla and mambo have had numerous issues where their internal modules are used to send spam through the unsuspecting customer's website. It's been so bad in the past that I stopped offering them with my hosting packages.

Typo3 is way too difficult for the average user, I think. Big Medium is pretty awesome, but again-- I think it's too much for the average joe.

MT is definitely my choice, too. It's bloated and resource-intensive, sure, but there's really nothing it can't do.

justG on Apr 17, 2007

@cbest: *Now* yer talkin'. Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate reaping the fruit of your miserable experiences. *grin*

Grusella on Apr 18, 2007

As CMS, on my opinion the best Open Source is Joomla! followed very close by Drupal.
On the .Net Side DotNetNuke and Community Server are very good.

And I Agree not all blogging engines are CMS.

There is another intereting Blogging engine: Serendipity who is very very easy to use and manage.

Alpaca on Apr 18, 2007

I use ModX CMS exclusively on all sites I design for clients.

It is very easy to use and an incredibly powerful CMS/php framework.

extrarice on Apr 18, 2007

Hmm, Drupal looks very interesting. *downloads to play with*

justG on Apr 19, 2007

Yeah, I'm interested to see the improvements in Drupal 5. I tried MODx and couldn't get into it. Thanks for the link to Serendipity, Grusella, I'll look into that one further.

Ivan on Apr 19, 2007

how about Symphony? http://symphony21.com/
xslt templating, and stuff...