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Best CMS?

I'm in the market to look for a flexible, lite, CMS where the learning curve is not too steep. I've been told ExpressionEngine and MODx are pretty good.

Anyone have a suggestion?

[UPDATE]
Well, I used Wordpress as I needed something fast and I already knew a bit about it. And best part, it's free. And designing templates are a relative breeze. The site I designed using Wordpress.

Posted by manon1165 Vip-micro on Sep 30, 2007 in Blab | 49 comments

ludwiggramberg on Sep 30, 2007

try this http://opensourcecms.com/ there you can test many cms

manon1165 Vip-micro on Sep 30, 2007

i have gone and found that they are all very clunky and not terribly web 2.0 fraught with tables and too many php files.

anti on Sep 30, 2007

I favor Drupal, but some claim a steep learning curve. I did not find it to be the case, YMMV. If you don't mind giving up some flexibility, you may prefer Wordpress.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Sep 30, 2007

Well, I need more than what Wordpress can offer as it's a community site. I've been using Joomla, and just told client it was ready for beta testing, when all of a sudden before he even takes a look at it, the server stopped responding, and ISP and webhost have no idea why. I'm thinking it's a Joomla thing. So looking for another CMS.

soprano on Sep 30, 2007

If you download Wordpress (the software, not the community) and install it on your own server, you can customize it all you want.

bluepenguin on Sep 30, 2007

i'd also recommend wordpress if you can install it on your own server. if you're comfortable with php and css you can do a ton with it...

Winnopeg on Sep 30, 2007

+1 for WordPress.

gswd on Sep 30, 2007

This topic was also discussed back in April. I don't think there was any consensus reached back then either.

ChickAzul on Sep 30, 2007

WordPress again ;)

VHormazabal on Sep 30, 2007

Wordpress or Textpattern

gswd on Sep 30, 2007

manon1165, I think it might also help if you told us more about what the site is supposed to do. You have said it is a "community site", but what does that mean? It could be argued that IB is a community site, it just that the community happens to be people who like icons.

ludwiggramberg on Sep 30, 2007

imho wordpress is not a cms, it wasn't designed to be... i used it and find it terribly basic

rajr19 on Sep 30, 2007

wordpress. i have it and i love it...

anti on Sep 30, 2007

Wordpress is great. I have used Movable Type and it was great until the spammers ate it. Both of those systems could probably be forced to just about anything. It might also be better in the long run to choose a more flexible system even if it took a little more study to set it up. Like gswd says, depends on what you want to do.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Sep 30, 2007

much thanks, everyone. i need a site that users can upload photos, post classifieds, write articles, etc. more user-driven than blog...

wallphone on Sep 30, 2007

You may want to look into Vanilla, its a lightweight forum package that has plugins for images, and you can set up a category for articles with a blog plugin, and a category for for sale/wanted.

Its actually what IB's old forums were running on before IB 2.0.

anti on Sep 30, 2007

Drupal and Joomla will both do that. I have not tried Joomla since before it was Mambo only. Drupal may take more thought to set up, but it is my opinion that it will expand more easily once you get the hang of it. You might want to try both and maybe some others, it is trivial to set up a test server on Windows.

sloan on Sep 30, 2007

wordpress workd great for a CMS google it can be used for much more than a blog.

check out sNews or Etomite also

sNewsCMS.com

www.etomite.org/

mrspoomp on Sep 30, 2007

i was in a similar position some time ago: need cms advice for a business site

hope that helps :)

minienvelope on Sep 30, 2007

I like ExpressionEngine. Works all on HTML and CSS. The only learning curve is EE tags. But that doesn't take too long if you put your mind to it.

thedudedean on Sep 30, 2007

Joomla!

kitt on Sep 30, 2007

Drupal! :)

chiskop on Oct 01, 2007

My 2c:

I second the suggestion for snews - very cool, very light.
Vanilla is great for forums, might be a bit tricky as a full cms.
Joomla1.5 is very nice, great improvement on the current stable version, not really light though. (A Joomla 1.5 site that I'm working on atm has absolutely no tables, and didn't require any core hacking to get there.)

chii on Oct 01, 2007

I believe the truth is there is no best CMS. There's only a best for your needs. A common CMS isn't suitable for a community website.

If you can do coding i can recommend Django/Ruby on Rails/CakePHP ...its pretty easy to create a simple CMS and Community Website.

There are also some free Portal System like http://www.mkportal.it/

Steax on Oct 01, 2007

Yes, a community website probably won't run off a CMS very well, because you'll soon want features that would actually be easier to code yourself. Which is why I make my own CMS, because I can tweak it to my needs.

My concept is this: if you're going after a common site style, go for a CMS. If you want something unique, make it yourself.

As for CMSes, I vote for Drupal. Hope that helps! =)

manon1165 Vip-micro on Oct 01, 2007

all great suggestions... i'm going to start doing some serious beta testing on all of them now... thanks, guys!

P0lka on Oct 01, 2007

Joomla

sloan on Oct 01, 2007

let us know what you decide please, I'm also very interested in this subject.

Although I provided a couple of suggestions I have not tried any besides wordpress.

JBVisions on Oct 02, 2007

I use both Joomla and Wordpress for different targets. Love them both.

Nell Vip-micro on Oct 02, 2007

Manon, I'd use Expression Engine for what you want. It's way more robust than Wordpress, or even Textpattern (which I also like).

JBVisions on Oct 02, 2007

Looking at the Expression Engine site, for what she wants it's going to cost her $170 for the basics.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Oct 02, 2007

yeah cost is a huge factor as my clients are small businesses or personal ventures.

sloan on Oct 02, 2007

here is a new one I just found Though opendesigns.org

NanoCMS v0.1

http://nanocms.kalyanchakravarthy.net/

silente on Oct 02, 2007

Personally I'm in favor of the one you write yourself. :)

Reduce all the junk that you don't need down to only what you require.

IMNSHO :)

manon1165 Vip-micro on Oct 02, 2007

unfortunately not very proficient in php and javascript and all the other stuff i'd like to do like software development -- but no time to learn since having the 4-year old demon who runs around loose in my home -- or else would love to just write it all myself...

jameshilton on Nov 28, 2007

Wow! it looks great, loading a little slow though but that might be my slow wifi connection, hang on i'll take a look on my main computer.

jameshilton on Nov 28, 2007

It's fine on my other comp, i also noticed because of my larger screen how the side photos are floating to fill the space, very nice well done.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Nov 28, 2007

hmmm, load time is pretty fast for me. i hope it's not because i've been working on it...

manon1165 Vip-micro on Nov 28, 2007

Yes, the polaroids are my favorite part. Ever since i found that png fix for IE6, so many design options have opened up.

dgtlb on Nov 29, 2007

i have used nucleusCMS in the past. as well as Joomla, Drupal.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Nov 29, 2007

@dgtb, it looks promising. I'm going to test it out. From your experience which is the most flexible template-wise?

dgtlb on Nov 29, 2007

@manon1165,
they all have a learning curve, but i felt most comfortable w/ nucleus.
im not a programmer but am comfortable w/ html, css, php. especially comfortable w/ css.
to figure things out, deconstruction is my tactic. they are all similar w/ concept but i think it comes down to how the underlining of the system speaks to you.
whats easy for one to understand may not be so for another. so w/ my knowledge i kicked it w/ nucleus for a few.
the test site i was working on: ricardobaldizon.com/nucleus, i am not certain which skin & template i had used/altered/used as my base, but i want to say they were the default skins and templates. cant quote me on the skin & template, gotta look into it.

manon1165 Vip-micro on Nov 30, 2007

@dgtb, well i'm pretty comfortable with joomla and wordpress, but am always willing to look into other cms, especially those that are web 2.0-ready (ajax, seo, lightweight, etc.).

peterlustig on Nov 30, 2007

many suggestions - here is mine ... i use phpwcms for all sites. i use it cause i don't have the time to learn many things and i want to finish my work fast. :) (its opensource)

manon1165 Vip-micro on Dec 01, 2007

@jameshilton, can you believe it! the client wants to take off the polaroids. the absolute shame of it all...
@peterlustig, thx for the suggestion, i'm going to check it out...

Steax on Dec 01, 2007

I use wordpress now for quick requested sites. It does most of what people want, and in other conditions I write in myself, hehe.

sloan on Dec 01, 2007

Will you be adding some kind of e-commerce to the wordpress design? That has been my latest challenge with wordpress. I love WP just want to find a good e-commerce solution

Steax on Dec 01, 2007

Uhhh..??

Google "e-commerce wordpress" » First result: WP e-commerce plugin, which has the ecommerce tag, leading to discussions on it.

Yep. =)

anti on Dec 01, 2007

A friend of mine uses WP and Google checkout. He is not happy because what he has are essentially two different sites, but I do not know if it has to be that way or if it is just him. :)