Recommend a CMS...

Hey all,

I have been asked by my Church to look into cms systems. It needs to be something free. It is essential that it is easy to use and work with and we need to be able to make it look user friendly!

I have searched these forums already and there are a few that i have found, drupal is good but the guys who will be using it don't like it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated,

thanks

RF

Typo3 is another very good one. It's very complex, and may be a little daunting for the admin(s) at first, but it's very powerful. Advanced template system, caching, you name it. The folks at blender3d.org and blenderartists.org use it. I know first hand that they are very happy with it, albeit at first you will need to invest a lot of time into it.

Joomla is another very good CMS, with lots of functionality similar to the Nukes, but geared very much towards security. It's a very robust system and it's usability is comparable to most Nuke derivatives.

Depending on how complex the site is supposed to be, you could also try something a little simpler, such as WordPress if you just want blogging functionality.

I would strongly discourage you from going into any of the "real" Nukes like PostNuke and PHPNuke and systems strictly based thereon. Unless you have someone who is willing to spend a lot of time installing security updates and patches and overseeing the security of the website at all times.

thanks for that. I expect i will be doing security etc for the site so i will avoid the nukes to keep my work load down. Daunting for the admins is not an option! They are basic computer users at best! But i will install both the ones you recommend and have a play myself!

Any others anyone?

thanks

RF

If you'd set up Typo3 for them and then be available for consultation it should work fine. The basic administration/moderation utilities are pretty user friendly, but setting up the low-level stuff requires knowing what you're doing.

Fair enough. I am uploading typo3 to my server now so i can play!! Also trying to use the joomla demo but looks like someone has screwed with it so i will wait for the 60min site refresh to happen then i can play with that one too!

Another one you might look into is TextPattern.
It's a bit more than a blog, less than a CMS (forum not included for instance), but it allows a nice mixture of static/dynamic pages.

You'll have to spend some time setting up templates, but once you do, adding new content is a breeze.

Ng

Thanks, i will take a look !

Something i meant to ask. I have installed mambo because it comes with fantastico so i thought i would give it a try, it appears to be very similar if not identical to Joomla. And there is a cross upgrade ability in Fantastico to upgrade Mambo to Joomla. Is it worth chnging...what are the differences???

Thanks

RF

CMS Made Simple is a very good one as well. I use it all the time with people who are looking to set up CMSs.

http://www.cmsmadesimple.org.

cc

thanks i will take a look. So far the best one i found for us is mambo !

Can typo3 handle a website that showcases software (ie. videogames) via tags:

games.com/ --> lists all games
games.com/action --> lists all "action" games
games.com/shooter --> lists all "shooter" games
games.com/pac-man --> shows the single game "pac-man"

Games can exist in both "action" and "shooter" genres.

This is all I need. A CMS that can display various projects with screenshots and categorize them via multiple "tags". This is similar to the way sysinternals.com organizes their utilities.

You could always use Wordpress. Its easy to set up, and can be easily faked to be a regular website. With certian plugins, you can prevent posts from appearing on the front page, and assign to multiple categories.