Easy-to-use content management system?

Hi,

I'm looking for a Content Management System which has the following features:

Hard requirements:
(1). Implemented in PHP.
(2). Search Engine Friendly.
(3). A decent selection of templates which are *EASY* to modify without *ANY* HTML coding.
(4). Renders correct on Safari (Mac) and Internet Explorer (WIndows).
(5). Is free / open-source.

Loose requirement:
(6). Preferably no database involved, just files. But if it uses MySQL, then I might accept that.


Do you have any recommendations?

Without going into any details why, none of the following are accepted:
- Mambo
- PHP-Nuke

/Mike

MHC Synthesizers and Effects
http://www.mhc.se

__/ [Mike] on Thursday 16 February 2006 14:12 \__

Hi,

I'm looking for a Content Management System which has the following
features:

Hard requirements:
(1). Implemented in PHP.
(2). Search Engine Friendly.
(3). A decent selection of templates which are *EASY* to modify without
*ANY* HTML coding. (4). Renders correct on Safari (Mac) and Internet
Explorer (WIndows). (5). Is free / open-source.

Loose requirement:
(6). Preferably no database involved, just files. But if it uses MySQL,
then I might accept that.


Do you have any recommendations?

Without going into any details why, none of the following are accepted:
- Mambo
- PHP-Nuke

/Mike

MHC Synthesizers and Effects
http://www.mhc.se

WordPress (wordpress.org) will satisfy all your needs apart from (3), on
which I shall elaborate:

Easy theming was introduced in version 1.5 (currently heading towards the 2.1
milestone).

What does theming involve?

===
* Download one of the hundreds of available themes, which are conventionally
contained in a compressed archive.

* Uncompress and upload the contents of the archive to the themes directory
(via FTP or alternative routes)

* Go to the WordPress administration panel. The new theme will show up with a
graphical preview.

* Click to enable
===

How to modify existing themes?

====
The administration panel allows you to modify the files directly -- either
styles or content.

Content could include simple, one-line PHP calls which add diaries, links,
preview of recent comment/article, and so forth. It puts you in full control
and the Codex helps you find out about existing functions. Then you have
plug-ins, which are as easy to install as themes are.
===

All in all, it is even simpler than it sounds.

Good luck,

Roy

PS - WordPress can be used as a CMS by all means. It is not exclusively a
blogging package -- something which has become a fallacy nowadays. Blogging
at the center is only that seminal umbilical cord, but you can extend to
achieve merely anything.

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | UNIX: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
5:10pm up 30 days 12:11, 14 users, load average: 0.09, 0.31, 0.23
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

PS - WordPress can be used as a CMS by all means. It is not exclusively a
blogging package -- something which has become a fallacy nowadays.

Blogging software *is* CMS software, just with additional features
(comments, trackbacks and so on) to make it useful for blogs.

I was going to recommend WordPress also, though I think the themes is a
PITA (i.e. it has a learning curve that I haven't been willing to put
the time into yet and I'd rather just use my own CSS), and WordPress
1.5 permalink URLs is broken which makes it bad for SEO.

WordPress does use MySql and the pages are dynamically generated. If
your database server is slow that can be an issue in serving up pages.

RFM

WordPress does use MySql and the pages are dynamically generated. If
your database server is slow that can be an issue in serving up pages.

RFM

Yup. That is indeed an issue and that's why I'd like to avoid MySQL based
solutions.

In addition I've tried WordPress and wasn't impressed when I started to have
a look at the templates and how to customize them. It seeed to be a *major*
project and required lots of HTML coding and then there's really no point (at
least for me) to use it.

Mike

MHC Synthesizers and Effects
http://www.mhc.se

On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 14:12:56 GMT, "Mike" <no (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm looking for a Content Management System which has the following features:

Last few weeks I've been trying out a few CMS's that are listed here
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ so far tried-


Wordpress - install failed and the support forum that I posted to
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/58455 never received a response (so
far anyway!!) so had to give up on Wordpress. Which was a shame as I
really wanted to see how it worked since a lot of people use it and so
plenty of templates around.


Textpattern - I was impressed with this from an SEO viewpoint as out
the box it uses CSS based design (no tables), SEO friendly file names
(hyphenated keywords) and the community seems to be growing so plenty
of add-ons. Got a test site using one of their templates I liked at
http://www.da3aya.com/ though the version of the template (Blix) was
out of date and images uploaded via the template update thing renames
images to 1.gif, 2.gif etc.. which meant the CSS file didn't work! so
I uploaded the images via FTP to maintain the template (not exactly
user friendly).

Not a bad range of templates, but they aren't easy to install. It uses
something called forms that's basically snippets of code that's pieced
together into a template. The concept is fine, but you have to
manually add the template code snippets one at a time which is quite
time consuming! Not sure why they haven't developed an automated
template system like I found with Nucleus CMS (see below).

If your plan was one site with one look you'll never change then this
is something I might use, but I'm looking to use it on a lot of sites
and can't afford the time messing with templates. If they fix that
problem I'll be using Textpattern in the future.


Nucleus CMS - not spent much time on it yet as just installed a test
site yesterday. Following their fancy URLs and Mod_rewrite
instructions has resulted in a very strange setup! I found the
articles listed under multiple directories (duplicate content!!)
you'll find item 2 (second article posted) under these 2 URLs-

/item/2
/item/2/catid/1

I know what they've done wrong, they left the category variable in the
URL which should be easy enough to remove.

You'll also note that though I've followed all the instructions for
search engine friendly URLs (fancy URLs is what they call them :-))
some of the links still have dynamic URLs. So there are problems with
the structure of the SEO friendliness out the box. Also lacks
hyphenated keyword rich URLs like you see with Textpattern, but a
little .htaccess work with the mod_rewrite code and some minor code
changes should fix this over sight.

The template system is much better, you upload the templates in their
own folder via FTP and install semi-automatically. Not tried adding
another template yet, but the documentation suggests it's going to be
very easy and with the option to switch to any template you uploaded
quite quickly. This appeals to me since I can create my own set of
fully SEO'd templates and use them with every installation (can then
choose any look I've had the time to optimise).

The template files code is pretty straightforward, PHP with their own
tags that should be easy enough to learn if you know a little PHP. If
I go with this one (looks like I will) it should be a one off
modification to fix the problems above and then I'll have an easy to
use SEO friendly CMS with a fair number of templates (I should be able
to port others from Wordpress etc... as well). I've got a lot of
projects planned that needs a CMS, so a little development is
acceptable, doesn't help you though :-))


Those are the ones I've looked at in detail, also discounted several
due to the URLs or lack of templates from the list at
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ (under MosCmenuTree Blogs on the left
menu). These are the ones I'm going through and so far Nucleus CMS
with the changes I'll have to make is my first choice.

bBlog - not many templates
BLOG:CMS - not checked
Blur6ex - dynamic URLs
boastMachine - not many templates
Dotclear - Templates in French
FireBlog - poor home page design at http://fireblog.berlios.de/ so
didn't bother.
LifeType - not checked fully yet
Loudblog - not checked because seemed to be aimed at MP3s
Nucleus CMS - see above
Pixelpost - not checked, but seams to be for images
Serendipity - no easy way to see the themes and the demos URLs are
semi dynamic, so didn't bother.
Simplog - not checked saw tables on a demo site
Textpattern - see above
TruBlog - not checked saw tables on a demo site
Wheatblog - couldn't find any templates on the main site!
WordPress - see above

Still a few to check in detail.

If anyone knows of others or sees something I've missed (was a quick
check on some of the above) LMK.

Hard requirements:
(1). Implemented in PHP.
(2). Search Engine Friendly.
(3). A decent selection of templates which are *EASY* to modify without *ANY* HTML coding.
(4). Renders correct on Safari (Mac) and Internet Explorer (WIndows).
(5). Is free / open-source.

Loose requirement:
(6). Preferably no database involved, just files. But if it uses MySQL, then I might accept that.

Doubt you'll get 6, everything I've tried uses a database.

Do you have any recommendations?

Without going into any details why, none of the following are accepted:
- Mambo
- PHP-Nuke

/Mike

David
--
Free Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/

I'm looking for a Content Management System which has the following features:
I would like to suggest you trying e107. There are hundreds of free

"themes" as they are refered to available http://e107themes.org, the
CMS e107 can be found here http://e107.org.

Now as for not having to do any html coding to change the template
"theme" you might be out of luck on that one. i have this cms on a few
sites if you want to look at them http://superestpm.com
http://marinlouise.com http://peoriabands.com http://phazedbeats.com
http://carolinaglassllc.com

The themes are basically easy to use, you unzip them to your hard
drive, and upload them via ftp to your webserver to the directory
themes. Go to the admin section and under preferences select the new
theme.

Also, this CMS does use a database, but IMO, its not slow depending on
your mysql server i suppose.

If you should require help setting up then give me a shout


regards,
john m
http://dosdawgs.com

I'm looking for a Content Management System which has the following features:
I would like to suggest you trying e107. There are hundreds of free

"themes" as they are refered to available http://e107themes.org, the
CMS e107 can be found here http://e107.org.

Now as for not having to do any html coding to change the template
"theme" you might be out of luck on that one. i have this cms on a few
sites if you want to look at them http://superestpm.com
http://marinlouise.com http://peoriabands.com http://phazedbeats.com
http://carolinaglassllc.com

The themes are basically easy to use, you unzip them to your hard
drive, and upload them via ftp to your webserver to the directory
themes. Go to the admin section and under preferences select the new
theme.

Also, this CMS does use a database, but IMO, its not slow depending on
your mysql server i suppose.

If you should require help setting up then give me a shout


regards,
john m
http://dosdawgs.com