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PHP Perl Programming The Internet

Open Source Content Management Discussion? 109

Posted by Cliff from the because-content-won't-manage-itself dept.
Media Girl asks: "As someone considering the vast array of GNU/open source CMS systems out there (and right here), what have been the experiences, insights and opinions of developers on the various programs out there, such as Slash, Scoop, Drupal, PHPslash and the various Nukes? CMS Matrix has a nice comparison grid of features, but there seems to be a lot left between the lines, and the Perl powerhouses are left out of the matrix. How do the typical components (blogs, articles, comments, karma) compare? What about modality, security and speed under heavy loads? What about the quality of ongoing development and activity of the app's community? What's leading edge and not bleeding edge? And what about the Perl/PHP debate? Can we take a snapshot of this realm of open source web development applications and hash it around a bit?"
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Open Source Content Management Discussion? More

Open Source Content Management Discussion?

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  • Community V. Content (Score:4, Insightful)

    by idiotfromia ( 657688 ) <(chad) (at) (chadbrandos.com)> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:38AM (#10850393) Homepage

    There's way too many content management systems out there that focus too much on the content aspect. I found it hard to locate quality open source CMS that wasn't trying to be Slashdot-like. Many people just want some for easily organizing lots of pages in a quick and easy manner. They don't all want to have forums, user profiles, galleries, news, or blogs built into the system.

    Keep it simple, stupid.

    • Not a surprise, but why not a wiki? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @02:04AM (#10850991) Homepage
      Blogs were the first and are the most deployed apps to use CMS. HTML-savvy people wanted to provide the rest of the world an easy way to contribute content. I'm aware of very few apps meant to make a web developer's life easier by allowing online editing as if it were an online Dreamweaver or what not.

      If you want KISS & need to add a lot of content, what is lacking in wikis?

      • I've been in the same boat as the guy you're replying to, and my answer to this question would have been that what I really wanted was something structured and designed more like the typical CMS implementation (database-backed, web-based admin without any html coding experience needed on the users' part, "document" upload of word/pdf/etc with searches and categories and all that, etc...), but I just don't want "community" features like blogging, news, rss, etc...

        The usual answer that I've taken is to use o

      • One downside to Wikis (Score:3, Interesting)

        by attaboy ( 689931 ) *

        I've used Scoop, Drupal, and built a couple of custom lite-CMS solutions. My only experience with Wikis is installing MediaWiki. To me the biggest downside was support for inserting straight HTML.

        While you can insert HTML into a Wiki entry, it isn't recommended. They want you to use the Wiki tagging language. This makes sense because the Wiki tagging is used to convey useful meta-information and separate content from presentation, but at the same time, losing the ability to use all of the functionality

        • To me the biggest downside was support for inserting straight HTML....losing the ability to use all of the functionality of HTML when entering content seems like a big trade-off.

          These seem to be a bit incosistent, no?! Inserting straight HTML can be a security risk and/or wouldn't be used by non-savvy users. There are wikis that do and don't let you use HTML, so I don't know what the big deal is...

          1- Provide a WYWYSIG editor for those who just want to add new content.

          The best you can do without something

      • Blogs were the first[,] and are the most deployed[,] apps to use CMS.

        A blog is definitely not a CMS. A true CMS has certain [bris.ac.uk] features [cmsreview.com], such as content "versioning" and support for workflow.

        I'm aware of very few apps meant to make a web developer's life easier by allowing online editing as if it were an online Dreamweaver or what not.

        To the contrary, many CMS's are evolving in precisely this direction. Increasingly, they are improving their user interfaces (UI) so that the CMS UI becomes, in effec

        • A blog is definitely not a CMS. A true CMS has certain features, such as content "versioning" and support for workflow.

          Ah the irony. The second link you list cites a blog as a type of CMS. Furthermore, I was using the term "blog" in a rather broader sense than personal blogs (though software that powers these, such as wordpress, are most definitely CMS apps): to refer instead to sites like slashdot.

          To the contrary, many CMS's are evolving in precisely this direction.

          I didn't say none. And I also see a d

    • The nicest, easiest, simplest, and most customizable content management system I've found is Etomite... see http://www.etomite.org/ [etomite.org]

      It is PHP/MySQL based, has very flexible templating features, and allows easy customization using snippets (small bits of PHP) and or chunks (small bits of straight html). It also sports a nice WYSIWIG editor.

      It doesn't have a lot in the way of community features, like messageboards and such, but it is perfect for organizing content. You can have any number of users generatin
    • Some open source CMSs that focus on content over community:
      Magnolia [magnolia.info] - just released version 2, Java-based, fantastic content element dialog creation.
      Etomite [etomite.org] - I am using this currently for a medium-sized business site. Nice addition of HTMLarea, still missing a few features but has the brightest future of the PHP CMSs.
      Bricolage [bricolage.cc] - the only open-source CMS I have seen that will publish, that is, the CMS server is completely seperate from the web server, which is how it should be. Has great content ele
    • Exactly. Too many things are being called CMS these days. In reality, some of these so-called CMS systems are closer to portals and blogs than true CMS systems.

      You talk about the KISS principle... the problem is that there are two extremes:

      simple<------------------>flexible

      and the easiest to write and implement are the slash and *nuke-like blogging systems. When a blog is all you want, these may also be the easiest to install and configure.

      However, you can easily outgrow these as you may want to h

      • However I can say that one product that stands out, and I have seen used successfully, is Bricolage (http://www.bricolage.cc/) which is on the flexible side of the above spectrum.

        Bricolage is built on top of HTML::Mason [masonhq.com], which is also the basis for some huge sites (e.g., Amazon).

        Mason isn't a CMS itself, but you can do pretty much anything you can imagine with it. There are some other CMSs built on Mason that might be worth a look, however, including Mason-CM [itassistance.biz] and Bricks [sourceforge.net].

        Mason can also be used with

    • There [are] way too many content management systems out there that focus too much on the content [sic; "community"] aspect. I found it hard to locate [a high] quality, open source CMS that wasn't trying to be Slashdot-like. Many people just want some[thing] for easily organizing lots of pages in a quick and easy manner.

      I am going to assume that you meant to write "community" rather than "content" in the quoted text. If so, then I agree with your comment, and have elaborated on this issue before. [slashdot.org] There

      • Paul, do you have any real world experience with openCMS? I have looked at it but never gone all the way in installing and testing it. It seems like it is the only other open source CMS that can publish out pages via FTP. Or maybe I reading the features wrong. I have been scared off a bit by my lack of Java skills. Any thoughts, if you have used it?

        • Paul, do you have any real world experience with openCMS?

          Yes, quite a lot. I have been using it since Jan., 2003, nearly two years.

          It seems [as if it were] the only other open source CMS that can publish out pages via FTP. Or maybe I [am] reading the features wrong.

          I am not sure that OpenCMS (version 5.01, the current production release) can publish pages via FTP, but at least one open source CMS has this feature built-in: Bricolage [bricolage.cc], which is designed for use by newspapers and magazines. Brico

    • The solution to that is to build a CMS with one function: news. Then offer a modular setup to the functions in your list.

  • Not really a help... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by name773 ( 696972 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:39AM (#10850406)
    but you win for the best summary ever, good job... seriously, it's well written.
    my site is small enough, with few enough participants that i can get by writing my own; it just provides a web frontend for editing the text files directly. this directory [phism.org] has the source code... if anyone is interested

    • I had a look at a lot of systems when I was setting up a Debian Administration [debian-adm...ration.org] site.

      All I wanted was the ability for some users to post articles, which had to go through a moderator or two - and the ability for comments to be posted.

      Slash was too heavy-weight and most of the other systems didn't fit.

      I ended up hacking yawns [freshmeat.net] to do the job for me.

      I may revisit the choice later, but there's a big gap between slash and the less featureful systems which could be usefully filled.

      • from the freshmeat comments it sounds like a neat project. my only suggestion is to whitelist the allowed html tags when you do the filter. maybe i read it wrong, but it seemed to me that you wanted to diallow a few tags but leave the rest.

  • Typo3 rules them all (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smeat ( 18128 ) <bbaptist AT mordant DOT com> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:41AM (#10850424) Homepage
    In my not so humble opinion, if you want a full featured and supported open source CMS get typo3.

    They have freaking instructional videos for $DEITIES sake.

    Marketing page:
    http://www.typo3.com/ [typo3.com]

    Community pages.
    http://www.typo3.org/ [typo3.org]

    smeat!

  • Ease of use (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:42AM (#10850437) Homepage
    To the discussion I'd also love to see some comparison of the ease of installation, quality of documentation, and how easy it is to design or customize a site. Not all of us are uber-geeks, and a little hand holding is nice.

    • I think (forthcoming accusations of suckuppitude expected) that Slashcode is a great forum management system.

      [I'm at Excellent Karma but I still get modded down - that's what's good about it]

      This is only worthwhile if one has a large enough user base, implementing user rankings does not work until a certain "tipping point" (to use an overused term) is reached.

      Some bitch about Slashcode, but the thinking behind it is not so bad.

  • Try em yourself (Score:5, Informative)

    by insensitive claude ( 645770 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:44AM (#10850452) Journal
    Open Source CMS [opensourcecms.com]
  • At work, we use TikiWiki [tikiwiki.org], but we have a lot of users and lots of files moving in and out, articles and such. I also use TikiWiki to talk between my family.

    The only trick is that it can take a while to install (I watched our poor Gentoo web-server grind away for a long time compiling and installing MySQL, Apache with the mods, and the updated mail client). However, there is a lot of documentation on customization and use.

    Although, if you're not looking for the blogs and the multi-user thing, try somethin
    • We're dealing with the same kind of discussion at work. To us, there are three major categories of CMS's:
      1. Document Management
        Checking documents in/out, versioning, etc
      2. Portal Management
        Slash, Nukes, etc.
      3. Web based Content Management Wikis, Blogs, etc.

      I posted some of these thoughts here: http://ktd.sytes.net/index.php?p=26 [sytes.net]

      What we wanted, was some ability for a portal (some blog like funcitoinality), but we wanted the best of both worlds from Wikis and Nukes. I wanted to flexable page orgaization

  • Open Source CMSs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by allden ( 748789 )
    I tried the PHP Nuke and Post Nuke CMSs for my website. Post nuke didn't run properly because the box didnt have mod_php - user community response - blame the web hosting service. PHP nuke had some irritating problems.
    These days I am running xoops - no problems at all. It has the best installation among the 3.
    Couldn't try others as they either wanted to install in directories like /usr (which my webhst doesn't allow) or they needed postgresql (which again my webhost doesn't provide).
    I wanted to try som

  • Zope and Plone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Earlybird ( 56426 ) <slashdot&purefiction,net> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @01:12AM (#10850675) Homepage
    Zope [zope.org] and its CMS framework, Plone [plone.org]. Take Plone for a spin. It's a breeze to install. The entire system is web-managed down to the core, with a flexible role-based security architecture.

    Zope is written in Python, so you avoid the PHP stack and its evils. Unlike PHP, Zope is designed around object-oriented concepts such as encapsulation.

    For example, to interface with a database you typically create (again, through the web) a connection object, then an SQL method describing the data (a pure SQL script with a few special HTML-like tags for specifying parameter slots) and finally a page template which calls the method.

    The upshot? You just decoupled the data from the presentation in a very elegant way, and you decoupled the data operators from the data source. Abstraction is the key.

    Plone, in turn, abstracts much of Zope away to provide an elegant, extensible GUI for managing user-oriented content. It has a workflow system, a component system, WYSIWYG article editor support etc.

    (The workflow system allows complex flows such as "both John and Jane must review and accept the article before it can be published, and after they've reviewed it, spelling wizard Bob must look over it before it for typos; but users Jack and Jill are trusted users who don't require John or Jane's approval to post articles.)

    Unlike most other CMSes, Plone/Zope have no external dependencies -- no MySQL needed, for example.

    • Re:Zope and Plone (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 )
      Zope/Plone are indeed awesome. The downside, and it's a big one, is that far fewer people know Python than PHP and Perl. Make sure you consider the possibility that five years down the road someone else - someone who doesn't know Python - may be running the site. While you can do customization without having to know Python at all, sometimes adding feature will require actual coding.

      This is really only a concern if the website's for your employer or a customer or something. If it's just for you, then I

    • Re:Zope and Plone (Score:2, Interesting)

      by quamaretto ( 666270 )

      I note (from reading the Zope 3 book) that Zope itself is way more general than a content management system. Here is the quote:

      Zope is an application and backend server framework that allows developers to quickly implement protocols, build applications (usually Web-based) and function as glue among other net-enabled services.

      Of course, I've only just started poking through the documentation and so forth, but so far, Zope as a technology reminds me ASP.net, only more abstract and general.

      In response to c2

    • Re:Zope and Plone (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Bwanazulia ( 126541 )
      As someone who has been building sites based on Zope for the last 3-4 years, my personal experience is that it is extrememly powerful.

      Zope Pros:
      - Built in everything: Webserver, ftp, webdav, gzip, caching.
      - Great products: Plone, CMF, discussions, content types.
      - Everything is an object. This sounds strange, but actually lends itself to the web very very well.
      - Huge, active community. Tons of examples. Tons of sites.

      Zope Cons:
      - Documentation, while getting better, is not at the level of other solutions.
      -

  • My experience: pMachine, Wordpress, MovableType (Score:4, Informative)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @01:30AM (#10850769) Homepage Journal
    Mainly dealt with the blogging engines here, since most of the sites are content-driven without the need for many additional modules.

    MovableType [moskalyuk.com] - fast to setup, easy to deploy, live community with hacks and what not around it, but since the move to the paid distro in 3.0 the activity died off a little bit. Never upgraded to the paid version, couldn't justify the license money with WordPress having so many similar features. It's a Perl+MySQL or Perl+flat file set up, so theoretically nothing more than cgi-bin is required.

    Which brings us to WordPress [techinterviews.com] - extensible, lively community, very easy to install and setup. The engine itself is a bit immature at this point for some advanced stuff, but if you know PHP, you'll find your way around it. Has a link manager and mass edit for comments (very useful for spam treatment), extensible as far as design, not too modular though.

    pMachine [itfacts.biz] - easy to set up, easy to use, but not too flexible. Coded in PHP and uses MySQL, many tweaks available, but limited functionality for the free version. The authors have since moved on to a different project, Expression Engine, and the community is a bit abandoned.

    The above links are going to my sites which run the said engines, not the engines themselves, a simple google search would take you to download pages for the engines.

  • CMS mailing list (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Matt Perry ( 793115 ) <perry.matt54@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @01:39AM (#10850813)
    There used to be cms-list.org before it went down in early 2004. People used that mailing list to talk about what you are asking and more. You can find archives online (search on Google). This site [cmsreview.com] is supposed to be the new incarnation of the cms list so you might want to subscribe and ask there. I'd have a list of your requirements in hand before you ask questions on the list. Since the term "content management system" is so generic asking what's the best CMS isn't going to get you far until you figure out what kind of content you need to manage it and how. That will dictate which CMS products you'll consider and from there you can look at the technical aspects to see what works best.

    Just my two cents on the subject.

  • My best advice is PHPNuke. It's PHP, so its easy to deal with. It's centralized (unlike PostNuke that changed from version to version and is without standard). It has Modules, so you can easily add any new features like Calendars and Photo galleries. It's themes, and that is also easy to edit. The Block system is simple, and there is no fighting with it to get everything "just right" like there is in PHP Website.
    • And it's appearance is bolt in. Except for the themes, that differ very little in their page layout, every nuke looks the same and feels just as stupid.

      Try Plone (plone.org), a real standards based CMS.

    • Re:PHPNuke (Score:5, Insightful)

      by a.koepke ( 688359 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @04:03AM (#10851512)
      PHPNuke has gotta be one of the most poorly written PHP apps available. Run the code with the error level set at E_ALL and watch the amount of notices you get for undefined variables and improperly used array references.

      • Re:PHPNuke (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Synistar ( 8654 )
        Yes, PHPNuke and PostNuke both have had a bad reputation for security exploits. A better alternative is Xoops [xoops.org] which is also a Nuke derivative but better managed and coded (not to say that it is perfect).

        Of the non-Nuke portals I would say that Drupal [drupal.org] seems to be one of the most well coded engines. Xaraya is also probably worth a look to but I have not used that one.

    • Re:PHPNuke (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheLink ( 130905 )
      It's got more security problems every other week or so. And the author sure didn't handle the security bug reports well when I last checked.

      Friends don't let friends use PHPNuke.

      The people handling my church site wanted a PHP based solution, when I vetoed PHPNuke and its cousins for security issues, they suggested EzPublish. Their source code didn't look that icky (signs of some clue being present) - on my brief look at it. Yes I looked at PHPNuke's source code, and it was crap. I had actually looked at i

    • Don't install phpNuke (Score:4, Informative)

      by baldass_newbie ( 136609 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @06:58AM (#10852091) Homepage Journal
      It's a freaking security nightmare.
      Once you get on the defacement lists, expect to get hit with every new 'sploit as soon as they're out. Francisco Burzi may be a nice guy, but he doesn't know shit about coding secure PHP. If you're going to run it, you'll at least need one of the secure releases or better yet...

      Use drupal [drupal.org]. Very solid, safe, secure and easily configurable. The toughest bit is figuring out taxonomy or categories that the various entries (blogs, forum topics, stories, etc.) adhere to. These things are all 'nodes', btw. But once you have your categories down, you're done.

      You can even search for a script [phrixus.net] to do the conversion from phpNuke to drupal, and no drupal doesn't require any special directories. Give it a whirl.

      And if folks are whoring sites, then I'll whore mine.
      Brew-Masters [brew-masters.com]
      I have the throttle hooked up, so hopefully it won't get slashdotted, but then it doesn't look like this thread is getting a lot of comments.

  • Quick Summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by natmsincome.com ( 528791 ) <adinobro@gmail.com> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @01:43AM (#10850831) Homepage
    Hi,

    Here's a quick summary.

    First of all you can check out a live version of almost all of the CMS at opensourcecms [opensourcecms.com]. This is a very good place to start.

    First of all what do you want?
    The main types are:
    * Portals - Think slashdot + forum + gallery etc. * Wiki - Think wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
    * Blogs - Need I say more.
    * Groupware - Think Sourceforge.
    For wikis the main one I like are:
    * PmWiki for an easy to install persoanl wiki.
    * Media Wiki for a large company wiki.

    I don't do blogs so ... no idea.
    I've tried a couple but none of them have really worked yet in my projects.

    Portals ... We'll again what do you want? If you want a community portal Drupal and PostNuke are popular. If it's a small content based portal then I'd have to same mambo is the best. But if you're going for a larger installation then I'd recommend Type3 or Phone. All of the above execpt Phone can be checked out at opensourcecms [opensourcecms.com]. As for php vs perl. We'll php is so much easier to install because most of the perl ones require CPAN packages which users don't have the right to install on most hosting servers. On the other hand some servers on support perl so it's really up to you. If your not planning on changing it the lanuage is very important.
    • The main types are:
      • Portals - Think slashdot + forum + gallery etc.
      • Wiki - Think wikipedia
      • Blogs - Need I say more.
      • Groupware - Think Sourceforge.

      Tikiwiki [tikiwiki.org] tries to be all of this, and much more. And if the current feature list is not enough, just wait a few days/weeks for the 1.9 version (the site runs a recent cvs so most can be tried there).

  • Slashcode considered harmful (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @01:50AM (#10850879) Homepage
    Slashcode produces horribly mangled non-standards-compliant HTML (and it claims to be HTML 3.2). Consider something else besides it. :)

  • Interesting (Score:1, Interesting)

    by opweirdisntit ( 780341 )
    As a heavy PHP Dev i'd like to note that although people might love all the CMS out there if you really want to get down dirty and know what your doing its always better to code what you need by yourself. In fact its usually better because you know exactly how it works all the loopholes / advantages and you will be able to optimize your site around it. In fact i made my own CMS called themelib with various features like dynamic plugins and static extensions so basically the cms system has all the core compo
    • No online administration? That's why you have to be hardcore and manipulate bits on the hard drive with a small magnetized screwdriver.

    • I tend to agree with this viewpoint. I did the same research for an upgrade to ZZZ Online [zzz.com.ru], but came up short. Typically, depending on the needs of the customer (even if it is yourself), are going to demand extensive changes to the code. Usually, this is enough to make you run screaming when the originators of whatever source you original used upgrades things due to "security concerns"

      My suggestion is to download a bunch of different CMS systems and outline the functionality you really need most. If yo

  • Slashcode is pretty poorly represented. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This site looks pretty impressive until you look at the individual cms description pages. For instance, Slashcode [cmsmatrix.org] according to the site, doesn't have content scheduling, rss feeds, blogging, a plug-in architecture or online administration. In fact, slashcode appears to do nothing at all. So I gotta wonder how solid the information for the other cms' are.

    Anyone out there have more expertise on the other CMS's want to double check this sites work?

    • Heh. In a halarious and ironic twist [cmsmatrix.org], if you put your mouse over "Blog" (it's the first one in built-in applications), the tooltip says to see slashdot.org as an example. Then a few pixels to the right, it says that Slashcode doesn't support blogs. Oops.

      I'd take any of the reports on this site with a grain of salt and (as always) do a little of your own research before making any decisions.

  • squiz [squiz.net] is very good.
    • It does look like the "open source" licence has a number of hidden gotchas, though, like:

      - you assign Squiz.net all copyrights to any modification you make (though I don't think that would stand up in court)
      - you must notify Squiz.net of any modification you make
      - the copyright licence has termination clauses

      I'm pretty sure that it would fail a number of points of the OSD, and probably wouldn't be considered free software either.

  • From your own kitchen is the best (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I made CMS for my site www.pungas.com [pungas.com] and it works just fine. It took me less time then trying infinite number of CMS solutions and on the end you never find what you need.

  • Security -- many are poor at best (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @04:03AM (#10851508) Homepage
    To give you a basic idea, some are quite painful to install with SSL enabled if you don't have root access. Others just discourage it.

    Additionally, quite a few have a default data from the development site; you're getting a carbon copy of a site not an application. Wikis tend to be the biggest offenders. Twiki, for example, is a royal pain to configure from scratch if you want to start with a blank slate. Use the Twiki site data itself, and most of it seems to work...till you start to customize things...and it breaks again. Very annoying.

    I'd treat them with a great deal of caution.

  • While not open source, and not necessarily targeting those looking for a "CMS", we have created a very complete and easy-to-use CMS.

    http://www.beyourown.net [beyourown.net]

    It's designed for and geared towards the newbie, but it's got all the features and power geeks demand.

    It's not free, it's not open source, and it runs on Windows. But I'm a former Debian evangelist, so you can trust me (or not) when I say it's not evil. Take a look [beyourown.net], it's pretty cool, and it was created by myself and just a few of my friends so we'
    • I should probably also mention that - even though our website does not openly advertise this - we have a very extensive and powerful web API/toolkit that we created, which not only powers our sites but is available for our customers to use to build upon our framework.

      We're also not totally proprietary - in that we'll be happy to give you the database schema, and any information you need to work with that data on your own terms, give you web services to work with, etc.

      And although we're not open source a
    • Suggestion: If you're trying to sell a product, don't put your graphics-rich website on a slow uplink line, particularly if the product you're trying to sell is web software.
  • I've tried and tested practically every single CMS for both PHP and Perl and found none to be completely what I want, which is three simple things;

    - A tree structure (so no nukealikes)
    - WYSIWYG page editing (preferably with a nice interface to work with images)
    - Easy templates (just a few files to edit rather than tens/hundreds of unclearly named ones)
    - Easily configurable; no need to spend many hours studying documentation or tracking down host-specific details.

    I have never seen a free CMS which does all

  • Zope and Plone (Score:1, Redundant)

    by HammerToe ( 111872 )
    Take a look at Zope and/or Plone. Zope is an application server written in python. It is very, very modular and has its own object oriented database built in (ZODB).

    Plone is a product on top of Zope that provides something a bit more CMS-like, offering very flexible workflows, custom object types, etc. It is easily 'skinnable' meaning with very little work you can change Plone to look very different (e.g. www.warwickshire.police.uk).

    Plone uses a system called Archetypes that allows you to rapidly deve
    • The one thing I did not like about Plone was that it was it's own webserver and did not link into apache without doing some stuff with virtual domans. I lso did not like that it had it's own data base. It does seem to be a very good CMS though but not one that suited my needs.
  • Buddy has a system running and it's extremely zippy compared to most of the 'packages' floating around. Key is good (mission appropriate) database design. XUL speeds up the user interface considerably. Alas, not open source, but it may be licensed. Or, you could roll your own.

  • Try eZ publish CMS (Score:2, Informative)

    by funnybug ( 832260 )
    I tried so many cms with interesting features. and I spent so many hours trying to find tutorials and docs... I stopped searching since I discovered ez publish. PROS: You can build any kind of site with it (from a home site to a corporate portal with ecommerce b2b/b2c features). It's full object oriented like plone, and is build under php. You can use mysql or postgresql as database backend. It's relatively well documented (everything is in their web site, and there is a book "Learning eZ publish" availabl

    • Re:Try eZ publish CMS (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bjpirt ( 251795 )
      I couldn't agree enough. eZ Publish is the most flexible CMS out of a large number I have evaluated. Like most PHP programmers at some point in their web career, I was considering writing my own CMS (as I already had kind of partially written one anyway) but as soon as I really began planning how I would build it I realised that eZ was exactly what I was planning to build.

      Once you get your head round the templating language, there's very little you can't achieve with it.
    • Except... I can't get the damned thing to install (FreeBSD 4.9). I like to think I know what I'm doing on my own box and regularly install much more complex packages by hand... but ezpublish fails every time. Ugh! Is there a help list for the beleagured?

  • e107 (Score:2)

    by mrgrey ( 319015 )
    e107 is a slick package. Simple to install and fast running. Utilizing a caching system (if you wish it) it loads pages fast. It usess the usual PHP, Apache, and MySql. It has tons of themes and plugins and is totally modular with menus, setup, etc. Themes are easy to edit and create and the admin area is amazing, allowing you to do anything you can think of.

    I've been using it since before it got big and have gone through many updates, which are easily executed with php update installation scripts.

    It also

  • What are your projects *needs*? (Score:4, Informative)

    by mobiGeek ( 201274 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:35AM (#10854069)
    You need to get a very good list of your "business needs" to start with. Starting to install and configure a particular CMS (and I use the term loosely...) is a waste if you don't know:
    • who your content-providers are and their technology strengths (and tolerance levels!!)
    • who your end-user community is and how "involved" they will be in the site (forums? community-driven content? story submission? ...) [don't get caught in the "needed feature" vs. "cool factor" trap!]
    • who your admins are and their technical strengths/weaknesses (are these the same people who will be configuring the system? are they coders or do they only work from white-books and red-books ?, etc...)
    • how much time is devoted to adminstration of the system?
    • a single look-and-feel template for the whole site or different sections get their own template(s)?
    • do you want to separate development, test and production?
    • how much time is devoted to enhancing the system?
    • what skillsets are available for enhancing the system?
    Once we listed out these, we found that a number of the CMSes I see people talking about here fell off our list.

    We don't want to have users "logging in" to our company website. We don't need/want forums/blogs/galleries. We need a simple-to-use content-provider interface for people with little-to-no webskills. We want separate servers for development, testing and production. We have a very skilled set of admins, but they don't want to be tweaking the system every day.

    Based on our evaluation period, we believe we are going forward with Bricolage [bricolage.cc]. It is not an easy system to get into, but its power and flexibility is fantastic and it has a fairly supportive community.

  • This way you can have a website and a forum that's well integrated into your website. I use this as well as PHP MyFAQ for a FAQ and GHISHI for syntax highlighters source documentation. It makes for a very nice programmers portal.
  • Can anybody reccomend a simple CMS that integrates /into/ phpBB.

    That is rather than integrating phpBB into the CMS like some of the popular ones I've seen. I'd like to use my existing phpBB templates, user accoutns, etc.

    Cheers
  • I have to give props to HyperContent which I don't see on any list there. It is rather flexible and snazzy.

    HyperContent [sourceforge.net]

    It is being developed by various higher ed institutions and it has some real-world production use (not just a guy and and his website).

  • Perl Plone alternative (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chris Croome ( 24340 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @02:40PM (#10856633) Journal

    I agree with all the comments about Plone [plone.org] being great, if Plone existed before we started developing MKDoc [mkdoc.org] then we probably wouldn't have bothered... If you like Plone but want a CMS written in Perl [perl.org] then check out MKDoc.

    MKDoc doesn't yet have such a big community around it yet but it's only just been GPL'ed [mkdoc.org]...

    The PHP CMS's are great if you don't have root, if you do then the Zope, Perl and Java ones are worth checking out.

    Another one that hasn't been mentioned here is Java Mir [indymedia.org] the Indymedia [indymedia.org] CMS.

  • commercial ones are better at the moment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @02:55PM (#10856838) Homepage
    I work for a company (www.gx.nl) that sells its own cms. Let me just summarize that we are more worried about other CMS companies than open source alternatives right now. OSS CMSs are just not that competitive right now. The reason for this is that there's more to a cms than installing the software on a server. That is the really easy part. The difficult part is actually developing the site to the customers specification (look and feel, dynamic functionality etc.), migrating his old content and integrating with backend systems. Then you also need to make it really easy for them to edit the content & layout and on top of that you need to continue to support their installation.

    This requires expertise and technical solutions. We provide both. Most of our customers do not actually care about what the software is or how it works. They just give us specifications and expect a working site that they can add content to effortlessly: that's what they pay us for. They neither have the expertise nor the desire to hand tailor some OSS system. License cost compared to development cost is negligable so most cost conscious customers will gladly cough up the license fees if they are convinced that it will cut down the total cost, especially if a nice support contract is bundled.

    Often we find that a customer is actually using some tailor made system (sometimes based on OSS components). Usually the reason they are coming to us is the lack of flexibility, soaring maintenance cost of their existing software.
  • This is a bit of a troll for a Holy War, don't you think? Obviously, and I say that emphatically: obviously every single one of the open source and free software CMS exist for a reason, because unlike proprietary software, people don't sit down and simply imagine that mice will beat a path to their door if they invent the perfect content system ... these things get written because someone needed them, each feature gets added because someone needed them, and for those someones, the software is a priori appr
    • A fair enough observation. I ended up going with Drupal. I like the code and I like the people. Do I fit into that community? You tell me. I'm there under the same handle. :)
      • uh uh ... you'll have to tell me, and I think you already did: You like the code and you like the people. I think that's evidence enough that you're home at last.

        Besides, when they haven't thrown out the rowdy likes of me, there's not much chance they won't welcome you :)
  • I hope many others got as much out of this discussion as I did. As the instigator, I thought I'd follow-up with what I did since submitting this question to Slashdot. I should note that I went forward without this sage advice, having visited this discussion only now (after Technorati so kindly reminded me). (You submit a story and then drift on, not hearing the echo a few days later.)

    In the end, I went with Drupal. I like the clean code. I like the community. But also the decision was helped in part

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