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Communications Software

CMS Recommendations for Static Site Migration? 26

Posted by Cliff from the manage-your-content-more-easily dept.
a-singularity asks: "I'm a Ph.D. student (and GSoCer) who also works for a campus extension organization to extend and maintain their website. They inherited the site from another organization at another institution. Currently the site is updated by editing very ugly, table-clogged HTML when someone requests it. The site maintains no separation of concerns, and has several poorly designed PHP scripts for database access. There are many CMS solutions out there, and while I've used a few (Drupal, MovableType), I'm not familiar with many other options. What is the best CMS out there for simple management of a medium-sized site with regular updates? What about ease of use, so all of those who might need to can submit updates?"
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CMS Recommendations for Static Site Migration? More

CMS Recommendations for Static Site Migration?

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  • Hello. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 )
    Well, with the addition of (perhaps) MamboServer, you already have the top easy to use CMS apps. I also hear good things about Plone. Typo3 is a bit heavy-duty, and I hear mixed reviews. And since this "Ask Slashdot" is really a dupe, let me be the first to mention Google for "Open Source CMS", and you will find... www.opensourcecms.com

  • OpenSourceCMS.com [opensourcecms.com]: Try before you.. install.

    I use Textpattern for my security site, Security Engine [the-engine.org]. It is a bit awkward at first, but is a very nice CMS once you learn the basics of it.

    • The only trouble with that link is it only lists PHP/mysql CMSs.

      http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ [cmsmatrix.org] will show you the rest, including commercial ones if you're interested (and considering the price of commercial CMSs, you're probably not) And it lets you compare based on the features you require.
  • Many unis are migrating to a single login system. While i personally think its a stupid idea, security wise, it does mean more freedmon.

    For example, JANET unis in the UK using RoamNet, can login via a different domain, ie: username@domain, rather than just the plain user name, at via any RoamNet access point in the UK.

    All of this is controlled via a number of different connectivities. Most noticibly unis are investing in Shibboleth (link: http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/ [internet2.edu] ), uportal, and similar things.

    Ge
  • Personally, I'd say go with drupal [drupal.org] if you need a really flexible system than can do just about anything. That said, it can be a bit daunting. For a smaller site, I'd go with WordPress [wordpress.org] (there are rumblings that they'll end up compatible at some point down the road). One nice aspect to WordPress is that the administration console is separate from the site, so it offers a separation of paradigms for users, although they drupal is heading in that direction I believe. There's also an active community of deve
    • I am quite into CMSs and I think Drupal is great - it is very clean and lean. Template/design system allows you to anything you wan't. It has nice/easy interface for editing/submitting etc. but I am far from saying it can do just about anything. It can't do many things like:

      * internationalization - you know, one site in few languages.
      * workflows - you know, like you have few editors, few translators, editor in chief (who can actually publish things when they are fully done and translated etc.)
      * advanced st
      • I'd recommend ezPublish too.
        The performance is not too bad at all (comparable with other non trivial database backed PHP applications), especially when you use a PHP accelerator - and the current version has a static export feature which will help a great deal.

        I run it on a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512Mb of memory, it manages 8 or 9 pages per second with a PHP accelerator, and I don't use static caching (yet).
        Obviously that's not gonna work for a high volume site, but as I said, it's consistent with the performa

  • For a comprehensive comparison of CMSes... (Score:5, Informative)

    by zhiwenchong ( 155773 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @06:33PM (#13160747)
    ... just use the CMS Matrix [cmsmatrix.org]!

    You're bound to find something that will fit your needs.

  • A JSR-168 compatible portal might be a good solution. It would take care of things like single sign on, and they usually have a fair number of useful modules. You should be able to find some forum and wiki modules, among others.

    These things take some substantial work to configure and set up, but once set up, they tend to work very well. You could look at Jetspeed or JBoss, for starters.

    These modules are also (slowly) starting to become comodities, so you should be able to get lots of useful functionality

  • http://www.opensourcecms.com/ (Score:3, Informative)

    by natmsincome.com ( 528791 ) <adinobro@gmail.com> on Monday July 25, 2005 @06:37PM (#13160779) Homepage
    http://www.opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com]

    While it only has php CMS it is a good place to start. This site has a demo of most of the CMS out there. You can try them and then a couple of hours later they will all be reset.

    Here are my recomendations:
    *Mambo - If you are trying to create a website.
    *phpNuke (etc) - If you want a community site.
    *Typo3, Phone(python) - If you have a larger site that needs more management, mulitple departments etc.

    • No Nukes! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @06:41PM (#13160806) Homepage
      *phpNuke (etc) - If you want a community site.

      The "nuke" family of CMS applications not only all look and feel more or less the same, they have a very bad rep for crappy code and a high number of security issues.

      Drupal, Plone, Mambo. All EASY to set up and admin.

      Though GeekLog seems to be a Nuke clone, I have heard good things about it.

      • How about DotNetNuke?? I only ask because a couple of consultants suggested it when my wife was asking about getting some web content updated at school, and the existing app really, *really* sucks...

        I suggested she might want to avoid getting sucked into using a Microsoft-only product... I pointed out that Zope/Plone appears to be good enough for NATO, NASA/JPL, AARP, Lufthansa and the Governors of Texas & Hawaii, according to their lists of happy users.

    • Typo3 is PHP, FYI.

      -psy
    • *Mambo - If you are trying to create a website.

      I agree fully with this statement. I have recently been looking at CMS's and this is really the only one that I have found that is easy and allows you to create a site that isn't just a blog. The module system is easy to use, and there are thousands of modules to download on http://mamboforge.net/ [mamboforge.net]

  • MediaWiki [mediawiki.org]

    I can personally attest to the power of wiki.
  • For smaller projects where you just want the client updating small portions of the website without knowing html, there is a product from Macromedia called " Contribute [macromedia.com]". This product is a client side solution, not a server side one, so no databases, programming languages, or server configuration is necessary. It uses HTML comments to designate which areas of a page are editable and which are not. Access can be granted based on HTML comments in the doument or by restricting entire folders.

    Note: This is n
  • While everyone mentions their own favourite CMS, I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention mine as well. Check out Sitellite at http://www.sitellite.org/ [sitellite.org] as well as our company website where you can get professional support and add-ons at http://www.simian.ca/ [simian.ca]. The company website also features some articles from well-known pros in the CMS industry about content management, online publishing, writing for the WWW, etc. at http://www.simian.ca/index/content-management-101 [simian.ca]

    Being the lead developer of Sitellit

  • I don't see anyone that's mentioned it yet (Score:3, Informative)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Monday July 25, 2005 @10:43PM (#13162230)
    but Wordpress is the one for me. It is insanely easy to set up and use, while at the same time, very powerful and adaptable.

    Wordpress [wordpress.org] recommended by me.
  • I'm biased, since I've contributed to the project, but CMS Made Simple http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ [cmsmadesimple.org] is a straightforward, PHP-based approach that is designed to port "mostly static" sites into content management.

    It is actually about managing content, unlike most of the PHP CMSes which are really more designed to be portal systems.

    It's fairly lightweight, works with a variety of databases, is localized into a lot of languages, and is GPLed.

    I got into this system after reviewing a whole big stack of other
  • Are you considering Java based ones? There are quite a few of them like OpenCMS, Lenya and Alfresco. There is a short review here http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/content/archives/005 119.asp [ittoolbox.com]. If you want to use a portal server that has content management capabilities, then Liferay is a good choice. It is JSR168 compatible. There is a good review at http://portlets.blogspot.com/2005/07/open-source-p ortal-server-selection.html [blogspot.com] and http://www.apoorv.info/index.php/2005/07/16/open-s ource-portals-comparison/ [apoorv.info].
  • In my admittedly very limited experience of CMSs, Mambo tends to look like Mambo, WordPress looks like WordPress, etc. They are all customisable, but beyond the simple stuff it is quite a steep learning curve.

    It seems like more work to learn and customise an existing CMS than it is to roll your own, developing it over time to meet your specific requirements, especially if you have a mix of static and dynamic content, the static content comes first, and you are already very familiar with XHTML and CSS.

    Of c
  • Bricolage [bricolage.cc] is a mod_perl-based CMS which is currently (as it happens) being worked on by 4 GSoCers. It's hard to set up at first, but is powerful and flexible.
  • I'm in the same "dilemma" of choosing a simple CMS to a small newspaper from my city.
    I used drupal in other site tried to use the 'nukes' and similars and a lot of others.
    I very biased to use Wordpress because it's simple to users, but I prefer a wiki who I think is much better than any CMS.
    btw: textpattern.com is a good choice too.

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