Your favourite CMS?

I have always stood by phpnuke but seeing this site basically changed my concept...

Should probably find the time to explore mambo etc...

Hello,

I've look into CMS software in the last two years. I've not found anything that suites me still. They offer a lot but at the same time I feel it is always too much.

I have started my experience with PHP-Nuke, after a day I was convinced that anything else would be better. I then fall on XOOPS, it was perfect, I then played with the module and tried to add stuff and I realized how bad it was.

I made a move to Drupal, simpler but still no better. I'm still using this thought. I then played with EzPublish, lots more complicated but so much more possibility but still too young. So I retracted back to Drupal.

I had a look at Xanaya, seemed promising but too young as well.

My point of view is that plugging into those architecture is too costly. And from my user point of view adding content is terrible.

The strength of the CMS is seen right away when you look at the way one add content. Basically if you get that part wrong then you got the whole thing wrong. A CMS is about adding content, and for sure, everyone will want to have its own way.

I think a WYSIWYG editor is the first thing to have, and then comes the way you add to the system, can I have pictures in my content, sounds, software all this is quite important. Then comes the unexpected.

How is the admin going to add custom nodes or pieces of information. This is like a database, any front-end to that is reducing in capabilities. Even xanaya is failing there from my point of view, yet it seems one of the most advanced in that area of creating custom module without coding and supporting those throughout an upgrade.

The tools are still to close to the DB they're built upon from my opinion and yet way too far functionnal from the user point of view. Most user that came to my sites were non-computer users and had such hard time to log in and registering that I can't even imagine how bad it was when they actually attempted to add a post to a forum or add a comment to an already existing article.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. The BBcode that most are using is too limited. I even think that limiting a CMS to the web is a dead-end. A CMS should offer a way for users to experience it outside of the HTML limitation. Even have a way from Word to send a text inside a CMS would be awesome like you can print it.

I'm still confuse as finding the issue is not easy, and that's probably why there's so many out there.

I've also tried TikiWiki, what a bad experience that is. The simple fact that they had put a + sign to open up menu has made most of the user complaining as they didn't understood they could open up the menu to see sub-menu options. They are not stupid, they are programmer. It was just unclear. Even with the yellow folder, no body understood the twice functionnality of the same line.

Many site send an email to activate an account. I can tell you that this is limiting the user a lot. Many of normal users reported never having receive the email, didn't bother to report that to me and left. They also didn't understand how the hell they were receiving an email while they never asked for it or that it was related with their subscription and why they had to activate their account.

The CMS are protecting against people and I believe they are doing too much already and they cross the line and are affecting the use from valid user. Again there I have no solution to propose, only idea to test.

Things would likely change with the ease of ASP.NET or maybe XUL, I can only hope because the web is lacking so much when it comes to a CMS that what we are facing with is the best effort of those web programmer attempting to make it look like an App while the basis design of the web doesn't fit.

I can only hope for better CMS. Even old BBS were more appropriate to their task than current CMS, in my opinion.

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Yannick Koehler

First, welcome to libervis.com Yannick!

I see how dissappointed you are with the whole today's CMS picture and i must say that i felt like in chaos for some time choosing the right one to power up this portal. One thing is for sure. There is no CMS that is perfect for you. You always have to analyze your pros and const with every system because there is no a system that has all pros and no cons.

Some ideas you are mentioning here may be subjected to an opinion. While it may be true that the today's CMS's limit users with requiring too much such as maybe e-mail activation etc., i don't quite know how else would it function. E-mail activation for instance has it's advantage. It allows users to register without yet appearing on the site as a new registered users. And they get an activation e-mail that they may save as a reminder that they registered. Once they decide to take action and participate on the site, they simply click on the activation link.
So, while from some points of view CMS may require too much from an user, it may on the other hand be viewed as giving users more control over their actions on the web.
Anyway, like i said, the points you stated, while being good, are subjected to an opinion, which are everyone free to express.

Thank you for posting.
Daniel

I've tried so many CMS and have been disappointed by almost all of them. They all tend to look the same (3 column design) IMHO it makes your site look the same as everyone elses.

I've given XOOPS, Mambo, PHPnuke, PostNuke, vbadvanced, and other a run. Mambo was the best looking one and PostNuke had the best plugins. I guess this is due to the length of time its been out.

Question: If you were going to a forum every day, would you rather go straight to a forum (Like WHT) or to a CMS (Sitepoint)? I find sitepoints CMS very annoying. Its just a way for them to push books on me when all I want is the forums. I bookmark my way around it.

Answer: I believe it's just a matter of taste. If you go to the site just because of forums it would probably be somewhat better to have acces straight to the forums, but i don't hold it as much of an issue. I actually like sitepoint. This way it offers some very interesting and useful articles at the same time offering forums where you can discuss, shareand get help and tips. And they made the acces to forums fairly easy.
Also, libervis.com while being centered around forums offers more features in order to provide it's visitors more open source/free software related content and resources by that enrishing the whole open source research experience. But it also provides easy acces to forums.

I actually like having it all in one because that way everything is integrated, but that may as i said be a matter of personal preference.

Daniel

I agree with the whole personal preference idea.
I find that for a lot of my sites I use either one of two.

PHPNUKE (www.phpnuke.org)
MAMBO (www.mamboserver.com)

My reasons are because of their ease of installation
They both also have a massive amount of free modules and themes available.

Welcome! :-)

Mambo is great. I actually considered it for this site, but dropped it since xoops which is used here is more suitable for community driven sites such as this.

And phpnuke is great due to it's maturity, great popularity and alot of modules and hacks as you said. However, it's many forks may in many cases do even a better job. Postnuke was a fork of php nuke and xoops is a fork of postnuke.

Heh.. we could call it the daddy of all cms's, at least on the open source side of the fence.

Daniel :-)

Agreed!
Tell me, what is this site using? I know it must be a heavily hacked version of something, I cant get my head around it? Its great.

This sit is using xoops (eXtented Object Oriented Portal System). It's actually not really hacked. It uses some of the non-default modules and only which may be considered as "heavily" modified is the basic 7dana jane theme.

I am glad you enjoy it. :-)

Hmm...

I believe you do have a good point there. However, I believe a CMS of your standard will need much more resources than what is possible as of now.

I also agree that no off the shelf CMS's can't suit a person's needs completely. Different people have different perferences and all. As such, I believe in coding your own, even though I am a rookie coder :-D