Comments on: How do you pick a content management system?

By: MonkeyT

MonkeyT — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:51:06 +0000

Your limited book theory doesn’t amount to much: A couple of years ago, Joomla came into existence through an internal shakeup, a change of leadership and a name change of an existing project. It began as a fork of Mambo, a CMS project which has been around a long time.

By: travc

travc — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:02:24 +0000

Wow, I am out of the loop. So there is a category called CMS now?MySQL (or postgresql if you are cool), Apache, php, and python are sufficient. But I guess there is a good case that you shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel continually.

By: Kent Sharkey

Kent Sharkey — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:09:39 +0000

As you say, the documentation really separates the tools, especially for Open Source packages. However, rather than struggle with the setup part, take a look at http://www.opensourcecms.com/. They have quite a broad selection installed, and you can view both the client-side and admin-side of each. They reset them hourly, so they tend to stay fairly clean.

By: Rev Matt

Rev Matt — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:38:48 +0000

To clarify: the ten hours to build the site included learning django.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:51:38 +0000

My upcoming project requires a complex form linked to a database with each user having a different and secured form (invisible to other users, most likely).

That doesn’t really sound like a CMS problem to me. Sounds like a bespoke web app…

By: Rev Matt

Rev Matt — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:28:18 +0000

In the same vein as mlf, if you want a CMS that does what you want and *just* what you want without a lot of needless complexity, roll your own. Chances are you’re pretty familiar with the data model for the project and defining the ui shouldn’t be too problematic. My preference is for Django + MySQL. I learned Django well enough to write a new website in about 10 hours (granted I was already pretty familiar with Python). And that was before 3-4 books on django came out in the past few months.

By: Matthew Platte

Matthew Platte — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:12:16 +0000

Popularity is not necessarily equal to Good. It’s in the interest of publishers to pursue the popular. Maybe popular — like Microsoft, for example — is what you’re really after; maybe not.

By: mlf

mlf — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:57:09 +0000

I learned MYSQL so that I can make my own CMS’s from scratch. This really comes in handy when I make websites for other people because I can custom tailor the backend to perfectly fit the needs and (most importantly) the skill level of the person I am making it for so he/she can easily make edits of their own.

By: Neal Holtz

Neal Holtz — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:54:12 +0000

This won’t be very helpful, probably, but I’ve often been tempted to go with Plone (I prefer the underlying technology – Python instead of Php). Last time I seriously looked was probably two years ago when I did a proof-of-concept for our Dept. web site — mimiced current look and feel and also started to re-implement the faculty/grad student databases. The project did not go forward, for other reasons, but I thought it showed promise. I haven’t actively compared Plone with other alternatives.The first google result for ‘plone drupal joomla’ is this:http://www.idealware.org/articles/joomla_drupal_plone.phpand I thinks its Plone comments are pretty sound.cheers and good luck

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:22:33 +0000

Where on Earth do they dig up these names?!!