I want to get into learning how to use a good CMS. A friend of mine is gaga over Drupal and is a long time member of it’s core development community, so I naturally inclined toward that. Someone else in another thread mentioned Django.
Who has experience with CMS’s and why would I want to pick one over another?
Keep in mind that I have limited web development experience and just want something I can learn to work with.
Well the two big free ones are Drupal and e107. And while they are not exactly content management systems, don’t forget to look into the various wikis like docuwiki.
There is no real advantage to one over the other, it’s a matter of personal taste in most things.
For instance, for wikis I use mediawiki though it’s the most complicated, simply because it draw people, because they are familiar with mediawiki through the Wikipedia. But certainly other wikis are easier.
What I would do is go to those sites and see the sites that they list as using their systems and then see what best suits your needs. In other words if site XYZ.Com was created with e107 and you love that site, it probably is a good way to go
Another vote for Drupal. I started using Drupal even though I was used to Wordpress (which is more for blogs, but is similar enough that themes are usually available for both platforms).
It was very intuitive, and I only had to spend a couple days before I figured everything out. If you have a concern or question, chances are, it has been asked, and there are plugins for practically EVERYTHING.
(i.e. You want a plugin to show print out your facebook status onto your website? Yup. It’s there.)
I’ll just say “Avoid Joomla!” It works well enough and has a fair array of plugins (called “extensions”). But its architecture is deliberately confusing - based not on content elements, but on their organization. You need to have your content organized into menus before putting any of it online. There’s also a pointlessly confusing terminology (“extensions” above being just one example).
Finally, Joomla!'s online community isn’t much help. RTFM-ism is particularly blatant, with most solutions and workarounds necessitating a good knowledge of PHP & MySQL, and the great majority of development work seems to be come from South Asia, adding a working knowledge of Babu English to the list of requirements.
Sometimes I think Drupal and Joomla are overkill for a lot of sites. Wordpress is dead simple and I like it for that. It all depends on what you need - if you’re trying to build a gigantic site for your brand featuring blogs for your users and forums and ecommerce out the wazoo, then looking at solutions like Drupal is cool, but for most small biz sites that are more like an online brochure, Wordpress is perfectly fine.
I definitely agree.
I’ve worked with a political group for over 10 years, and every couple of years a new Chair wants us to create a new website, using one of these ‘content management systems’. We’ve used several of them over the years. But they all end up being too complicated & confusing for normal people to use, and thus the sites end up stagnating for lack of current, usable information.
Meanwhile my internal website continues, and it ends up being accessed by nearly everyone, including the news media, because it has the accurate info in a timely manner. It’s very plain & simple, hardly any graphics, just real information. And all done in plain HTML on a text editor.
IMO, most CMS’s are overkill, and they end up killing the site by being too complicated to use.
I use and like Expression Engine. It has a modest (one-time) fee for most users; nonprofits and personal sites can use the Core version for free.
Lots of good 1st and 3rd-party extensions/modules/plugins, good developer community. And quite easy to translate an ordinary HTML page into a dynamic EE page.
Plus, you can set up different levels of access for different user types, meaning you can have a SuperAdministrator who is allowed to monkey with the HTML, etc., but also an “Editor” class (or whatever you want to call it) who can write and edit new/old content on the site. You can even create workflows this way (Writer class submits content to Editor class for approval, who then makes it live, etc.).
Seconded. It’s the worst CMS I’ve used in years.
If you can get your site to fit it, blogging systems like wordpress of movable type are much easier to use.
We use Drupal on techsupportalert.com and have had nothing but success with it.
That sounds like a problem of poor design rather than a problem with CMSs.
Here’s another question.
If I wanted to use a CMS, what would be some really helpful foundational skillsets? Obviously MySql and php. Are there some good free tutorials out there? Would it be good to take a class? What is the consensus on this?
It’s probably poor design reinforced by developer/user schisms within the communities, which often favor developers. After all, every plug-in, module, fix, etc., takes time and work to develop, and developers come to expect at least a similar level of commitment from users - and to developers, commitment means expertise. No code knowledge? No time to RTFM in its entirety? No fair! Open source means we’re not getting paid, so don’t make unusual demands of us.
Users, OTOH, want a relatively simple and intuitive system that can be added onto and/or changed with a minimum of training (and no special consultants) and adds new functionalities all the time. Anything less is likely to be seen as an elitist club for codeheads.
The thing is, the developers are not doing OS for the good of all humanity (no matter how some may blog about it). They’re doing it because they love to code, not solve wetware problems or communicate. And, of course, also because they may be able to trade on their expertise in the for-profit marketplace - which doesn’t reward communciating problem-solvers nearly as well as pure geeks.
To be honest, if you don’t plan on developing anything, I’d say just some HTML knowledge is needed. The thing about a CMS is that you shouldn’t need to edit the code!
It’s insane the number of plugins out there, unless you want something super specialized (say, you’re a non-profit and there’s some sort of standard fundraising site that you want to pull the total number of dollars raised dynamically) you’ll be able to find a plugin. And for the super specialized stuff, it might just be better to to pay someone $100 to make that plugin. Is it worth 4 days of your time to learn how things work as opposed to paying $100 and getting a quick turnaround?
I can handle HTML. And my plan is that if I ever get to where I am actually designing stuff that’s turning a revenue to just outsource what I can’t handle myself since there are plenty of outsourcing websites that handle the billing for you. I just need to be able to know enough to project manage competently.
Beware of Doug Yeah, the developer thing is something I understand pretty well, though I imagine a lot of stuff is developed under the aegis of a design project. Say I need some app developed, I pay someone to develop it and then it goes up on the Drupal website as a plugin. My friend I referenced above has been involved with Drupal for many years, and he said that one year it stopped being a bunch of code monkeys hanging out at cons to super-pro trade fairs.
Can you rephrase? Not sure I get your syntax.
They used to be dominated by Drupal geeks, and now they are dominated by Drupal suits trying to sell to corporate points of contact.
mswas - not to raise a zombie thread - but how did this turn out? Did you end up using Drupal, Wordpress, etc?
I have been paying a monthly fee through GoDaddy for their website builder - and it stinks. I want something much more functional and easy - and rather than starting a fresh thread, stumbled on this.