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This should be fun.

I've been doing Web sites since the 1990s. I've written my own full-featured CMS systems in Perl (I told you I've been doing this a while) and in PHP, have completely modified open-source CMSes, and have used a number of CMS systems; including Java systems and even ASP .NET systems. I've written many, many plugins, modules and themes.

However, just because I actually have a couple of decades of direct, relevant experience in exactly this, doesn't mean that my opinion will hold any weight at all. This is SlashDot, where poo-flinging monkeys rule the roost. I'll be soundly attacked because I don't drink the right brand of Kool-Aid as some kid out of Java School.

My opinion: You want commercial-grade, the .ASP systems are generally robust as hell, but you need to pay for a good one. Free: You need to go to a PHP-based system. Drupal is definitely the best; but has a Matterhorn learning curve. WordPress is the easiest to set up and actually, despite all the screeching, has very good quality and support up the yin-yang.

There's a couple of off-the-beaten-path CMSes, like TextPattern and EZ. They are actually fairly good, but lack the enormous code base and community support from the "Big 3."

I tend to avoid Joomla. It's easy to set up, has a lot of support, and is about ten thousand times more complex than it needs to be.

I think we're likely to see some good Node.js systems coming out soon. RoR never really made it out the gate, and if you see Perl, like Movable Type (Which is actually a fairly robust and mature system), start running.

FLING POO HERE -->

Thanks for the tip. I have heard very good things about TextPattern and EZ Publish. However, the issue is that the folks who use my code are primarily "big 3" users; with a distressing number of Joomla users.

It has to do with "market penetration" and "community support," as much as good code, ease of extensibility, etc.

I usually use eclipse PDT on windows, but it doesn't scale well with really big projects (anything base on ez publish, a CMS often used in the company I work for): the code completion system becomes a nightmare, as everytime I begin typing a function name it freezes several seconds as if parsing every file on the hard drive to find if it already exists somewhere.
I tried netbeans, and the problem is the same. I end up with and IDE where the only features I use are syntax coloring, functions folding, and file structure outline.

On smaller projets it's very useful to jump to the defincition of a class/function just by hitting F3 while the cursor is on the function name, regardless of what file it is declared in. I really miss it on big projects, where it could be even more useful.

Who said everyone was struggling? I didn't need to look far to find this..
If you know PHP/OOP/GLP/web/(java) or you are a technical writer then there is work for you in Chicago*/Lyon/Paris/Dortmund/Oslo/Copenhagen/Tokyo*/Belgium: http://ez.no/company/career

* Only for the technical writer position officially, but developers are possible at all locations if the right person shows up, so just apply if it looks interesting..

What do you mean by aggregator? An RSS feed?

As for CMSs, I know that Plone and EZPublish can accept/convert ODF files, and I just found HippoCMS, an Apache Caccon-based CMS, through a quick Google search for "ODF CMS."

> Anyone have better solutions?

Yes.

eZComponents Graph, from the developers of the eZpublish CMS. It's FLOSS, easy to use, and works very well for some automatically generated graphs I made that needed to update every week.

RedHat isn't to blame for your problems.

We had similar problems. However all you have to do is when you install the newer version of python, do make altinstall instead of a make install. When you need the newer version, you just do /usr/bin/python2.4 when you start your app. Python takes care if it all. Really simple.

As for your php problem. Remove all of the php rpms and install from source. It does not invalidate your support (at least it hasn't invalidated ours). You can get multiple version of php running on the same server. You can do it with mulitple apache installs or through http://groups.google.com/group/alt.php/browse_frm/ thread/e19e4d7ab309ed3b/2e18b77fa8c54b83?lnk=st&q= install+multiple+versions+of+php&rnum=13&hl=en#2e1 8b77fa8c54b83">playing with the apache handlers.

I've found RHEL to be by far the easiest distro that just works out of the box. It also pretty easily can be customized without having support issues. The worst that might happen are the above two issues. Everything else is even more simple. I didn't think Linux would ever be this easy! Now if they could just get the Fedora Crap project on track and not behaving like alpha and beta software, I'd be happy (until they do I'll use CentOS at home).

(Why am I seeing two posts when I preview??)

One really anoying thing with PHP/MySQL Solutions is that there's so many of them. And a lot are so crappy it's unbelievable.

Here's my breakdown of systems worth mentioning and that I've worked with/administrated/looked into:

Typo3 - the scariest heap of PHP code ever. 7 years of historically grown code mess. Don't even think of looking at the current data model. The operating system of OSS CMSes, the first to sport a proper GUI and an own configuration language and heavy Ajax use in the backend (before it was called Ajax). Large community. Despite the mess it is, its performance requirements and it's notably difficult install process, it is a very powerfull, flexible, secure and stable system. Usefull extensions number in the thousands and it is one of the bridgeheads of OSS into the corporate world and powers a notable amout of large scale / high profile / heavy traffic websites. It's extremly popular in web agencies throughout the german speaking world (probably because it had a german backend from early on) and basically has allready grown beyond critical mass in Europe. Reddot regularly pee their pants when they hear 'Typo3'. The Webagencies using it as their prime tool are actually called Typo3 agencies sometimes. You can make a fair living as a Typo3 expert in Germany. There's a regular magazine on Typo3 (some articles in english as free PDF available: http://www.yeebase.com/home/ ) and 20+ german books about it.

If you want to dive into an OSS CMS for good it's not the worst choice. If T3 doesn't have it, you probably don't need it. However the learning curve is steep and it's a german-style overengineered monster, despite being initially built by a danish guy. You have been warned.

Note: The T5 team (a subgroup of the core T3 community) is currently rebuilding an entirely new architecture from scratch and plans to be finished with the new branch (Typo3 5.0) in about 2 years. Which actually keeps me interested in the project.

EZ Publish - same league as T3 yet smaller community. Backend less scary. Probably less features.

Joomla - descendant of Mambo, factually it's successor. My and many others favourite. The first turnkey OSS CMS that doesn't look like shit. Hence the raging success. Installation is a breeze. Considered a strong competitor to Typo3 in Germany, despite lacking a German backend. Which means a lot, because Typo3 owns Germany (see above). 1000+ Extensions and Plugins and many German books on it and a magazine aswell - which went broke after 3 issues though :-) .

PHP CMS - yes it's called that way. Very small, simple, no DB needed. My first. Not very big but good enough for small sites.

Drupal seems to much between the above and the Wordpress/b2evolution Blog-park to be of interest to me. I've heard alot about it, he community is very active and a lot of people in the T3 and Joomla Camp accept it as one of theirs. However, there's only so much systems you can look into before it get's pointless. Drupal may be worth a try aswell for those who are interested.

For the last two years, I've been looking for a Unified Content Management System[..] The closest I've come to something that is a Unified Content Management System is Drupal. However, it lacks the slashdot style moderation. It also seems overly complex to install, setup, and admin. Finally the biggest problem is that all of its pages are dynamically generated.[..]

Hands down the best open source content management system out there is "eZ Publish".

In the past I've used Textpattern, Mambo, Joomla, Etomite, Typo3, Sharepoint, and a few others, and eZ Publish dominates them all.

It is a real *content* management system - not article management (with title, body text, etc.). You can set up different content classes with your own editable fields and customize various views for displaying the information.

What I find amazing is that the entire back-end administration is built using the same API and template language that you'd use to build the front end. The administration is really just a different "view".

It does have a steep learning curve, but I doubt you'd find anything else as flexible, robust, secure, and stable.

Check it out here: http://ez.no/products/ez_publish

PEAR and the new eZ components http://ez.no/community/news/ez_components_1_0_rele ase_candidate_1

http://ez.no/

Although the name may sound like it is a wimpy CMS, ezPublish is one of the most impressive CMS's around. I am currently in the process of adopting it as the base for my employer's website redesign.

Yes, it is wrote by Norwegians, but their English is superior to that of many native speakers. Also, they have an amazing model for translations and versioning (keeps the 10 most recent versions of a document by default). It also has a nifty nodular system of organizing pages.

At first, it seems a little confusing, especially when the manual starts talking about nodes and objects and IDs and whatnot, but it eventually makes sense. Once that happens, you have a great deal of creative abilities, with templates and the such. I shied away from many other CMSs because they assumed (or at least appeared to assume that) you wanted to do one certain thing, and God help you if you wanted to do something else. ezPublish really seems flexible.

Oh, and to the "CMSs only take an hour or so" group: I wrote a CMS working with one other person, and we easily put 500 man-hours into developing it, adding custom functionalities, and making it look acceptable to non-technical folks (we still don't have a graphical interface, just HTML menus and tables with a sprinkling of Javascript).

Kyle

>> In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo
>> is yours, and you must NOT charge people for
>> Mambo iteself.

> I thought that GPL software could be sold as
> long as the source was attached.


Yes, and you're right. You can sell the software for whatever price you'd like, but you MUST keep it under GPL licence which means you have to provide the source and the people who paid you money can again sell it or give it away. You CAN'T relicence the program if you don't have the COMPLETE copyright for it.

Some companies go to great lengths to make sure they have the complete copyright for the code they release and then they have the possibility to have the software as GPL and as a commercial licence (e.g. the competitor to Mambo: eZ publish or QT). But even they can't take back code that they've once licenced under the GPL.

I really dislike people who spin things like the mambo people. It's clearly stated in the GPL FAQ.

It does a disservice to the GPL licence because people get confused. And it only discourages people who don't know the GPL well enough.

make sure you test Plone's performance first.

I don't know if it scales up, but it sure as hell doesn't scale _down_
It's by far the slowest out of the box CMS I have ever played with.
Also the split between Zope administration and Plone administration raises the learning curve quite a bit.

I really liked the design of Plone, but unfortunately the performance was so bad that it wasn't worth putting in the significan effort required to understand the system.

Something that comes close to Plone's design, but is much faster, well documented, and rather less complicated is ezPublish.
I don't know how well it would handle 100,000 users though, as my CMS needs are for mostly public sites with a handful of editors as the only registered users.

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" available to buy from the site). In my opinion, it's the best open source php cms available (it has also commercial licence). CONS: It takes 160 hours to master the product (including the scripting language). Visit the site: http://ez.no/

Well, use the GPL-licensed eZ publish CMS. It's designed like a real CMS (well, for online content at least) with great flexibilty, object orientation for all content, workflows, versions, multi-language, etc. etc. In development for several years already.

It's not easy to get into, but if you want flexibilty and power then that's the way to go. PHPNuke et al. are for small websites that just want to publish news/articles and have other predefined content. eZ publish or Typo3 go the more professional way.

I've tried eZ publish which is a PHP based CMS. Does anyone know both systems enough to point out the differences in performance, setup, maintenance? Thanks.

eZ publish is definitly one of the best open source CMS out there. I prefer it for it's flexibility, but it's also simple to use.

If you wan't you can alter the admin interface and make it even easier for your parents to use. If you configure the webDAV support properly, your parents can just drag'n drop new images directly into the site (works with konqueror and ie).

You can download it from http://ez.no.

eZ publish is definitly one of the best open source CMS out there. I prefer it for it's flexibility, but it's also simple to use.

If you wan't you can alter the admin interface and make it even easier for your parents to use. If you configure the webDAV support properly, your parents can just drag'n drop new images directly into the site (works with konqueror and ie).

You can download it from http://ez.no.

ezPublish is a very sophisticated GPL-licensed CMS that I've used for several projects. Really worth a look; for some reason it's a lot better known among Europeans (perhaps because it's developed by a bunch of Norwegians).

The salience to this discussion is that's real simple to administrate an EZ site, and install/setup is more straightforward than other similar systems I've tried.

Also, if anyone knows of any projects (with source available) written in PHP that are designed well, I would be interested to hear of them. I looked at a tiny bit of PHPMyAdmin's code just for kicks and was horrified. But that's not a valid judgement by any means.

ezPublish 3 Very impressive with a choice of GPL or commericial.

I agree that many popular open source PHP apps have a pretty face but are painfully ugly below the surface. Most that I have tried still need register.globals = On.

One tip of the typing front, if you want a comparison which looks at value AND type, use === rather than == phpMyAdmin is one of the first generation of PHP apps and I agree is full of classic hacks but it works perfectly for it's intended purpose. If you want to put together a well designed PHP app, you really need to pick a one of the available PHP frameworks, unless you want to spent alot of time re-inventing wheels. eZ Publish is worth examining as is Interakts Krysalis (a port of Apache's Cocoon to PHP) although both "tie" you into quite deeply to their way of doing things. On the more "lightweight" framework front, it's worth investigating ISMO or WACT. But if you're really dying, try this: http://pear.php.net/python: "This extension allows the Python interpreter to be embedded inside of PHP, allowing for the instantiate and manipulation of Python objects from within PHP."

"but inlining code and presentation is really not the right way to be encouraging new folks to programming to code..."

You'd better tell that to the guys working on mod_python cause they've already introduced PyHP - Python Hypertext Preprocessor. And while you're at it, better tell the guys a PERL::MASON of the error of their ways.

"PHP teaches programmers bad habits like excessive use of global namespaces, and generally is accomplished with poor editing style becuase it is inlined with HTML, which has different needs for editing/indentation/etc."

PHP doesn't teach anything. If you choose to use globals that's your problem. You'll find if you look most PHP community sites advocate avoiding the use of GLOBALs.

Also as to "inlined with HTML", PHP originally was a templating language. Zope's TAL is simply another programming language (designed specifically for templates) and it's even been ported to PHP PHPTal. As template languages go, TAL is OK but if you're going to have a declarative template syntax (as opposed to an imperitive syntax like PHP in HTML or Mason) you'd be better off with one which gives you some real power, like ASP.NET or Java Server Faces.

Suggest reading up on the TemplateView. That link is a particularily in depth study of templates.

"PHP does not work well for team programming, and Python does."

Yes Python is a better designed language but, based on your arguments, there's no particular advantage it has for teams. Zope is framework built with Python but you'll find many excellent frameworks written in PHP which also have some form of templating e.g. eZ publish or Krysalis (based on Apache Cocoon).

The usual argument for "what works for teams" is things like "private, protected, public". Both PHP and Python lack this (although PHP5 is a different story) so the emphasis is on developer self discipline e.g. __myprivatevar or $__myprivatevar

When to use what?

Use Perl for command line and batch processing
Use Python for desktop apps
Use PHP for web based apps.

eZ Publish from ez.no, and a bunch of others listed at OSCOM

But I would stay well away from some of the new stuff. There are plenty of CMS's out there without a project needing to use something that is new and is a duplicate of an existing product.

There are several promising PHP frameworks in development.

Ports of Struts
PHP.MVC
Phrame

And ezPublish 3 which is primarily a CMS but can also be used as a general purpose framework.

IMHO for one of these to really take off (like Struts) is what professional PHP development needs.

It depends also on web-site design and content presentation. Content presentation depends on CMS. Another question was raised: Can independent Content Management Solution developers survive? Meaning CMS like Typo3, Managee, ezPublish that is not like phpNuke, postNuke and brothers. You may think everything you want, but Content Management tools are very important!

Pfft, the least secure PHP application on earth (and one of the worst written), and another app based on the least secure and worst written PHP app? No thanks :)

Personally I've found that pretty much all systems like this turn out to be messy, badly written, poorly designed, and have URI's that would make TBL gag.

Case in point: phpNuke, long, long history of major security holes, with a hugely speghettified codebase.

Scoop, with embedded Perl and HTML thrown about everywhere in the database.

Drupal, with raw HTML everywhere in the PHP.

This pattern repeats just about everywhere. The closest I've found to an open source web application which doesn't make me want to hit something is ezPublish, which at least makes an effort to have reasonable URI's, and has a decent attempt at making itself OO (although sadly at a significant cost of performance).

Developers: mod_rewrite is your friend. Go read Cool URI's Don't Change, and maybe TBL's other Hypertext Style Guide stuff, it'll be good for you even if you don't agree with all of it.

Not to sound too idiotic, but in my experience you always get what you pay for. If you don't pay enough, you get poor architecture, lack of extensibility, creeping deadlines (if you only have one developer, and he's sick...), and the knowledge is locked with a smaller group. Documentation is ALWAYS the thing that gets cut in an effort to save money, but when you have a group of 10 people working on the project, you cannot work without it, so you can't cut it.

On the other hand, open source projects like ezPublish[ez.no], Apache[apache.org], and MANY others have the benefit of long development times, good documentation, and many developers working on them. That is the way to get less expensive quality software, not to underbid!

Anyways, just my $.02

It seems your question is a bit badly researched before "Ask Slashdot", but anyhow..

I have personal experience with the following :

- eZ Publish (PHP, *nix, MySQL/PgSQL based)
- Slashcode (Perl, *nix, MySQL based)
- PHP Nuke (PHP, MySQL based)

I wouldnt recommend PHP Nuke, but have little experience with the forks off it.. (Check Freshmeat.net as someone suggested).

eZ Publish is the closest I have seen a complete GPL CMS (Content Management Solution), and integrating some of the addons or buying the desktop edition makes it very easy to use!Highly recommended, and now comes in an easy to install Debian package too ! :) (As of woody, apt-cache search ezpublish and then apt-get install the package ..)

Slashcode is possibly one of the better weblogs, although you should possibly check these too, if that is the kind of website you need :

- Scoop
- Drupal

For non "LAMP", based on Tcl and the AOLServer webserver, check out OpenACS, which is reportedly very feature rich.

I do not have personal experience with either Scoop, Drupal or OpenACS, but several sites use them and produce great sites with them.

Good luck !

According to hotscripts.com, eZ publish is the most popular script. We use it in our buisness, and we are very happy about it. eZ publish is a very fast and scalable, and, in opposite to many other open source systems, very well documented.

One of the advantages by using an open source system provided by a commercial company is that you can buy support if something should go wrong.

They also have a desktop client available for Windows, Linux and Mac (although not open source :(, but very reasonable priced :) ) that makes you able to publish articles with a WYSIWYG interface. This makes publishing articles very fast and efficient.

The biggest problem with eZ publish is that the system is very big. The code is very vell designed and documentet, but it takes a while to get to know the system.

I like ezPublish.