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A Simple, Family-Oriented CMS?
jbarr asks: "I would like to host a private, family-oriented Content Management System (CMS) that would allow geographically-separated family members to easily share online things like photos, comments, stories, calendars, etc. I would like it to have friendly yet secure front-end and have an easy interface that wouldn't intimidate the less-than computer-savvy. I could always just install and tweak PHP-Nuke and create a family-friendly theme, but is there something else that you would suggest? I would prefer an Open Source solution, as my host is Linux-based."
As the owner of GmailTips.com, I'm sure you will appreciate the irony of my post :)
:)
I've known a couple family groups who ended up using Yahoo Groups for this very purpose. It was the cheapest and simplest solution. Do you really want to host a web/email service and provide technical support to your family? (Not that there's anything wrong with that)
I've run two dozen different lists through them for a variety of groups (Work alumni groups, self-help groups for job seekers, geographically dispersed groups, etc). Each time we debated what services to use, Yahoo Groups won out because it had the most complete feature set and was the easiest to use. Nobody really cared about having a full-fledged CMS--they just wanted to be able to post stories, comments via email or the web.
Yahoo Groups is good enough, with a few caveats.
Yahoo groups supports comments & stories as regular old posts, photos & calendars. The group members can receive the posts via email or on the web, which makes it simple if they just want to use their regular email.
It doesn't have a good secure interface, the default login screen is HTTP, but you can log in via HTTPS as well. The groups can be invisible to outsiders, closed to non-subscribers, etc. Not sure if that's what you meant by a 'secure interface'.
The solution is not open-source, it's not something you can custom host, they have ads, and you need a Yahoo account to use the advanced features (I think).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I like E107. It's very useful and customizable and has a great theme and plugin developer community.
for me it suits everything from community sites, to corporate sites.
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Geeklog. Pathetically easy to set up and use, even moreso to administer. Plugins aplenty from squatty.com. And of course you need themes.
PHPNuke is OK, but I've found Geeklog to be a lot cleaner, and the community support is insane[ly good]. For your purposes, comments, stories, and calendars (including per-user calendaring, I believe) is included. There are several plugins that connect Geeklog and Coppermine, Gallery, etc.
Here's what you might like about it:
- It's modular, so the base install is pretty lightweight, but you can add a lot of features. Activating a module is usually as simple as untar'ing it into a directory and switching it on, and maybe running a SQL script.
- Granular user controls. Permissions and interface can be configured at a pretty fine level, so they only see what they need to see. It's easy to have multiple authors on the same site. Also easy to limit content for anonymous users.
- Supports all the stuff you mentioned, either natively, or through native-looking modules. (i.e. you don't need to integrate Gallery).
- Great admin interface. Lots of options are exposed, more than I've ever seen.
- Active and large community... 'nuff said.
A lot of CMSs offer these, but I've been happiest with Drupal's feel and overall ease of use.perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
LiveJournal
Was created by Brad to help his family keep in touch, and at the same time be as user-friendly as possible. Has a bunch of GUI apps that allow posting without ever touching the Web interface.
"Friends" aggregators allows the users to read the stream of postings of the friends they choose to add, so no need to browse 15 journals at once to see whether they added anything new over the past few days.
E-mail notifications, commenting, pictures, etc.
And it's open source.
By "family" I assume that you're using a euphamism for the mafia. In this case you may want to use good encryption, and host the server in a country with weak ties to law enforcement in your native country. Perhaps you should have been more up-front in your request for information.
-- $SIGNATURE
hit OpenSourceCMS and go through the lists - most have online demos available so you can play with them. :)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Try Drupal [http://drupal.org/%5D it is simple but powerfull CMS/Blog system. With easy user interface (at least I think so) and writen very well (meaning code) - it is clean, object oriented mostly, and modular. The tarball is just half megabyte.
Or maybe go with MediaWiki [http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/%5D it is the engine behind WikiPedia - it uses simple wiki markup, supports images, stories and stuff. Also it has access control, revision control etc. - it should be suitable for such tasks.
And to be honest dont go with anythink with *nuke in name - this is spaghetti code shit. It is very awful for me. Unclean, not modular.
You may want to take a look at Mambo CMS (www.mamboforge.net) It is GNU licensed, and in my experience, a very mature CMS app. There are tons of plugins (including a cool Dreamweaver extension that makes theme-ing pretty easy). I use the blog and gallery plugins for my site and I am very happy with it.
I have also used e107 as well, it is a pretty nice app as well, but Mambo seems to have more features.