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CMS Recommendations for Static Site Migration?
a-singularity asks: "I'm a Ph.D. student (and GSoCer) who also works for a campus extension organization to extend and maintain their website. They inherited the site from another organization at another institution. Currently the site is updated by editing very ugly, table-clogged HTML when someone requests it. The site maintains no separation of concerns, and has several poorly designed PHP scripts for database access. There are many CMS solutions out there, and while I've used a few (Drupal, MovableType), I'm not familiar with many other options. What is the best CMS out there for simple management of a medium-sized site with regular updates? What about ease of use, so all of those who might need to can submit updates?"
Well, with the addition of (perhaps) MamboServer, you already have the top easy to use CMS apps. I also hear good things about Plone. Typo3 is a bit heavy-duty, and I hear mixed reviews. And since this "Ask Slashdot" is really a dupe, let me be the first to mention Google for "Open Source CMS", and you will find... www.opensourcecms.com
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
OpenSourceCMS.com: Try before you.. install.
I use Textpattern for my security site, Security Engine. It is a bit awkward at first, but is a very nice CMS once you learn the basics of it.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Many unis are migrating to a single login system. While i personally think its a stupid idea, security wise, it does mean more freedmon.
For example, JANET unis in the UK using RoamNet, can login via a different domain, ie: username@domain, rather than just the plain user name, at via any RoamNet access point in the UK.
All of this is controlled via a number of different connectivities. Most noticibly unis are investing in Shibboleth (link: http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/ ), uportal, and similar things.
Get ahead of the game!
Matt
Personally, I'd say go with drupal if you need a really flexible system than can do just about anything. That said, it can be a bit daunting. For a smaller site, I'd go with WordPress (there are rumblings that they'll end up compatible at some point down the road). One nice aspect to WordPress is that the administration console is separate from the site, so it offers a separation of paradigms for users, although they drupal is heading in that direction I believe. There's also an active community of developers behind WordPress, although that can probably be said for most of them.
... just use the CMS Matrix!
You're bound to find something that will fit your needs.
A JSR-168 compatible portal might be a good solution. It would take care of things like single sign on, and they usually have a fair number of useful modules. You should be able to find some forum and wiki modules, among others.
These things take some substantial work to configure and set up, but once set up, they tend to work very well. You could look at Jetspeed or JBoss, for starters.
These modules are also (slowly) starting to become comodities, so you should be able to get lots of useful functionality stuffed in there without having to write too much code. The various departments and such can each write their own little portlet, and get it all integrated into the whole.
These things tend to be more for dynamic sites, but I could see one working pretty well even for a static site. They often have lots of content management features, etc... Usually they are DB backed, but a good postgres install shouldn't be too hard to come by.
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
While it only has php CMS it is a good place to start. This site has a demo of most of the CMS out there. You can try them and then a couple of hours later they will all be reset.
Here are my recomendations:
*Mambo - If you are trying to create a website.
*phpNuke (etc) - If you want a community site.
*Typo3, Phone(python) - If you have a larger site that needs more management, mulitple departments etc.
The "nuke" family of CMS applications not only all look and feel more or less the same, they have a very bad rep for crappy code and a high number of security issues.
Drupal, Plone, Mambo. All EASY to set up and admin.
Though GeekLog seems to be a Nuke clone, I have heard good things about it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
MediaWiki
I can personally attest to the power of wiki.
Software Wars
For smaller projects where you just want the client updating small portions of the website without knowing html, there is a product from Macromedia called "Contribute". This product is a client side solution, not a server side one, so no databases, programming languages, or server configuration is necessary. It uses HTML comments to designate which areas of a page are editable and which are not. Access can be granted based on HTML comments in the doument or by restricting entire folders.
Note: This is not meant to be a secure application, it does not actually prevent people from editing pages except at a client side application level. Contribute respects the HTML comments, but there is nothing stopping the user from FTP'ing directly to the site and circumventing contribute's access "hints".
That being said, it is a great quick and dirty way of letting people create new pages and edit existing ones based on templates that you design. You can easily create a page with navigation bars and logos, but define a huge area as "editable". Clients can create hundreds of pages based on this template then later, you can edit the template to update the navigation, and contribute will regex (search and replace) all documents on the site based on that template and FTP them to the server. It is even possible to create a heirarcy of templates, so that changes to a parent template will trickle down to child templates and then to all pages that inherit from those templates.
Another nice thing is that, being a macromedia product, it integrates well with dreamweaver. A contribute template is no different than a Dreamweaver template, except that it has security permissions mapped on top.
While everyone mentions their own favourite CMS, I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention mine as well. Check out Sitellite at http://www.sitellite.org/ as well as our company website where you can get professional support and add-ons at http://www.simian.ca/. The company website also features some articles from well-known pros in the CMS industry about content management, online publishing, writing for the WWW, etc. at http://www.simian.ca/index/content-management-101
:)
Being the lead developer of Sitellite means it's obviously my first choice, however it does have many features useful for medium-sized websites that are lacking in lower-end systems like Mambo and Contribute, as well as lots of documentation and a very usable GUI.
Anyway, good luck on your pursuit of the best CMS for your site.
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but Wordpress is the one for me. It is insanely easy to set up and use, while at the same time, very powerful and adaptable.
Wordpress recommended by me.
I'm biased, since I've contributed to the project, but CMS Made Simple http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ is a straightforward, PHP-based approach that is designed to port "mostly static" sites into content management.
It is actually about managing content, unlike most of the PHP CMSes which are really more designed to be portal systems.
It's fairly lightweight, works with a variety of databases, is localized into a lot of languages, and is GPLed.
I got into this system after reviewing a whole big stack of other so-called CMS products, and either found them to be portal systems that did content management only if you tortured them for a while, or much too complicated and slow for the kind of thing I needed.
That's not to say it's the right solution to all problems! It has weaknesses if you need to have multiple independent protected areas in a site, lacks a lot of the "portal" features like user-facing login and registration, etc.
Anyway, check it out!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Are you considering Java based ones? There are quite a few of them like OpenCMS, Lenya and Alfresco. There is a short review here http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/content/archives/005 119.asp. If you want to use a portal server that has content management capabilities, then Liferay is a good choice. It is JSR168 compatible. There is a good review at http://portlets.blogspot.com/2005/07/open-source-p ortal-server-selection.html and http://www.apoorv.info/index.php/2005/07/16/open-s ource-portals-comparison/.
If you are looking for non java ones, there is midgard, drupal, plone (based on zope). I've used wordpress, which although not a CMS can be used as one for smallish sites.
regards /a
http://apoorv.info/
In my admittedly very limited experience of CMSs, Mambo tends to look like Mambo, WordPress looks like WordPress, etc. They are all customisable, but beyond the simple stuff it is quite a steep learning curve.
It seems like more work to learn and customise an existing CMS than it is to roll your own, developing it over time to meet your specific requirements, especially if you have a mix of static and dynamic content, the static content comes first, and you are already very familiar with XHTML and CSS.
Of course, if you just want a website that looks like a CMS, the above won't concern you. But if your design differs in structure (not necessarily things like layout, fonts and colours, which can usually be set up in templates) from the CMS default, expect a lot of customisation.
Bricolage is a mod_perl-based CMS which is currently (as it happens) being worked on by 4 GSoCers. It's hard to set up at first, but is powerful and flexible.
I'm in the same "dilemma" of choosing a simple CMS to a small newspaper from my city.
I used drupal in other site tried to use the 'nukes' and similars and a lot of others.
I very biased to use Wordpress because it's simple to users, but I prefer a wiki who I think is much better than any CMS.
btw: textpattern.com is a good choice too.
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