Scot Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 Does anyone have experienced recommendations about an inexpensive or open-source content management system? I've heard about products like Drupal and Plone, but don't really know much about them. Cyndy and I are considering putting the newsletter site into a CMS to make it easier to sell web ads; traffic has been picking up there (as it is here). If I can make the Scot's Newsletter site pay something back, it would help us move to a dedicated/managed webhost.Any advice on CMSes? Thanks in advance.-- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 I'm assuming you're not interested in blogging CMS such as Movable Type, WordPress or Textpattern? Or are you? Marsden11's been using Joomla. I've used Movable Type, WordPress and Textpattern and I would say that WordPress is very easy to setup and use, Textpattern is quiet elegant but not as polished, and Movable Type, while the most popular has a more complicated setup but is quite powerful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scot Posted April 27, 2006 Author Share Posted April 27, 2006 I'm not suing it *for* blogging, but that doesn't mean that I can't adopt such a system to what we're doing with the newsletter. I have MovableType installed on one of my servers, so I'm familiar with (and don't much like) MT. I don't like that MT decided to create it's own entire set of proprietary commands. Why? It just seems like it's over-engineered to me. But I do like the code that it generates automatically, which is very CSS supported. But CSS is a problem for newsletters. I can't send the CSS with an HTML newsletter. The newsletter aspect seriously complicates this. It may not even be possible to get both that and an easy to use site management tool.-- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 I agree that MT is horrendous to work with. I hated it's installation and I even found some errors in it's Windows setup documentation that would have stopped most people in their tracks. So, are you wanting a simple and elegant method of taking the CMS content and sending it as the HTML newsletter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marsden11 Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 Try Joomla. Way better than PHP Nuke. 1000s of templates to choose from. Mostly free but there are many you can purchase.My test site will automatically generate a PDF of any page content. No need to worry about HTML and CSS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 28, 2006 Share Posted April 28, 2006 Midgard is very nice and open sourceMidgard CMS is an Open Source Content Management System built on top of the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) platform. It provides a reliable, powerful and internationalized set of tools for building web sites and networked applications.Midgard utilizes PHP as the web scripting language and provides integration interfaces on Java and C layers. Midgard's unique architecture enables it to provide services like single sign-on and replication. With these capabilities and the integrated full-text search system, Midgard is an excellent match for information-rich web sites and intranets. More info at CMS Matrix siteMySource Matrix and MySource Classic through MySource.squiz.net are open source as wellMore info on MySource Classic and More info on MySource Matrix at CMS Matrix siteMySource Matrix is an Open Source content management system that is substantially more advanced system than its predecessor, MySource 2 (which was independently rated by Gartner http://www.gartner.com/ as one of the most advanced content management systems in the world). The system is easy to use (see the Flash presentation http://matrix.squiz.net/evaluations/quick-tour) and highly functional, offering everything you would expect from a CMS being used by some of the world's leading companies and Government bodies.For example, MySource Matrix includes:* A What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) simple editor interface for use by people with little or no web training* Flexible workflow (with the ability to create as many steps as are required)* Flexible permissions structure for distributed authoring and system management* Full audit trails* Transparent versioning and full system roll back* Flexible metadata* Standards compliance (capable of publishing web accessible sites up to Priority AAA)* Separation of design from content* Asset based structure for easy content re-useThe release of MySource 3 has been eagerly anticipated by the MySource community because it represents more than 18 months of work. Every part of MySource 2 has been reconsidered, redesigned and rewritten to suit the future requirements of content management.The system is browser-based (in other words, all editing interfaces may be operated through a Java enabled web browser without installing additional software on your machine). To use MySource Matrix you will need a recent version of Sun Microsystems' Java Runtime Environment (1.5).MySource Matrix is written in PHP and uses the PEAR database abstraction layer to manage database communication. Commercial implementations of MySource Matrix currently use PostgreSQL and Oracle, however using an abstraction layer means it is possible to add support for many other databases including Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and ODBC connections.Organisations running the system include Future Publishing, Mark Warner Holidays, University of Oxford and The Australian Federal Government.MySource Matrix is very impressive. There are extra things that you can buy too but the main system is very nice all by itself. I have actually played with this and really like it.The CMS Matrix site pages listed above for each system has tables that make it easy to see what they have and what they don't have. The CMS Matrix site main page also lists many more systems out there whether they are pay-to-play, open source, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marsden11 Posted April 28, 2006 Share Posted April 28, 2006 Midgard lacks basic FTP support and no Advertising Management. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyndy Posted April 29, 2006 Share Posted April 29, 2006 The CMS Matrix site is awesome! Thanks so much for recommending it. In fact, it's so detailed, it's hard to know what we need and what we don't need. At this point, I'd say Drupal, Joomla and MySource Matrix are all good possibilities. I've heard good things about MODx too. Does anyone have experience with any of those?Thanks hugely for your thoughts!Cyndy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeber Posted April 29, 2006 Share Posted April 29, 2006 Of those, I've only ever tried Joomla (and its precursor Mambo). It is certainly easy to set up and use, but doesn't offer what I see MySource Matrix can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted April 29, 2006 Share Posted April 29, 2006 I thought you might like CMS MySource Matrix ... I know I did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angelo Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 I use a couple of free CMS systems (and PORTAL systems).For PHPBB (my favorite board software) - EzPortalCMS SystemsDragonflyCivicspaceAnother freeware I found ishttp://sourceforge.net/projects/ff-cmsContent: News System, GuestBook-System, Picture-Gallery, Forum-System, Admin Area Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.