Category: CMS

I tried out eZ publish yesterday… i’m still looking for a CMS for end-users that don’t know any html. It’s pretty impressive! Offers a lot of stuff out-of-the-box. Easy step-by-step install.

Next step is to try and find out how to customize and adapt the included templates.

I also tried out phpwcms as somebody recommended it in my blog comments…. i don’t like it. Not straightforward enough for the intended audience.

Still on my list of evals: phpwebsite

Do you have any further ideas or recommendations?

I’ve finally downloaded and installed Drupal to get an idea if this would be a possible CMS for a small web project I’m planning to start.

Installing the basic modules and setting up the MySQL database was straightforward. No problems here.

What I’m finding more daunting is the CMS interface itself. There are a lot of modules and settings. And it takes some time to grasp the concept and terminology.

For example, it took me a while to figure out how to create a simple menu. I found this posting that suggested using the so-called Menu on-the-fly module. I guess, I would have expected this to be part of the basic install. Or maybe there’s another simple way that I’m missing.

I haven’t had a look at how to change the design of a theme or how to build my own theme.

Drupal offers a lot of options and additional modules. But at this point I’m worried that the CMS interface is too complex for the end users I’m planning for. And probably too much effort to customize for a small web project.

there’s a long but interesting discussion going on about content management systems at The Server Side. See:

Ask TSS: Do any Java CMS/Portals match the PHP ones?

There’s a lot of references to useful tools (both PHP and Java). Cos of the sheer number of different tools it’s all the more important to have a complete list of requirements.

As usual, these kind of exchanges tend to turn somewhat “religious” whenever developers are around.

Couple of commenters seem to feel that Java is better for large sites:

Use java-solutions @work where longlasting and big software is an issue and use php-solutions @home or in shorttime and smaller projects.

What is your opinion?
What tools offer the best usability for the content guys?