Content Management Systems

[cyberseed]

What is the best free content management system to use. Is there an open source CMS that is easy to set up. Or is it best to buy some hosting with CMS added to it? Need a cheap solution for budget websites. Have heard that some CMS do not rank well in Google whilst others rank excellent. Someone mentioned a CMS called Mambo but I know nothing about it.

Any help yes please!!!

[moojoo]

www.textpattern.com <-- fooking AWESOME! Mambo is alright but I think it may be more trouble than its worth. Textpattern is uber easy to install./setup, you use all your own CSS, HTML, PHP etc, the build in tag system is awesome, you can create all the pages/custom forms you need, great plugins are available, and it is slick. www.newguyinennis.com is run off of it, as are a few other projects I have done. I highly recommend it although it is not the most friendly out of the box CMS it is by far from my experience the best. and once you get the hang of it (Which is not difficult to do) you will be rocking very quickly.

[cyberseed]

ta very much moojoo - sounds like it impressed you!

[ukgeoff]

It also depends on whether you want to apply content management to an existing site without having to rejig things too much or whether you are starting the site from scratch.

If it's the former, then your choices are more limited.

If it's the latter, then it's a question of picking a system that you feel you can work with and that produces results you like.

Which ever option you choose, make sure the end result is validated code. SOme systems produce rubbish code even if the page looks good.

[moojoo]

Yeah but all he would have to do to convert it over was create a page and section for each existing page and just copy/paste the HTML from the files into textpattern. Annoying perhaps but not very time consuming. One thing I like about textpattern is it only outputs code you tell it to. You have complete control over the look, feel and forms used to display the CMS content. And I hate template systems.

Here is example of a form I use for textpattern to auto generate my archives page to give you an idea of its sexy slickness heh.

Code: Select all

<!-- show the year -->
<txp:if_different>
<h2><txp:posted format="%Y" /></h2>
</txp:if_different>
<!-- show the month -->
<txp:if_different>
<h3><txp:posted format="%B" /></h3>
</txp:if_different>
<!-- article title and link -->
<ul>
<li><txp:permlink><txp:title /></txp:permlink><br /><txp:posted /></li>
</ul>

And in the HTML all you would put is something like this to output all of your articles in a month sorted list which updates automatically every time you write a new article:

Code: Select all

<txp:article_custom limit=99999 form="monthly_article" section="article" />

End result is here: http://www.newguyinennis.com/archives

[cyberseed]

Thanxs everyone.
Was worried about CMS generating non valid HTML - Text pattern sounds good from a user point of view and it claims to generate

standards-compliant web pages

Moojoo I looked at your site www.newguyinennis.com liked the photography but some of the content on the home page does not validate - see:
http://www.htmlhelp.org/cgi-bin/vali...F&warnings=yes

Maybe I am being picky but these days valid HTML is more of an issue.
Does anyone else have any experience in using the CMS Mambo?

Simplicity is essential - maybe Mambo is unnecessarily complicated.

UKGeoff - Its for a new project at the moment but I would guess most people want CMS so old projects will probably migrate.

Thanks again
Cyberseed

[moojoo]

That error is just something silly its fixed now. I was playing around with stuff this weekend heh. textpattern only outputs code you tell it to output.

Validation pwns

Here is a screen shot of part of the back end: