Which is the best CMS to use

Joseph

Hi all,

I've used quite a few CMS's, for various things from gaming sites to memorial sites but I need advice on something

Recently I've been trying out a load of CMS's to try and find the best one for making small scale commercial sites, tried TYPO3, Jaws & more

Can anyone reccommend some?

It don't need to be an extravagant CMS just somethign that has a good content page creation system

Cheers

p

Well, there's no real 'best' CMS really, it all depends on your needs. The best advice these days simply seems to be to pick a flexible, well supported one and stick with it and you'll learn how best to turn it to your needs.

I would heavily recommend either Expression Engine or Drupal.

EE is commercial, but there's a free version for testing. It's got excellent support and is very flexible, but itsn't aimed at running massive sites, which is a good thing.

Drupal is a little bit more complicated, has less support, though a good community. And it can seem to do everything. It's open source and free, but my impression is it's a little bit rougher around the edges than EE.

tomED

P is on the money!

It's totally to do with your requirements.
We'd use Typo3 quite a lot because we know how flexible it is and how much we know it now.

But there are times we'd use even the most basic ones like www.cushycms.com for example.

Tom

Joseph

Cheers

Started using Drupal the other day and so far I'm very very impressed think it might be what I'm looking for, going to try out EE now

squibs

I would heavily recommend either Expression Engine or Drupal.

I installed the free version of EE lately and it didnt seem to have a wysiwyg javascript editor like tinmce or fckeditor integrated, unless I missed something? That would make unusable for me.

p

squibs wrote: »

I installed the free version of EE lately and it didnt seem to have a wysiwyg javascript editor like tinmce or fckeditor integrated, unless I missed something? That would make unusable for me.

It doesn't have one on by default, but you can add it fairly easily. They've got lots of plugins and modules that you adjust to make it work the way you want.

squibs

It doesn't have one on by default, but you can add it fairly easily. They've got lots of plugins and modules that you adjust to make it work the way you want.

Yeah - I just though it was odd that it didnt come in the base package, as a user with no html experience would be lost without a proper editor. I guess because its commercial they dont want to use GPL stuff.

p

squibs wrote: »

I installed the free version of EE lately and it didnt seem to have a wysiwyg javascript editor like tinmce or fckeditor integrated, unless I missed something? That would make unusable for me.

squibs wrote: »

Yeah - I just though it was odd that it didnt come in the base package, as a user with no html experience would be lost without a proper editor. I guess because its commercial they dont want to use GPL stuff.

I guess it depends on your audience really. I did a project with EE recently and didn't have any WYSIWYG stuff in it. In fact, I was quite glad it didn't. I wanted the client to focus on the content, and not to worry about fonts & colours.

mneylon

http://www.movabletype.com is very flexible and scales really well

EKRIUQ

I seem to have latched on to Joomla and can't find anything better and its ever expanding extentions.

Maybe a steep learning curve but it's very flexable and has many options

squibs

I guess it depends on your audience really. I did a project with EE recently and didn't have any WYSIWYG stuff in it. In fact, I was quite glad it didn't. I wanted the client to focus on the content, and not to worry about fonts & colours.

I promise I'm not being deliberately thick. I'm genuinely trying to figure out how EE meets its users needs out of the box (and I know it does because it has many users). Without the js editor you cant do any text formatting, and I dont see how a CMS can work in everyday applications without that.

Without exposing your EE client can you tell me about your recent implementation. Not trollling - curious...

p

squibs wrote: »

I promise I'm not being deliberately thick. I'm genuinely trying to figure out how EE meets its users needs out of the box (and I know it does because it has many users). Without the js editor you cant do any text formatting, and I dont see how a CMS can work in everyday applications without that.

Without exposing your EE client can you tell me about your recent implementation. Not trollling - curious...

No problem at all, always love a good discussion. I don't mind showing you the site. It's here: http://www.johnhayesfilm.com/
It's quite simple site, and allowing the client to have formatting would have just got in the way. That's the first EE site I've done, but other CMSs I've used, we often didn't give the client an editor, or else only allowed very basic formatting like bold & italic. The client didn't type in html either though. I've found once you give people an editor with colours etc... they create a mess and wreck the design. People are paying for the site to be designed by a professional, so they should just worry about the content, not design.

I don't think EE would suit anybody, but I don't expect any CMS to be perfect, right out of the box. I think everyone needs to be tweaked to your needs. The important thing for me is that I know I can add an wysiwyg editor if I need to to, or anything else.

squibs

Thanks for sharing. Lovely site, great design - wouldnt have thought it was CMS. I get it now.

nice1franko

tomED wrote: »

But there are times we'd use even the most basic ones like www.cushycms.com for example.

oh yes ... that's a perfect for what I need right now (i.e. retro-fit CMS functionality into just a few pages on an existing site)

thank you thank you thank you

tomED

no problems!