Content Management system to use

Pentax

Hi,

Can anyone tell me what the best CMS system is to use. I have been reviewing several and I'm not sure which one to use and also if it will do what I want.

I'm trying to create a local website that locals can post upcoming events to the website once they are a registered user. I'm pretty sure it will take the same format/principle of websites such as gumtree, donedeal and so on in as far as a member can log on and post and manger their own advertisement. I have looked at Joomla but I'm not sure if it will allow members to post their own ads.

Thanks in advance, any help will be well appreciated.

Kind Regards

willows

What is the best CMS depends on what you want to use it for.

You mentioned Joomla and the way you want to use it.

There are many extensions out there for joomla that will allow you to do classifieds and events.


http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/ads-a-affiliates/classified-ads

ones for events

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/calendars-a-events

One piece of advice, list your requirements in a spread sheet. Then test the extensions and their features. Tick off the features you have matching the ones of the extension you are looking at, and then after testing them a clear choice should emerge for you .

I hope this helps.

Stick to joomla 2.5+ as joomla 1.5 is coming to end of life.

Pentax

Hi Willow,

Thanks for the advice.

Here are couple of my requirements for my website but again can you point me in the right direction and I will build on that.

1) Not only classifieds I want to be able for individuals (customer/clients) to be able to log on and list a room to rent our house.
2) I want customers to also be able to list services offered
3) and I know I said this before but also list upcoming events.

Doing this for a neighbor as a favor and would like to avoid building something for him that doesn't function as he would like it.

Also a friend of mine mentioned using Open Reality, have you heard of it and if so what your views on this open source CMS.

Regards

Pentax

willows

Pentax wrote: »

Hi Willow,

Thanks for the advice.

Here are couple of my requirements for my website but again can you point me in the right direction and I will build on that.

1) Not only classifieds I want to be able for individuals (customer/clients) to be able to log on and list a room to rent our house.
2) I want customers to also be able to list services offered
3) and I know I said this before but also list upcoming events.

Doing this for a neighbor as a favor and would like to avoid building something for him that doesn't function as he would like it.

Also a friend of mine mentioned using Open Reality, have you heard of it and if so what your views on this open source CMS.

Regards

Pentax

Try joomres and resman components for joomla booking engines.
Event listins jcal pro has a nice calendar, but it depends if you want to list events with images locations or notices of events.

I have used openrealty along time ago maybe 6 years back, I have not had a look at it since. I was a decent engine and we moded it heavily for a french property company. Still works today with no issues at all. If its the same engine then i'd say its solid but I haave no recent experience with it.

I hope that helps.

benny306

Hi,

Joomla is a great suggestion as it's meant to be one of the most robust CMS's out there.

Conversely, I use WordPress for all my CMS needs. I might be bias but I think wordpress is the best system out there. Tons of templates, plug-ins and support.

Just did a quick search and found this plugin for classifieds type script: (wasn't sure if I can post the link so I just listed the features below)

Ad Features
1. Search ads by city, state, country, username, or keyword
2. Allow AdSense ads to be displayed
3. Control over HTML use in ads
4. Limit the text size of ad postings
5. Standard form fields can be enabled or disabled,
depending on your needs (title, website, name, country, etc)
6. Allow or disallow image posting with ads
7. Automatic expiration of ads (free or paid)
8. Configurable ad display for AdSense placement
9. Ads can have a "Tweet This" button in their layout
10. Ads can have a "Share on Facebook" button in their layout
11. Ads can be flagged by community for bad/offensive content
12. Ads can imported via CSV files
13. Ads now support embedded videos
Notification Features
1. Allow posters to be notified of expiring ads
2. Allow admin to be notified when new ads are posted
3. Classified ad users can contact the ad poster without exposing
the poster's email (blind email system, similar to Craigslist)
4. Admin can (optionally) be notified of expiring ads
Payment Features
1. Allows for paid or free ads
2. Supports PayPal and 2Checkout for paid ads
3. Google Checkout support for paid ads also through a Premium Module
4. Allow for image posting limits higher than free ads
5. Multiple fee scales for posting ads (allows you to have longer ad
postings with higher fees)
6. Variable ad expiration lengths connected to fee scale
(e.g. allow ads to run for 30 days for $10, 60 days for $15, etc)
Ad Posting Controls
1. Allow admin to approve ads prior to posting
2. Allow admin to approve images prior to posting
3. Users can edit or delete their own ads
4. Admin can edit or delete all ads in the system
5. Secure system gives users a unique editing key to administer
their own ads
6. Allows for limiting image posting (by image size, height,
width and total count if desired)
7. Anti-spam checks for all ads posted via Akismet.
8. Flagged ads can be viewed separately to determine violations, and
then deleted or unflagged.
9. **New Ad Management panel, visible by users and admins for easier
ad creation/editing/delete.
10. Admin can post ads on behalf of other users with the ads displaying as
if the user posted them initially
Image Features
1. Allow image posting or shut it off completely
2. Control the number, filesize, height and width of images posted
3. Allow for different numbers of images to be posted with
paid ads vs. free ads
4. Allow for image approval prior to posting
Premium Modules (Add on modules, not included with free plugin)
1. Category Icons (adds small icons to give visual cues to
your user for each category in AWPCP)
2. Extra Fields (allows you to add any custom fields for display.
For example, if you have a pet-related board, you might have
"Sex", "Breed", and "Dam/Sire" as additional fields you require for display)
Now supports search in extra fields, too.
3. Regions Control (allows you to restrict viewing of ads based on
locale, so users don't see items they aren't physically near them,
also allows customization of the region types, such as
village, borough, etc)
4. Google Checkout (allows you to support Google Checkout as a
payment method for paid ad posting)
5. RSS Feeds (allows you syndicate your classifieds for your users to
download in their favorite RSS reader and come back to your site
more often!)
6. Featured Ads (allows you to promote certain ads over others by
charging a fee for them, featured ads are displayed using CSS to
highlight them. Featured ads are always returned first in a category,
the overall ad list, or in search results. Also has a widget for
placement anywhere on your site. Full admin control of featured ads, too)
7. **NEW** Fee Per Category (allows you to charge for certain categories
and not others, giving you more freedom on how to configure your classified
section. Allows for multiple fee plans per category, as well as a default
plan to cover "all other unspecified" categories)
Premium Module Links:
Category Icons

Extra Fields

Region Control

Google Checkout

RSS Feeds

Featured Ads

Fee per Category

Sup08

benny306 wrote: »

Hi,

Joomla is a great suggestion as it's meant to be one of the most robust CMS's out there.

Conversely, I use WordPress for all my CMS needs. I might be bias but I think wordpress is the best system out there. Tons of templates, plug-ins and support.

Just did a quick search and found this plugin for classifieds type script: (wasn't sure if I can post the link so I just listed the features below)

Ad Features
1. Search ads by city, state, country, username, or keyword
2. Allow AdSense ads to be displayed
3. Control over HTML use in ads
4. Limit the text size of ad postings
5. Standard form fields can be enabled or disabled,
depending on your needs (title, website, name, country, etc)
6. Allow or disallow image posting with ads
7. Automatic expiration of ads (free or paid)
8. Configurable ad display for AdSense placement
9. Ads can have a "Tweet This" button in their layout
10. Ads can have a "Share on Facebook" button in their layout
11. Ads can be flagged by community for bad/offensive content
12. Ads can imported via CSV files
13. Ads now support embedded videos
Notification Features
1. Allow posters to be notified of expiring ads
2. Allow admin to be notified when new ads are posted
3. Classified ad users can contact the ad poster without exposing
the poster's email (blind email system, similar to Craigslist)
4. Admin can (optionally) be notified of expiring ads
Payment Features
1. Allows for paid or free ads
2. Supports PayPal and 2Checkout for paid ads
3. Google Checkout support for paid ads also through a Premium Module
4. Allow for image posting limits higher than free ads
5. Multiple fee scales for posting ads (allows you to have longer ad
postings with higher fees)
6. Variable ad expiration lengths connected to fee scale
(e.g. allow ads to run for 30 days for $10, 60 days for $15, etc)
Ad Posting Controls
1. Allow admin to approve ads prior to posting
2. Allow admin to approve images prior to posting
3. Users can edit or delete their own ads
4. Admin can edit or delete all ads in the system
5. Secure system gives users a unique editing key to administer
their own ads
6. Allows for limiting image posting (by image size, height,
width and total count if desired)
7. Anti-spam checks for all ads posted via Akismet.
8. Flagged ads can be viewed separately to determine violations, and
then deleted or unflagged.
9. **New Ad Management panel, visible by users and admins for easier
ad creation/editing/delete.
10. Admin can post ads on behalf of other users with the ads displaying as
if the user posted them initially
Image Features
1. Allow image posting or shut it off completely
2. Control the number, filesize, height and width of images posted
3. Allow for different numbers of images to be posted with
paid ads vs. free ads
4. Allow for image approval prior to posting
Premium Modules (Add on modules, not included with free plugin)
1. Category Icons (adds small icons to give visual cues to
your user for each category in AWPCP)
2. Extra Fields (allows you to add any custom fields for display.
For example, if you have a pet-related board, you might have
"Sex", "Breed", and "Dam/Sire" as additional fields you require for display)
Now supports search in extra fields, too.
3. Regions Control (allows you to restrict viewing of ads based on
locale, so users don't see items they aren't physically near them,
also allows customization of the region types, such as
village, borough, etc)
4. Google Checkout (allows you to support Google Checkout as a
payment method for paid ad posting)
5. RSS Feeds (allows you syndicate your classifieds for your users to
download in their favorite RSS reader and come back to your site
more often!)
6. Featured Ads (allows you to promote certain ads over others by
charging a fee for them, featured ads are displayed using CSS to
highlight them. Featured ads are always returned first in a category,
the overall ad list, or in search results. Also has a widget for
placement anywhere on your site. Full admin control of featured ads, too)
7. **NEW** Fee Per Category (allows you to charge for certain categories
and not others, giving you more freedom on how to configure your classified
section. Allows for multiple fee plans per category, as well as a default
plan to cover "all other unspecified" categories)
Premium Module Links:
Category Icons

Extra Fields

Region Control

Google Checkout

RSS Feeds

Featured Ads

Fee per Category

# Benny306
I too use a lot of wordpress for static sites and recently was asked for one that can do some similiar user ineractivity, I haven't started to research it yet but are all of the above plugins available in wordpress?

Thanks

OneOfThem Stumbled

Wow, is Wordpress a CMS? I always thought of it just as a powerful blogging facility, like Blogger!

Sup08

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

Wow, is Wordpress a CMS? I always thought of it just as a powerful blogging facility, like Blogger!

yes, I mostly use WP now for CMS static sites where the client gets better control over the content. You can have it with or without the blogging element.

benny306

sup08, that list above is from just ONE plugin called 'Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin'. It seems quite good just going by the features. I've never used it myself so can't really vouch for it, but the features and user rating make it look decent.

OneofthemStumbled - yes many people use wordpress as a cms. In fact I use it for both a CMS and user management system, and installed a forum on it too. There are 2 great FREE plugins called mingle and mingle forums.

As for content management; you can basically do anything you want with wordpress once you get your head around 'The Loop'. Place content anywhere, list titles of stories like a news magazine etc.

In my opinion, it's the best overall free platform for anything. From a blog to a full blown CMS.

Sigerson

Hi guys, what would be the best CMS for a local community website?

Ideally, multiple admins would be in charge of a single page each, where they can upload images, videos and text to the page.

willows

Wordpress or Joomla are the 2 main platforms.

Wordpress most users might know already but if not updated its very hackable.

Joomla will allow you to allow 1 user to edit 1 page through Access Level Control.

From experience when I see this setup of 1 user per page what happens in practice is 1 user is great at updating and the are not bothered or do it 1 time only.

Both systems have tons of templates and addons.

14ned

Pentax wrote: »

Can anyone tell me what the best CMS system is to use. I have been reviewing several and I'm not sure which one to use and also if it will do what I want.

There are two other options very few recommend, but they ought to.

Option 1: Plone (https://plone.org/) has one of the best security histories of any CMS and it's been around much longer than the others. It's generally used by "big iron" users like corporations and governments, and once you've used it for a while you'll find Joomla, Drupal etc a bit toy with their half baked implementations and poor design and lack of data safety. Conversely, Plone is a real arse to initially master, it has very high initial investment and deployment costs, programming it really requires you to be a guru level Python master, and it's almost certainly overkill for what you're specifically needing. Still, I thought I should mention it, I ran a Plone install for years and was generally pleased with it as it has very low maintenance overheads once you've set up the site.

Option 2: About as opposite to Plone as possible is Hugo (https://gohugo.io/) which is a 100% static site generator and what I replaced my Phone install with. It's zero maintenance, as in, quite literally zero, because there is nothing which can be hacked into, no database, no PHP, just Apache or Nginx. You just need to think out of the box when it comes to your site design and implementation, but all the stuff you want is very easily within reach with Hugo (think of HTTP PUT writing a new page fragment into a file and Hugo regenerating the static site as soon as it spots a change). Instead of thinking in terms of dynamically generated content, think in terms of small cronjob python scripts which regularly write or update page fragments and have Hugo regenerate the static site. You'll get something which looks just like a Joomla website, but really is zero maintenance, scales to 10Gbps without a thought, and the only thing which can be hacked is Apache or nginx.

Hugo won't scale to complex sites well, but it's absolutely fantastic for small single purpose sites like you have in mind. Generally it is paired with the git source control system and typically Github pages, so you also get all your hosting for free and guaranteed integrity and ability to wind back changes and find history. It's worth a look before you jump.

Niall

M.T.D

Re singerson question
Yes that can be done several ways. By Role, can only edit their own content
If you want pages rather than posts then it can be done with categories. i.e. the editor can only edit pages with the category they have been assigned. This will also work for galleries. Needs a couple of plugins or editing the functions file.
Did just this for a client's site not long ago. I used a custom page layout to both make editing options easier and to limit their ability to editing anything else, but rather than edit functions file I created a small plugin.