Lets Talk About Content Management Systems

adioking · #1 () 11-23-2006, 06:54 AM

Okay guys, I know that I'm probably supposed to put this in the web design forum, but figured that we would get a lot more action in this forum (we can always move it later). Anyways, I've noticed quite a few mentions on PAW about content management systems and the lack of knowledge about them, so it's time to get a nice thread going.

If you are using, have used, or have researched a content management system, then let us know. Even the CMS by Top Q Media should be discussed here.

Some important things to talk about include:

Ease of use
Search Engine Friendliness
Scalability (multi-user capability)
Support

I'd like to start with a couple things. First, I want to mention a few of my favorite CMS's and why they are my favorite. Well, I'm just going to talk about Wordpress for now, but I've also had some experience with Plone.org and Citomite CMS's.

Oh, and I'm really interested to see what you guys have to say. I'm waiting for the first person to mention Top Q's CMS. I really do enjoy the backend of those CMS's, but I can't stand the super long post names and duplicate content problems that I've heard of. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

WordPress

I like Wordpress a lot because you can do quite a bit with it. It may not be that great alone, but the ability to add plugins and themes makes it one hell of a CMS.

Ease of Use

Wordpress is super easy to use. It's free, a quick install, and posting is a sinch. However, it is a little bit more difficult to do some things, such as add forms on pages and other dynamic content

Search Engine Friendliness

I enjoy that you can change the permalink structure for search engines. You can also use the "post slug" option to customize the directory name of your post. This is very SE friendly

Scalability

In one of my WP sites, I've added over 50 users, 20 of which are authors or contributors. In my opinion, WP is very scalable.

Customer Support

There is a huge database of information on Wordpress.org and you can find whatever you need.

Things I don't like

It's hard to find a good custom theme designer. Also, it would be nice if dynamic content worked better, maybe I just don't know how to do it or something?

Georgia Poker · #2 () 11-23-2006, 10:26 AM

The more research I do on ModXCMS, the more I like it. SEO friendly, easy to make it work with an existing or new template. The code chunks and snippets are really cool and easy to use as well. If I can figure out this thing in a few days, it's scary to think what an experienced person could do with it.

Creating Meta tags is also very easy and intuitive and you have the option of refining those tags by page.

This alone makes it worth it to me (since it's free!)-

http://www.modxcms.com/search-engine...d-seo-cms.html

adioking · #3 () 11-26-2006, 05:15 AM

Ya, open source is best for many reasons. I looked into that when you made a post about it awhile ago. Seems fairly simple compared to some of the others that I have seen.

I know that there are others out there. Why doesn't anybody else wish to share?

Jeremy · #4 () 11-26-2006, 10:21 AM

All my CMS is custom made and extremely easy to use. After working with CMS I would never go back to raw html, frontpage, or dreamweaver.........ever.

hoursurfing · #5 () 11-26-2006, 11:20 AM

Bobi's is pretty simple. Not too much to it other than insert it into the word like document and you're done. There are a lot of limitations though.

Ease of Use

It's as easy as using word with not as many formats.

Search Engine Friendliness

Seems to be somewhat search engine friendly but could be better.

Scalability

Haven't tried allowing more than one person but I believe it can be set up easily only allowing access to certain pages through logins via admin.

Customer Support

Not too sure because I just tell Bobi to do it and he gets it done

Things I don't like

There seems to be some bugs in the system and sometimes I spend an hour just trying to fix the coding that causes the bugs in the source. I'm sure someone experienced could change it around quickly.

ex: For some reason the font will change for no reason and you have to use the "source" to delete and change it. Also sometimes your text gets duplicated and shoved towards the bottom of the page. And for some reason it deletes the words USA when you transfer them over from word to the cms.

adioking · #6 () 11-27-2006, 12:28 AM

I was just searching through old threads here and found the following:

http://www.pokeraffiliateworld.com/f...nt-system.html

I looked into a few other CMS's as well. I tried out the MyModX CMS that was suggested, and I liked it for the most part. However, I dont think that you can control which sections of the website that users will have, which is a nice feature in XIGLA.

I do like how you can choose an "alias" in ModX, but I'd really have to try it out more in depth to see how effective it really is (its so hard to find a good CMS with SE friendly linking structure these days).

I didn't see this feature in XIGLA, but if it was there I would probably choose XIGLA over ModX, even though it isn't free.

I'm also really confused about the folder / file structure in ModX... can anybody explain how you would keep your folders / files organized in this CMS?