Best CMS ?

Soldato
Joined
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For those web developers amongst us. What is your favourable CMS plug in ? I'm looking for an easy to use and brandable one for future projects.

Thanks.
 
Soldato
Joined
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I use wordpress. People don't give it a chance because they presume it's just for blogging, but I've found it the most feature rich, customisable, well supported and easy to teach users CMS around. Oh and if you have a modicum of XHTML talent it looks nothing like a blog - just like with any other CMS.
 

Hxc

Hxc

Soldato
Joined
29 Oct 2004
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12,501
Location
London
Depends entirely on what sort of site you want.

e107 is by far the best traditional "portal" cms I've ever used.

Plume is lovely and expandable, although it requires a bit of work to be put in

Website baker is brill for a simple site, and can be easily customized design wise.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
3,480
I watched that video. It looks interesting for very basic websites with no dynamic content etc..
yeah exactly, good for basic stuff... still works with dynamic things but i had to write a workaround...

would like to get into using wordpress as a more comprehensive solution, but i'm dubious about how effective and customizable it would be compared to dedicated CMS software...
 
Soldato
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Location
London
yeah exactly, good for basic stuff... still works with dynamic things but i had to write a workaround...

would like to get into using wordpress as a more comprehensive solution, but i'm dubious about how effective and customizable it would be compared to dedicated CMS software...

At the heart of wordpress is a loop that draws the content. You can put the loop wherever you want and call it as many times as need be on a single page - so the template files can be whatever you want them to be. In combination with custom meta tags within posts (nothing to do with meta tags in the normal sense of the word) you can draw as much or as little information from each page as you like. I've never thought of a situation and thought 'oh wordpress wont let me do that'.

Wordpress is dedicated CMS software - it's just set-up by default to work as a blog.
 
Soldato
Joined
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3,480
i've been playing around with WP and am getting the hang of the structure but have a quick question regarding development...

when you make something like this, for example i might replace a static website with a wordpress powered version, once its developed in say a sub folder out of public view, how do you then go about moving it to the root to become the live site without messing up loads of links etc?

and fini, i would like more informaiton on the idea of custom meta tags to vary which bits of information you are drawing... do you have a link or anything?
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2004
Posts
7,571
Location
London
i've been playing around with WP and am getting the hang of the structure but have a quick question regarding development...

when you make something like this, for example i might replace a static website with a wordpress powered version, once its developed in say a sub folder out of public view, how do you then go about moving it to the root to become the live site without messing up loads of links etc?
I'm probably not doing it the best way possible, but I tend to develop the theme on a blog I run that I know's working (so I can see what it looks like with content in it (using the 'theme testdrive' plugin so that only I can see the theme in development)) and then when I'm ready to move it over I quickly scan through all the theme files looking for any link that's not relative and then swap it out. Yes it creates a situation where the site is originally up without content, but it doesn't take long at all to put the content in (if you've got it ready saved so you can just cut and paste it in to your new pages). At worst it'll take a few hours to transfer all the new content that way, but I know I wont have missed changing a link and I always install analytics on the old site for a load of reasons anyway so I know what time to do it, what time the site's quiet. Of course once it's up and running changing between themes and testing themes is much easier - just a click of a button - this is purely for when I'm converting a static site to a wordpress site.

and fini, i would like more informaiton on the idea of custom meta tags to vary which bits of information you are drawing... do you have a link or anything?
No problem. First off an apology if you spent any time googling it - I think wordpress calls them meta keys rather than tags - woops! Anyway, say, for example, you want to list all the posts/pages in a particular category - well you'd start with something like this:
Code:
	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
		<?php $variablename = new WP_Query("cat=XXXXXX"); while($variablename->have_posts()) :$variablename->the_post();?>
				<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" ><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
		<?php endwhile; ?>	

	<?php else : ?>
			<h2 align="center">Something went wrong</h2>
			<p align="center">I'm sorry, but I'm incapable of writing proper php</p>
	<?php endif; ?>

That's all very nice, but a bit boring. Say you want to add a photo next to each post name - this is where the meta key comes in. In each post/page what you want to do is set a custom field of, for example 'photo' with a link to wherever the photo's stored (users can still upload just by clicking on the picture button as it tells them the link). The code would now look like this
Code:
	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
		<?php $variablename = new WP_Query("cat=XXXXXX"); while($variablename->have_posts()) :$variablename->the_post();?>

<li><href="<?php the_permalink() ?>><img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "photo", true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?> /></a>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" ><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
		<?php endwhile; ?>	

	<?php else : ?>
			<h2 align="center">Something went wrong</h2>
			<p align="center">I'm sorry, but I'm just a bit rubbish at all this</p>
	<?php endif; ?>

So what we've done there is used get_post_meta to pull the link we saved in the custom field of the post - and now it displays the photo next to the post name.

An example where I've used this in the past would be for an 'employees' page. This way all the user has to do when adding a new employee is create the page for them, including the photo and putting it in the 'employees' category and the parent employees page will be able to see that employee without being changed at all. The page then displayed for each employee a nice big photo of them with their name underneath it (pulled from the title of the page) and their position (another meta key).

You can make this more complicated by querying it so that you only show posts with a certain custom fields or with certain values or whatever. For example you might only want to show a list of posts where the meta key 'featured' is present and has a value of 'yes' (some people do this by having a featured category, but I think that the meta key way is far better for SEO). Really when used with multiple loops this allows you to do whatever you want in a form that's really easy for users to create content for.

A good example of where meta-keys are used to good effect (sorry not going to link to any of my own examples :p ) is the revolution pro-media theme where they've created a page that would be impossible to do in wordpress without the use of meta-keys.
 
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Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
3,480
thanks for a great post fini :)

looking at that revolution pro theme, do you reckon that is the kinda thing that would be good to buy for education purposes? i.e. take it apart and learn from it or is it technically not gonna be much more complicated than a standard free theme you would download?
 
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Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2004
Posts
7,571
Location
London
The free themes never have anything remotely complicated going on. I wouldn't bother buying that theme though - I think you should be able to work most of it out through googling and/or looking at the code that the theme spews out.

For example - it's clear that they're using meta keys, and the only other thing I can see that's going on in the theme is the tabbed feature thing, which looks to be using tabber.js. Apart from that all you need to remember is how the different template hierarchy works and there doesn't really seem to be anything to learn from it.

If you're coming to it from a history of writing static pages then just remember all you're really doing is inserting the loop wherever you want it so write your pages still however you want. If you're coming to it afresh then I suggest starting off with a theme that's vaguely how you want and then change it until you have what you need - at least then you know you're starting with a relatively solid structure and have all the files you need etc.
 
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