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The road I took to deciding which CMS is right for me

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Whilst trying to decide which CMS /CMF to use, I found Open Source CMS a great help. It allows you to get a feel for numerous open source projects ranging from Bloggers like Wordpress to CMS through to E-commerce solutions like Zen Cart and osCommerce ...and a lot more in between!

After getting a short list of about 4 or 5 I downloaded XAMPP . XAMPP allows you to simulate being a web server so you can use PHP, mySQL and lots of other features by installing Apache and other bits on your PC. The ones that made my shortlist included Modx (the one used for adrianlawley.com), Drupal, Joomla, XOOPS, Typo3 & CMSmadeSimple.

Here are my thoughts on the shortlisted ones:

  • Typo3 - This is no doubt a great CMS and is probably the most distributed here in Germany. It's great for developers after a couple of books and a few online tutes you can probably get a site online. When I first saw the backend though and tried to find my way around, it was a daunting task. I imagined the average secretary getting the job of updating content and such with little or no HTML knowledge and decided to try something else.
  • Joomla - Another well-known CMS. The community is large and just about everything you need is probably already available. Joomla, it would appear, is the successor to Mambo which I used over on www.flash-genie.de a couple of years back. I would recommend it as a great place to start with CMS.
  • CMSmadeSimple - This is the bees knees for any average site. It takes about 5 minutes of pointing and clicking to find your way around. To quote someone from OpensourceCMS "If you want to create a page based website that is very to maintain (and create in the first place) then this is currently the best option. Support from the forums is very good, the code is good, and its nice and fast."...Sort of sums it up.
  • XOOPS - XOOPS is a framework which is its strength, but unfortunately also its weakness. To get a basic site up and running you are going to have to download a lot of modules. It would be my choice if I had to incorporate a Shop system though, because there is a module that incorporates OScommerce.
  • Drupal - I have heard lots of good things about Drupal and it seems very strong. For my choice, I posted a relatively simple question on both the ModX and Drupal forums and waited for a reply. ModX won, and I'm still waiting on Drupal.
  • ModX - This is the one I decided to go with in the end. There are a couple of things that need improvement usability wise, but it is a young community and I think it will go it's way. I installed MaxiGallery and got it setup in about 2 minutes displaying my Mangas

At the end of the day, everybody wants different things from a CMS or CMF...I found what I wanted with Modx.

All the best,

Taff

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Marco
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MODx
Reply #1 on : Mon June 30, 2008, 17:17:49
Adrian - Nice observations regarding some of the leading CMSs out there. I also found CMS Made Simple to be a good to choice if you are looking to get a site up and running fairly quickly. (I found that sites run a bit slowly through their interface though.) In the end, despite some frustrations here and there, MODx has become my CMS of choice though. Some fucntionality concerns aside, I would love to see the documentation get the critical update it needs. Poor documentation seems endemic to Open Source CMSs. If MODx had solid documentation, I think it would become the undisputed leader in the CMS world. Indeed, the product itself is really quite good.

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