The best CMS for community driven sites?

I am in a middle of CMS research and testing for the community site i am about to start, but whenever i search for ‘the best cms’ or even ‘the best community cms’ i got nothing relevant. I am aware that there’s no best cms, but best for your situation. However, i am still asking myself and now…yourself what is the best cms for comprehensive community building? What are your experiences and opinions.

It’s easy to put up a forum and start a community by that, but i am searching for something more around that forum. I want to provide my visitors more options than one forum can give.

What my CMS needs is:

  • full phpbb integration
  • blogging capability
  • articles section
  • ability of exporting ‘hot topics’ on other pages from phpbb forums
  • polls and petitions
  • RSS news agreggator
  • great scalability for future growth (multi server setups)
  • best possible performance and speed, stability
  • very good overall reputation
  • ease of use both by admin and users

I made the above list more on the fly, but that sums up generaly what is most important to me.

Just to mention, i heard that drupal has some special reputation and is known by its taxonomy, but misses phpbb integration and i don’t like their built in forums (newbb if i am not wrong) Also i know that mambo is by many considered the best, but i got the impression that it just isn’t meant for these kinds of community driven sites. Typo3 has everything, but that everything may turn to be too much, and it’s requirements are too much which may result in lower performance. As for nukes… i don’t know what to say really… there are simply too much clones that i end up confused… CPG nuke sounds good, PHP nuke is very popular and all have phpbb integration. Are nukes good for community driven sites?

Please, post any experiences you may have with establishing a community with a CMS. What is/are the best CMS for community driven sites?

Thank you very much!
Daniel

With the exception of a forum, this is fairly close to what you want.

http://www.midgard-project.org/cms/

Thank you Doug!

I checked Milgard site and it surely seems to be a nice CMS, but the lack of forum integration (even any other like newbb besides phpbb) is a major thing to what i am about to start. Everything should somehow rotate around those forums and the services the site would have would be community services like blogs, article submits etc.
Also, milgard seems to be less known, even cmsmatrix.org sites does not list it, and i am searching for a good and high reputation.

Thank you for your effort anyhow!
:slight_smile:
Daniel

why not just code the integration in? MX-System is phpBB integrated and there are other hacks that take posts from phpBB and put them on your main pages, so just look at the code and code it in your CMS. Or wait a while, I see so many people asking for this integration, that it will soon appear.

hey check out storyteller. it has integration with phpBB2, invision 1.3, vb3, vb2.2, and for one more so i think it would work pretty good. im goin to do some looking into it more and see if i would like it for my site :slight_smile: here is the link

you will have to register to beable to download it but it is free to download it youhave to go into the members area :slight_smile: good luck and if you decide to use it let us know how it works :slight_smile:

Thank you for responding!

As for coding the integration myself i am not that advanced user and i still don’t know how to code php having troubles even with CSS. However, i saw alot of people asking for that phpbb integration so i would expect it from all ‘major’ cms’s at least in form of some kind of module. Anyway, i am somehow starting to like this xoops newbb, it actualy is similar to phpbb. The only thing i may miss is the admin interface which is in xoops newbb forums the same as the interface for the whole cms. However, the whole Xoops looks great. Does anyone uses it for community sites? What do you think about it’s scalability?

As for storyteller, i actualy ran into it before and checking it out again now i must say it looks promising and your site runs the speed of light. Also the forums seem nice. I will save the homepage for reference. Thank you for mentioning it big_k.

More closely looking, the site i am about to develop would actualy be a combination between a community portal, forums and blog enabling users to not only discuss, but to write blogs, articles, read and even submit news… Shortly said, i want to provide them every communication, information sharing ability possible. And i want users to be my editors and publishers also.

My team site uses Xoops I like it so far.

xeliber, could you let us know how well storyteller intergrated with your site as i am working on it but having gotten working like i would have like to :slight_smile: thanks
that is if you go with storyteller :slight_smile:

Hah, big K, i am not still sure for any cms and while storyteller seems nice i just don’t like the idea of it having it’s commercial version that is more advanced than this free version, and since the site i am starting is heavily open source advocating site, a future community (with any luck and much work) i would want to go with a full open source cms. I am sorry to dissapoint you big_k if i made you anyhow think i am going with storyteller, but that’s just my elimination and choice game (whatever it’s called). But thanks for mentioning it.:slight_smile:

One more thing i’d like to add is search engine friendly URL’s which are very important for getting all of our pages indexed by google. I saw xoops fails this test on it’s own, you have to install a hack that i found to do the job. Any experiences?

Thank you! :slight_smile:

Here’s a new one I’ve been looking at http://www.subdreamer.com/

no problem as i have given up on looking into it as the free version doesnt integrate well :slight_smile:

Subdreamer is looking pretty promising to me i mite have to give it a try it seems to integrate well :slight_smile:
and it only costs 35 bucks which is pretty damn cheap for unlimited use :slight_smile: but it still means they are charging for it :frowning:

Yeah! I ran into subdreamer before, i remember now when i visited their site. But i am definitely no accepting anything that isn’t open source, even if i would be ready to pay some money it is just not right for me to power my open source related site with non-open source system. That is just not an option! :slight_smile:

But thanks Billiousness for response! :slight_smile:

I may post a probably final list of all features i need so that any experienced knowledgeable mind outhere can shout out if they know exactly what i am looking for. If i don’t find it myself.
For now, xoops seems like the best choice, but i only mind it being originaly search engine unfriendly as i said before and that is a major issue. The only salvation to that would be the performance of this hack that is meant to make it engine friendly!

Daniel

here is a list of open source cms i dont know if any of them integrate with phpbb but you can check :slight_smile:
http://www.oscom.org/matrix/index.html

Thank you big_K, i am on it! :slight_smile:

Also, here is the full list of needed features, maybe i am a little too requiering, but hey, maybe there is something to fulfill all those needs, and maybe you are the one to know just about that one (so i remember you)! :wink:

Here it is:

FORUMS (preferably integrate PHPBB or at least some alike, with the same or similar features)
‘HOT TOPICS’ FROM FORUMS, BLOGS, ARTICLES (CHOSEN TITLES)
ARTICLES (with rating ability, commenting system, signature and ability to turn off/on those options for each article posted)
MULTIPLE BLOGS (with rating and maybe commenting system)
NEWS (with commenting)
RSS CAPABILITY (get’s fed from multiple sources, total control)
FAQ
POLLS
PETITIONING CAPABILITY ( if possible, we need ability to create petitions by signatures))
LINKS (prefferably with rating ability)
DOWNLOADS (prefferably with rating too)
SEARCH ENGINE (and search box ;))
‘HOT TOPICS’ FROM FORUMS, BLOGS, ARTICLES (CHOSEN TITLES)
SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY URL’s
EASY TEMPLATING AND SKINNING SYSTEM (wysiwyg if possible :))
STABLE, FAST, RELIABLE
GOOD OVERALL REPUTATION
GREAT COMMUNITY, SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

That should be all! :wink:

Now, i am gonna research all of the interesting systems and one must meet these demands! If you already know it, save me! :slight_smile:

Thank you very much!

Daniel

You have looked here right?

Not to hot on Xoops. It’s a good script but I think it’s kinda buggy. Have you tried Mambo? Can’t remember if that has the forum mod or not?

Xoops is definitley good for that though… modules.

The thing I like about drupal is that it seems to have a well laid out modular design.
It has many of the features you need and it has a number of submitted modules for extra functionality.

Your needs are pretty diverse, so I imagine whatever solution you go for you will have to get some modifications done.

If your site is new, phpbb integration may not be as important. You can choose a system which has A forum module/capability and use this because it will be naturally integrated with other parts.

Let’s see… I’d say that phpBB would be a very good choice. It can do all of what you want (if you modify it a bit - and believe me, it’s a breeze to modify compared to some other systems). For phpBB, ezPortal is probably the quickest and most adaptable solution. ( http://smartor.is-root.com/ ) Articles might be a little tough to pull off.

Drupal could also do everything you want, but it’s very hard to modify, a little buggy, and somewhat difficult on the user side. It can, however, handle forums, user blogs, rss feeds, and articles natively.

This is a great resource for CMS. They’ve set them all up and let you play with them.

Hope that helps.

And they use Mambo for their own site.

Mambo can do everything on your list, though not straight out-of-the-box, as the developers keep the system fairly lean (read “not bloated”).

There are two fully integrated forum options (SimpleBoard and LoudMouth are their names), a phpBB integration component, and a beta version of SMF integration which seems to be going well.

-Tony