I’ve moved my sites to a perl based solution since that is where my skills are and headed. As a result I’ve got an extra copy of it, including the latest version which is pretty nice but not of use to me. It retails for $500 but I’ll sell it for $325, which is a very nice discount (35% is pretty good!) and “used” software isn’t like used jeans, LOL. You can reach me here or at perlplace at yahoo.
I’ll say this. Other than a few, there isn’t much in php in the way of content management and the nukes really stink.
TYPO3 (open source) just released 7.5 hours of video tutorials which makes this otherwise complex but very powerful CMS much easier to understand and use.
I used to be a PostNuke and Xaraya fan but once I saw the marketing potential in TYPO3’s static page content generator (search engine freindly pages) I was inspired to spend the extra time to learn the system. It’s well worth it. What’s the point of having a CMS if you remain invisible to search engines?
http://mediatech.net is an experimental site. I use it to gauge search engine rankings at the moment for TYPO3 related terms to see how I rank among commercial TYPO3 entities. I’ll use my findings to launch and market several projects for non tech markets this Spring.
I’m still a newbie to TYPO3 but I can help people with the basics.
Somewhat inaccurate statement about Xaraya which really depends upon how quickly they move. It’s the up and coming built from the ground up and can do the job right now for simple tasks with a lot of promise for those who invest in its system. It’s definitely hot on the radar but not fully mature.
FYI, it’s really not permissible to register trade names of other others in order to profiteer from the popularity of their property.
I’m reviewing the site and it looks impressive. The documentation area is exceptional. I’m going to take this one for a test drive!
I’m currently running typo3 for a work-related website but I’m going to utilize it for another site as well.
I’m running e107 for my prison101 website. It’s ok and I’ve gotten further with that one than most but there are still some issues that i can’t get resolved and questions that I cannot get answers for. The e107 website is flooded with people looking for support and my questions pretty much get overlooked.
That topic is from over 6 months ago, when Xaraya was still in the very early beta period. There have been 1875 changesets in that 6 month period on the core Xaraya tree and over a 1043 changesets in the modules tree since that initial post.
However, don’t let the facts stand in the way of your spreading of falicies. Not that that was ever a problem for you, Gregory.
The install went ok until I got to the instructions to install Imagemagick and Ghostscript. I don’t speak unix that fluently so that’s where I got stuck and had to quit.
Well, I’m still looking. At this point I’m thinking that there are only a few that actually do the job but will require some real hacks. I’m glad that Xaraya is being designed from the ground up and it is a consideration but not for this project. Siteworkspro is actually decent looking on the outside with several features (author pages, vbulletin ‘integration’ for registration, etc.) but from the comments in the forums I shudder a little about the inside. It seems some of the customizing styles requires modifications directly in functions… ouch. All I need is one theme and we’ll have to see what that means… anyone? Keith M did a nice job with his site as well as functional integration. but there are some holes, e.g. subcategorization and wonder about the inside…
My second impression of typo3: As powerful as it may be it bites the user friendly hand that clicks on it. Way, way too much crap for me to have to wade through just to get things started, especially when all we need is a simple ezine site. If I can’t get things up and running easily within a day or two then it’s nowhere near as friendly as it should be. Honestly, I’d sooner choose ezcms although that too suffers from its own issues although definitely cleaner than SWP.
PHPWCMS is very impressive at first glance… good catch. Will need to take a look. However, user friendly URLs is a must and I didn’t see that being accomplished easily there and I’m not in the mood to start relearning writing mod rewrites.
PS – Greg, if you’re looking for the things money can’t buy by registering those domains then you’re looking for love in all the wrong places. LOL
Customizing template styles and navigational elements (hierarchical menus) is done through TypoScript which is similar to XLT. Once the style has been created the newbie can simply hack the TypoScript like one would with a CSS style sheet or DHTML script. The base template itself is HTML. The TypoScript is rendered as dynamic content inside the HTML template through the use of tags. Very similar to PostNuke and other CMS’s. Example: <!–###LEFTNAV### START–> and <!–Top Navigation –>, ect…
I’m a sub categorization junkie which is another reason I chose TYPO3. TypoScript allows me to set up very complex graphical or textual hierarchical menus using DHTML or CSS for sites that have dozens of categories and sub categories. The menus auto populate of course when new pages are added in the page tree structure.
I’m kinda hoping Xaraya adopts some of TYPO3’s features like page tree view. Working with a page tree makes managing content so much faster. Notice Vignette’s page tree interface (a $200,000.00 CMS):
I have to agree here. It took me 2 months to wrap my head around TYPO3. The new tutorial videos help speed the learning curve up a lot. TYPO3 is overkill for a basic ezine or website. It is not a simple CMS due to the fact that it was designed for commercial end users familiar with the complexities of higher end CMSs. If you have 4 or more content packed sites to manage and need to set permissions for hundreds of front end and back end users TYPO3 does speed things up a lot.
I am putting together a template package that will allow a neophyte to install a preconfigured set of modules (extensions) and template options quickly. The neat thing about TYPO3 is you can export page tree structures, templates and configurations as a single compressed database file and import it at a click of a button into another TYPO3 setup… instant gratification
It’s clean and simple however it does not have search engine compliant URLs. Go to Google and type in “typo3 template”… notice how mediatech.net (or typo3.cn) is #2
I’m did it for the type ins… I get most of my site traffic through Postnuke.com (redirect) followed by Google searches. I have the pnapi.com URL plugged in several thousand posts on 10 + PostNuke related sites (including PostNuke forums). About 40% of PostNuke users travel through the entire site.
My goal is to make TYPO3 as easy to work with as PN… and more popular in the USA
I have a unix guru friend who assists me with installing some of these CMS’ so I can test them out. phpwcms even stumped him.
It’s very frustrating trying to find a CMS that I can just install and use. I manage websites, I don’t program them. I don’t want to become a unix geek in order to just run my websites.
I am, however, a software developer of 4GL business applications. I’ve doing this for 12 years and based on experience, if you develop an application for the end user to easily manage their business requirements, then DO IT! And not half-assed.
That CMS should install itself and setup all the parameters based on a “user-friendly” interface where the user can simply answer some questions, and have the product installed and ready to run without having to spend countless hours on geek message boards trying to decipher unix/php/mysql lingo only because you want to display your own banner instead of the developer’s banner.
Everytime I think I’ve found a cms that MAYBE meets my criteria, it turns out that I have to do jump thru flaming hoops just for simple things. I could manage my site easier and faster by using an html editor or writing the html code by hand. There should be no single parameter that I should have to set outside of my user-friendly setup page.
This is a wake-up call, cms developers! Do the job right or don’t do it at all. If I had the time outside of my full-time programming job to learn php, unix, mysql and everything else that goes along with it, I’d build one myself, and trust me… it would be the ultimate application because that’s the way I learned to develop software.
I apologize if I seem too harsh or if I have offended anyone. I just have higher expectations of people who call themselves software developers.
TYPO3 installs in 3 simple steps once you have it configured properly. I have a package that I tar balled that I preserved permissions on that makes installation a 2 minute process. Send me an email if you would like a link to it. You need to unpack it with the shell command tar xvzpf file.tgz to preserve permissions.
I’ll be releasing a very user friendly TYPO3 HTML template in less than a month which is way easier to work with than the default templates that come preinstalled with TYPO3.
Someone should considered writing a book… TYPO3 for Dummies. Honestly, the system is much easier than it appears once you’ve spent 3 months figuring out the shortcuts.
The typo3 stuff is cool although I’m still a bit reluctant to go wading through it just yet. I’m going to take another look at a few others before going for the plunge with two of our sites.
FYI, regarding the redirects, in general it’s unlawful to use the trade name/mark of another and it can get you sued although many do it and take the risk. Also may not win the goodwill of fellow developers who have spent time to create value in a trade/product name, if you know what I mean… but I digress and want to hear more about a CMS that can somewhat easily be implemented to run an ezine site…
I’ll turn the redirect off now that I’ve got your attention
Magnolia looks promising. It’s a little bare bones atm. It has a page tree structure like TYPO3, appears to produce very nice URLs and you can move content around with a mouse. Check out the screenshots:
I believe SitePoint is one of the best article sites around, so what’s wrong with modelling the best site?
However, its not modelled simply on sitepoint, its modelled on a number of Article Sites, and the screencaps you have seen are simply ONE of the many different templates / layouts that it will be shipped with.
Looks like SiteWorks? Wow… that sucks…
Just so you know… CREATOR of SiteWorks, is now our lead developer, and he reckons its a 600% improvement on SiteWorks… but what would he know
