I’m not a fan of CMSes in general because the output is generally atrocious (valid code is very rare, and I’ve never seen a package that begins to approach clean code). This can easily result in significant cross-browser compatibility issues. They also don’t tend to last very long or build up a significant community of users; a large, popular CMS may have a community in the 1000s to 100,000s, where even a difficult programming language like C# or Java have millions of users you can talk with (and light languages like CSS and XHTML are understood by even more). I’ve provided training to clients in “survival HTML” that allow content managers to generate new content. In conjunction I will template the site (using .NET master pages or something similar) to reduce or eliminate the chances of content creators breaking pages. Given the complexity of any reasonably powerful CMS, I’ve found that HTML training is actually much simpler for people to wrap their heads around and more robust allowing them to accomplish more and work more reliably than with a CMS.
That said, Wordpress is about the only viable product I would consider if I were going to deploy it. It has the largest community of users which is a massive advantage over other CMSes. It’s HTML output is about as good as CMSes get, and it is far and away the easiest tool to use if the clients I’ve spoken to are any indication. While it is designed as a light blogging tool, the simplicity of it’s design is a key reason that non-technical people can use it productively and I believe that’s why I hear better things from the people using it as a CMS than I hear about formal CMSes like Joomla! and Drupal.
Some, like EE and MODx, output none of their own code at all. You are given a blank sheet, just like a blank HTML page, and the code is entirely up to you, which is part of the beauty of it.
It is a good book, but I like “Digging into WordPress” much better as it really goes deep under the hood of WP, something which I find absolutely invaluable: http://digwp.com/book/
I’m not suggesting that the SitePoint book is worse, just prefer the in-depth discourse by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr.
Thanks for the link, it sounds like a good second book for me. I also was looking into the videos that Chris Coyier recently posted to the Lynda.com site.
With one exception in EE. If you prefer marking up your documents in HTML4.01 Strict, you’re out of luck, unless you opt to not use EE’s standard Email module and other forms. Even Solspace’s must-have Freeform module has XHTML coded right into the core.
I’ve addressed the issue several times on the EE fora, on the Solspace fora, and I even made a feature request on the road-ee.com roadmap, but alas, nobody seems to care. At least I have heard exactly null, nada, zero echoes on the matter.
Yeah, I did think of that after posting, but thought I’d let it go. I have also posted about the issue a few times. So far it’s only annoyed me with adding images and forms, where is adds trailing slashes, which is annoying, but I guess I can live with it. I’m surprised EE2 didn’t address this, as XHTML had already received its death sentence before EE2 was released.
I just boggles my mind all the things I still have to learn. I am enjoying the converstaion on forums and will surely learn something from it. Wordpress is truly an amasing program, but there are many facets to it , that most of us dont know about. I found codex helps with some answers .
Haven’t read the full posts but Wordpress is kind of ruling these days as the themes can be customized and various free plugins are available which can be tweaked as per webmaster needs…!
Hi all,
I’ve been reading here your discussion about different CMS and it was very useful for me.
I have the similar problem as “lookingglass” and really need your help to decide which CMS to take for my needs because they are different from his… I think of the multilingual Travell site with description of tours and countries, useful instructions and some know-how for travellers. So, any comments you could on the following would be very welcome.
Here is a brief description: 1. Multilingual Front-end
• Description of the company
• Medical and other recommendations for tourists
• Travell news and customs changes
These “static” pages would be rewriten regularly. 2. Multilingual tourist blogs, comments, may be forum also…WordPress has a nice plugin:” WPML Multilingual CMS” with some fine features:
WPML manages multilingual posts in one post per language. Translations are then linked together, indicating that one page is the translation of another.
Is there smth. like that in ExpressionEngine or somewhere else? 3. Multilingual eCommerseSell some virtual products
As I have no experience with php, may be ExpressionEngine is the best choice for me?
Thanks in advance.
I prefer using Joomla or Drupal instead of WP because they started as CMS instead of morphing into a CMS from blogging. That said, I think a guy in the UK has built one of the most attractive WP sites out there and I think it really pushes the envelope. The site is: http://www.beatlesbible.com. FYI: I am not associated with the site, unfortunately
As for eCommerce, there’s an eCommerce module that ships with EE, but it’s very, very basic, so you’ll probably want some third-party solution. There are plenty modules for that too now, so perhaps there’s something that’ll do what you need, though I haven’t a clue about these eCommerce add-ons and how good they are.
Hi all, I just scanned this thread and the one major choice that hasn’t been mentioned yet is a LGPL system called Contao (http://www.contao.org). I’ve been exclusively developing for Contao since mid-2007. The framework is second to none. Whereas even EE and ModX have things people learn to coexist with, Contao seems to have done an excellent all-around job. It gets some criticism in terms of back end interface when compared to EE for example, but that simply is because more emphasis has been placed on the core Framework primarily. I could probably write a book about it by now, especially about what I love in it, and how mature, stable, and modular it is, but I’ll just leave it at that. It has a strong, loyal community base, plenty of english-speaking participants despite being a German-made CMS, but, benefits from having the language support so many other choices do not offer. There are hundreds of extensions (471 by today’s count) and an ecommerce package that is built in as a set of extensions instead of a bridge or a separate layer on top of the CMS. The coding style is extremely clean and well-written MVC style, and what else… it’ll blow away any of the old albeit well-supported packages like Joomla, Drupal, etc. that have little or no framework, a patchwork of coding styles and philosophies, conflicts, bugs, etc. That we just don’t have to deal with by virtue of the great design of Contao. Needless to say, I love it, it keeps me employed full time, I’ve developed & sold approaching 50 individual extensions single-handedly in the past three years and spend less than 2 hours per month supporting them, and usually only the ones that are not fully tested/burned in. I’ll stop there.
