Which CMS To Choose

[flesso]

A client has asked to set a system up for them so that they can add to their website the venues in which they are appearing. I know in this case a CMS will be required, but there are so many in Fantastico I don't know which one to choose. Currently, the website is only 5 basic HTML pages, which is another reason why it's hard to choose a CMS. Can anyone suggest a good CMS to use (not TYPO3)?

Thanks in advance.

[Ben]

PHPNuke, Joomla or Drupal are the ones I'd choose from - make a unique style for it, and no body will ever notice its a CMS .

[esnail]

If its just a few details he wants to update then a full CMS might be overkill. You could create a PHP updateable page quite easily to write to either a MySQL database or even a simple text file. Password protect the folder in which the update page is located and you'll have a much simpler system.

[flesso]

Originally Posted by esnail

If its just a few details he wants to update then a full CMS might be overkill. You could create a PHP updateable page quite easily to write to either a MySQL database or even a simple text file. Password protect the folder in which the update page is located and you'll have a much simpler system.

That sounds a good idea, although I'm sh*t with PHP. I'll dig out he dusty book later and have a look. Or I may just use Dreamweaver so I don't have to go to any trouble.

[MattHawkins]

I have used Postnuke (related to PHPNuke) and Nucleus. Postnuke is probably over kill for a handful of pages. Nucleus is fairly light weight but it depends on how many pages your client expects to create and how often they expect to update them.

I guess you want a system with some sort of calendar display that links articles to dates so that visitors can see up and coming events by month etc.

If you stick "simple cms" into google there are a few out there that are meant to be bare bones. The trouble I found was the more basic the CMS the smaller the community of people using it. Ideally you want lots of support but you only tend to get that with popular systems but they seem to get more complicated and bloated as time goes on!

[flesso]

I've decided that I'll just create a password protected folder and MySQL database from cPanel and let Dreamweaver do all the coding.

Lazy I know, but I can't be bothered to get a fully blown CMS when it's only one page which will need updating.

[DPS Computing]

I think thats a good decision for your purposes Josh. If you were going to use a CMS I would avoid Joomla - there are too many security issues!

[paul]

I found a bunch of open source cms demos installed at opensourcecms.com take a look for test drive.

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by paul

I found a bunch of open source cms demos installed at opensourcecms.com take a look for test drive.

Thanks for the link paul - am going to check them out. I can't seem to decide on a CMS to use so hopefully one of them will jump out at me .

[daledavies]

I found Wordpress to be a very good CMS platform for a small website like the one you have planned. Its a LOT less complicated than something like Joomla or Drupal, plus its dead easy to create themes for it.

There are a number of plugins I would recommend for improving Wordpress as a CMS, see my posts towards the end of the following for a few suggestions...

WordPress Hosting

The advantage of using Wordpress over one of the smaller open source CMS's you might find on opensourcecms.com is that it has a massive support and 3'rd party developer community.

[gordo]

I use e107 on two websites one of the easiest to set up and doesn't come to bloated and good for admin

[paul]

Using wordpress as CMS is good idea as you will have lot of plugins wp-plugins.net and you get good support through their community as well.

[DPS Computing]

I've started using Drupal and I can say I am very impressed so far .