Yet another content management system, called Whiteboard. It’s not finished yet, but you can test it out at http://www.thinkcomputer.net.
My eyes are tired…looked at pretty much all of these.
What I need is:
- Free
- Customizable
- Inline WYSIWIG from a Mac
- Plays nice with mySQL
The WYSIWIG from a mac is a major requirement…and I have yet to find a CMS that can do it.
Do you know of one??
A lot of web developers at this forum, like myself, have been looking for content management systems written with PHP. I’ve recently switched from ASP to PHP, so I’ve been looking for a good content management system to replace my ASP stuff. After reviewing a list of content management systems here, I decided to try EZ Publish because it seemed to have the most features.
About
The Install
The first thing you will notice after reading the installation manual is that the developers assume you are a UNIX admin. This is tough for me considering I just came from (and sometimes and still am in) the ASP world. Instructions like this one confused the hell out of me:
[i]Now you just have to run the “./configure” program with the appropriate configuration directives which we discussed in the preceeding sections, for an apache module you’d do the following:
./configure --enable-trans-sid --with-mysql --enable-trans-sid --disable-magic-quotes --with-imap --with-openssl --with-apxs
Remember that to compile a script/cgi version you’d need to change that line to:
./configure --enable-trans-sid --with-mysql --enable-trans-sid --disable-magic-quotes–with-imap --with-openssl[/i]
Luckily, there is a simpler way to install the application at the end of the install manual. This method involves basically uploading the files and then editing some config files. After doing this though, I still had tons of bugs in my install. The installation guide says nothing about setting permissions on folders, and there are quite a few that you have to set, for instance, you have to CHMOD several folders to 777 to get the admin page to look right.
Getting Frustrated
After about a week, I got everything going. EZ Publish does have a lot of nice features and I enjoyed testing them out. After all this work though, I found that EZ Publish was very slow! I had read this in the forums at their site, but it was truer than I had thought. Browsing through the admin part of the site was very slow and I was getting frustrated more and more. Finally, I had enough with EZ Publish, and I pointed toward its directory and hit delete. EZ Publish was no more on my system. The fantasy of an awesome CMS was gone and I was back to sqare one.
Summary
- EZ Publish is very hard to install and is ideally made to be installed by a UNIX admin on his own machine
- EZ Publish has many great features and is stable once installed
- EZ Publish is slow on a server that is normally very fast
So it’s back to searching for me. Honestly, I will probably design most of the web site myself and end up adding a news script to the front page. I hope someone else had better luck than I did with EZ Publish. If you did, let me know.
- Casey
True - ezpublish has loads of features, but is a real server hog. You will need a powerful dedicated server to get anything like the speed you would like - and don’t even think about it on a shared server - you will be kicked off the machine in no time.
I like Back-End myself. You can find it at:
http://www.back-end.org/
I’m going to be using it for my site, albeit with quite a lot of modifications. But for me, it was a great basis, and for someone people it should be everything they need.
I really do recommend it.
Originally posted by Hacker
[B]I think this is a great one, though it is strictly not promoted as one.
www.pmachine.com [/B]
Yes, pMachine can be used as a CMS, although it isn’t touted to be one. It’s really a blogging .php set of scripts.
However, I use to for full site maintence.
(Posting as shecodes on the site.)
Sue
If you’re looking for an online WYSIWYG editor that lets you specify an editable region on your web page… then check out www.snippetmaster.com
Perfect for designers who don’t want to give full access to their clients, etc.
Bitflux CMS looks promising - http://bitflux.ch/developer/
{The dev’s are friendly too)
And to those bashing ez publish - for big projects there is no competition, its great and v3 should be out in a month or two (or three, who knows). It takes time to get to grips with it, and there are some annoying minor bugs, but once you do it is really good.
For smaller projects I’d use movabletype (perl) which can output .php pages if you want - MT makes a fantastic mini-CMS, check out what Brad Choate has done with it: http://www.bradchoate.com/past/toh_colophon.php
Or do what I do, use MT for news and ezp for article archives 
Anyway just my 2c
-luke
I agree with the post from above regarding phpWebsite. You would be well-served to check it out. There is now a pretty stable user synchronization to sync the user/login process with multiple applications, particularly phpBB2.
phpWebsite after months of searching and experimenting with various CMS. I’ve got it running in test mode, near moving to production at [URL=http://www.coastaloutdoors.com/phpwebsite/]Coastal Outdoors phpWebsite test I expect to try the implementaiton of the user/login sync this weekend. If that works well for us, we’ll go ahead with the move of the site to phpWebsite.
The Nukes were too slow and burdensome for me. pMachine, as stated above doesn’t have the architecture for a solid CMS yet. Webgen didn’t have a strong community support system or as many modules.
So, after months of painstaking experimentation, I settled on the phpWebsite. Only problem is, it’s tough to find all the support, module and theme communities. If you decide you like this, let me know, I’ll provide the URLs for quick access to the various communities.
The development group is currently working on version 0.9 “Fallout” which promises to be truly awesome and flexible.
Originally posted by caser85
[B]
Hey I took a look at that. SiteWorks is exactly what I am looking for right now. Looks very clean. I would like to see some other people that are using. The only thing that bothers me is the $200 price tag. It might be worth it though. [/B]
After reading some of the postings, I decided to fork out the money. I must say, it is really a good piece of software, though I’m only using it as a personal log.
I’ve tried eZpublish, it is very good, but it is a resource hog, you need to have your own server. A hosted solution is not possible.
As for commercial ones, I use Vignette Story Server (ww.vignette.com). I think that is the standard for CMS.
Originally posted by Hacker
I’ve tried eZpublish, it is very good, but it is a resource hog, you need to have your own server. A hosted solution is not possible.
fwiw you definitely can use ezpublish on a shared hosting account, ez systems even offer pre-intalled options via their partners! I’ve used it on a cheapo $10usd/month account before, no probs.
btw your clients must have deep pockets if they’re using vignette…
True, you can use ezPublish on a shared server, but it is painfully slow. Vignette Story Server was what I used for a previous company.
I’m using SiteWorksPro (www.siteworkspro.com) and must say it is quite a performer for its price. It has partial integration with vBulletin and phpBB, and the support is outstanding.
BTW, anyone using the commercial version of Mambo? They don’t seem to have large screen shots and no sample site as demos. Can’t even see a template for the commercial version.
The German CMS programs are really good. Add this one too:
BG Studios
Here’s another one:
I haven’t tried it yet but it looks pretty impressive. The downloadable binary itself is more than 5 megs…
John
Do these packages have to be installed by the system administrator for the server, or can I install it remotely via FTP for my websites only?
Originally posted by divamissx
Do these packages have to be installed by the system administrator for the server, or can I install it remotely via FTP for my websites only?
You install them as you would any other script. Download the script, unzip, upload in FTP, run the install file. Hope that answers your question.
I purchased and downloaded the SiteWorksPro package and while I was reading the instructions, a friend of mine messaged me and gave me the link to his phpnuke site that he just setup. I was impressed. Can someone list some of the major differences between these two products?
One thing about SiteWorks is that you can build a subscriber database but you have to have a 3rd-party package to send newsletters. I already have an online newsletter service so that’s not a big deal really.
But I would like to know if phpnuke would work for me. I do not run my own server. My site is hosted remotely and it contains a chatroom powered by the ichat software package. I mention that because I’m not really sure if I’ll have problems integrating the chat with the CMS.
Thanks!
Diva
Originally posted by divamissx
[B]I purchased and downloaded the SiteWorksPro package and while I was reading the instructions, a friend of mine messaged me and gave me the link to his phpnuke site that he just setup. I was impressed. Can someone list some of the major differences between these two products?
One thing about SiteWorks is that you can build a subscriber database but you have to have a 3rd-party package to send newsletters. I already have an online newsletter service so that’s not a big deal really.
But I would like to know if phpnuke would work for me. I do not run my own server. My site is hosted remotely and it contains a chatroom powered by the ichat software package. I mention that because I’m not really sure if I’ll have problems integrating the chat with the CMS.
Thanks!
Diva [/B]
Can’t comment on siteworkspro design as I haven’t seen it’s code. 
However, stay away from anything ending with nuke. Very bloated code.
Originally posted by Codename49
However, stay away from anything ending with nuke. Very bloated code.
What do you recommend instead?