What Content Management System are you using? Any Good?

[easy does it]

Hi,

I know Wordpress does a decent job, but I want to go the html site route. So please suggest other alternatives to WP.

I would get a custom designed CMS but I don't have an idea how to talk the right language to a programmer, or how to begin the discussion.

Some people here must have found elegant and idiot proof solutions. There are solutions such as ArticleMS but I don't know if that can be adapted for my purposes:

a site for my own content, possibly hundreds of pages. SEO friendly urls, no dynamic content, easy to use.

I've looked at a ton of CMS software and apart from stuff with a big learning curve like Joomla the simple to use stuff isn't flexible enough to allow me to design my site as I would like it.

Any suggestions, ideas? How did you solve the problem? And does it work?

Much appreciated.

Tom

[ecoverartist]

Hi Tom,

I used to use Big Medium - www.bigmedium.com - and I still highly recommend it!

[wchua24]

i am using blogspot i don not know that much but this works for me.

[Jesus Perez]

Joomla is uber powerful. And version 1.5 made navigation and use even easier. I can't begin to explain the power and ease Joomla brings to the table. You can learn it at Joomla Video Tutorials.

[freelikehell]

joomla wins hands down.. although you'll take some time to get acquainted, but its worth the effort

[easy does it]

Thanks for the replies.

Ecoverartist,
Didn't know about that one.

Bluesquares and Freelikehell,
I don't really want to have to learn a CMS. I need something that lets me get on with what I want to do which is content creation

Ecoverartist, I'll check out bigmedium a bit more.

Who's next? I'm still stuck on this one.

Tom

[blokh]

DRUPAL

DRUPAL

DRUPAL

One of the most comprehensive and I would rate it as the best CMS I've ever used.

I have worked with Wordpress (love it), Joomla (involves a learning curve, but okay) ... Drupal is by far the best.

My Drupal site:
Raakesh.com
Wordpress:
Raakesh’s Blog

Drupal site:
Reiki Masters
Seek Reviews | Honest Product Reviews ... to help you decide better.
US Pet Store | for all your pet's needs

I am in the process of migrating all my custom HTML sites to Drupal now ... the modules you can find are awesome ... I think that should end your search. Highly Recommended.

[getsmartt]

I second the nomination for drupal, it is more complicated than Wordpress, but I found it a lot simpler than Joomla.

[Dan Moran]

I'll put in a third for Drupal. Super easy to install. Super easy to manage. And still flexible and powerful enough to get the job done. Lots of free plugins to do just about anything you want.

- Dan

[lennelljones]

I would have to say Joomla. It IS a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, you will be very happy with the things you can do.

[kkchoon]

I still prefer Wordpress as CMS, if I want more SEO power, I use XSitePro to build highly optimize SEO Site.

[Alminc]

Well, joomla or drupal are highly recommended.

But since you want something very easy to use,
take a look at this one: CMS Made Simple - Welcome to CMS Made Simple

[SteveJohnson]

Originally Posted by easy does it

Hi,

I know Wordpress does a decent job, but I want to go the html site route. So please suggest other alternatives to WP.

I would get a custom designed CMS but I don't have an idea how to talk the right language to a programmer, or how to begin the discussion.

Some people here must have found elegant and idiot proof solutions. There are solutions such as ArticleMS but I don't know if that can be adapted for my purposes:

a site for my own content, possibly hundreds of pages. SEO friendly urls, no dynamic content, easy to use.

I've looked at a ton of CMS software and apart from stuff with a big learning curve like Joomla the simple to use stuff isn't flexible enough to allow me to design my site as I would like it.

Any suggestions, ideas? How did you solve the problem? And does it work?

Much appreciated.

Tom

If your content gets stored in a database or flatfile system rather than as individual files, it is dynamic content. What exactly are you meaning, 'the html' route? I can make WordPress have .html endings. No biggie...

So by definition a CMS is 'dynamic'.

If you want a site built entirely of .html files (that, incidentally, would have to be manually updated every time you make a site-wide change) just buy a copy of Dreamweaver, design yourself a template, and make web pages.

Again - what exactly are you thinking when you say "...but I want to go the html site route"? Unless you're talking the Dreamweaver (or other html editor) option, that term is meaningless...

A better question, I suppose, is "what do you need to do that WordPress will NOT do"?

[Marcus Paul]

Most of what has been mention are PHP CMS systems. If you want HTML, why not use Dreamweaver HTML templates and use Contribute to manage the content?

[limoge]

I have to recommend Drupal if you don't want to use Wordpress. Those are the only two CMS that I use.

[Ken Leatherman]

Originally Posted by easy does it

Hi,

I know Wordpress does a decent job, but I want to go the html site route. So please suggest other alternatives to WP.

I would get a custom designed CMS but I don't have an idea how to talk the right language to a programmer, or how to begin the discussion.

Some people here must have found elegant and idiot proof solutions. There are solutions such as ArticleMS but I don't know if that can be adapted for my purposes:

a site for my own content, possibly hundreds of pages. SEO friendly urls, no dynamic content, easy to use.

I've looked at a ton of CMS software and apart from stuff with a big learning curve like Joomla the simple to use stuff isn't flexible enough to allow me to design my site as I would like it.

Any suggestions, ideas? How did you solve the problem? And does it work?

Much appreciated.

Tom

Hey Tom,

I'm doing exactly what you are talking about right now. I'm using an "elegant and idiot proof solutions" script right now which has enabled me to go the .html route for every page. I have 514 pages on my site and adding more every day.

Not only can I add text and format it, but I can embed videos, images and other Web 2.0 goodies I want to do with it. I can montierize every single page with something different if I want or put the same thing on every page with the click of my mouse.

I'm 65 years old and complicated learning curves drive me to the wall and most of the time I either give up or end up in trouble so deep with it I can't get out of it. I only know one or two things about html code <b></b> but frankly I would almost rather shoot myself than try to use it.

It's called EZ Content Manager or EZCM and that is exactly what it is. It's designed and built by Big Mike and his trusty sidekick Diego of INCANSOFT.com fame. They are really well known here on the WF, especially Big Mike.

I'm not sure how much I can talk about it, but I can tell you if I can use it anybody can. Now the only drawback is you can't buy it yet. However, I know for a fact a WSO is going to be run in the near future and then it's going to be launched world wide shortly after the WSO at a considerably higher price.

I really wish I could tell you how excited I am about using EZCM

This thing is awsome and I think it's going to change the way people build content sites.

Ken Leatherman
The Old Geezer

P.S. Nice talking to another "Idiot".

[Louis Raven]

Guys... spend ten minutes in the MODx forum and you'll understand how much Drupal and Joomla hold you back!

MODx CMS is the best. It is more powerfull than Joomla and Drupal but easier for the average newbie like me.

So many people regret spending 4 years learning Joomla only to find out they're restricted.

All the best,

Louis

[easy does it]

Thanks everyone,

Jeff
Thanks for the 2nd vote for BigMedium. From what I've seen it's a good one.

Steveinidaho,
I may well eventually go the WP route. I don't know enough to debate the pros and cons of WP, and I have a tendency to look for ideal solutions that are not easy to find. Thanks for your post.... I am here to learn.

Ken,
Sounds like what I need. You got me excited just reading your post. Do you think Big Mike would let me have a review copy for some feedback from a fellow idiot. Got any idea of the WSO date? I guess I'll have to keep my eye on the WSO forum, and I was trying to stay away for a while

Thanks all

Tom

[SteveJohnson]

Tom, hope you find what you're looking for. Committing to a certain platform is a big decision and not easily changed.

I would suggest that you list what is important to you, what your site HAS to do, what features you MUST have in order to concentrate on content rather than mechanics.

Then look for the easiest solution that will fulfill those needs.

WP isn't the best solution for everything - nor are any of the other CMS platforms. I get a little concerned for people when they say "I want to go the html route" -- because often they're just parroting what they've run across somewhere.

Sounds like you have a decent handle on what you need, though, and that's Job #1.

[Debbie Songster]

I tried Joomla and hated it
Went to Drupal and didn't like that one either

Played with wordpress for a long time and then decided to try the new Joomla

I love it - yes there is a learning curve ( most of it is just being organized and understanding proper structure for what you are trying to accomplish)

I've found some exceptional modules to go with Joomla and invested in quality templates so my sites are very functional.

If all I need is a basic web site then I use Wordpress. If I'm building a large site especially one with lots of affilitate products, I use Joomla

For my stores I use another type of software and for my membership site its totally different again.
I suggest you create a wish list of what you want your website to do and do some research for those qualities.

Don't be afraid to learn a system - it always pays off in the end.

SEO friendly urls, no dynamic content, easy to use.

Are you worried dynamic content doesn't index well? My stores prove thats a myth and same with the SEO friendly urls.
Its nice to have them but not crucial

[Ken Leatherman]

Hey Tom,

Ken,
Sounds like what I need. You got me excited just reading your post. Do you think Big Mike would let me have a review copy for some feedback from a fellow idiot. Got any idea of the WSO date? I guess I'll have to keep my eye on the WSO forum, and I was trying to stay away for a while

Thanks all

Tom

You can ask Big Mike but I suspect he's going to be very careful with letting more Idiots like me play with this script. I'll tell you one thing you can do though and that's put some light hearted pressure here on him here in the forum.

Maybe wait until tomorrow and put up a new post and ask him some very specific questions about it. Gently chide him about how desperate you are. Tell him what you're looking for that type of that thing. He's a pretty good sport and likes to help people out when he can.

He may only whet your appetite but then again he may give you some solid information. More than likely he's going to kick my butt for talking so loud about EZCM.

Ken

[DJPumpsta]

Joomla definitely wins hands down. I use it for about 4 of my websites. Not a big fan of drupal.. i know it had some security issues at some point so i switched over to joomla and never had a problem

[Loren Woirhaye]

I've read the opposite - that Joomla has wide security holes and
Drupal is better in that area.

Joomla templates are great for eye candy appeal. Wordpress too.
Drupal and other lags in that area.

It depends what your priorities are -
1. how many users?
2. how much security
3. SEO important to you?
4. how much time do you have to learn?
5. how technical is your mind?

[dwoodward]

Wordpress works best for me

[Leanne King]

Of course, I love my WordPress to death and couldn't imagine a day without it. I have also walked on the wild side with Xcite Pro and the updated version 2 is very good. I hear good things about Drupal but not enough to make me leave WP.

Leanne

[DJPumpsta]

Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye

I've read the opposite - that Joomla has wide security holes and
Drupal is better in that area.

Joomla templates are great for eye candy appeal. Wordpress too.
Drupal and other lags in that area.

It depends what your priorities are -
1. how many users?
2. how much security
3. SEO important to you?
4. how much time do you have to learn?
5. how technical is your mind?

Yes that was true until the new security updates were done. Joomla did have problems but now they have an entire security task force that looks for holes in the coding and makes sure to keep it in top shape.

[DJPumpsta]

If you're looking for a system that just does blogging tho, there's nothign better then installing wordpress on your server. It does everything you could possibly want and more. Plus all the plugins are to die for. It's the best free option.

There are probably "pay blog systems" that you can purchase (similar to vbulletin to forums - like thewarrior forum) but I haven't done any extensive research on that topic.

[gatorjack]

For websites in the past I have used Joomla. I prefer 1.5 over the 1.0.x version. However, I am looking to try out other CMS scripts. I have tried Drupal and just can't seem to get the hang of it's structure.

I am currently looking at CMSMadeSimple and have been thinking about XSitePro. The reason for XSitePro is to be able to quickly make a professional-looking page in a short period of time.

My talents lie in research and technical aspects. Sure, I can create a site with tons of bells and whistles, but graphic design is not my forte. It seems that with XSitePro, it comes with literally hundreds of templates. All I want to be able to do is when I get an idea for a project (e-book and/or affiliate site) to be able to start my research, type the content, and have to use minimal effort in the graphic design part. Having access to tons of templates sounds like a huge plus.

Anyone have any experience in XSitePro? The price is a little steep (I'm just getting in to all of this and I'm on a half of a shoestring budget). Anyone know of something similar to XSitePro for cheaper or free?

[Cash Blasters Online]

I like Blogspot , it's free and makes money just as ggod as any website does, and gets ranked easy.

[kkchoon]

Blogspot is great for fast money generation! If you want to build a serious business...host your own blog!

[faverr]

Several months ago I converted a site of mine to WordPress, and I manually modifed much of the code in a theme to make it behave like a CMS. Around the same time my son (almost 17 years old at the time) decided to use Drupal. I tried to discourage him from doing so, because I believed the time involved to get it running would be overwhelming for what he wanted to do. I thought he really needed a "CMS-lite" type of application, so I tried to convince him to use WordPress.

It turn out he went ahead and used Drupal, and he loves it. He's never regretted his decision, and he found it pretty easy to set up and get running. So it would appear to me that Drupal is simple enough to set up that it can act as a CMS-lite application pretty readily. But of course it's a full-featured CMS, so it seems to me it would be a good choice for someone just starting out with a CMS who also wants enough horsepower for when their site grows into something really big.

[Michael Taylor]

I love (LOVE!) Expression Engine.

[UncleHQ]

Hi Tom,

I currently use three different CMS systems - depending on what my needs are.

1. Joomla - for content publishing - once you get used to it - it really is easy.
2. Wordpress for blogging - straightforward but get your spam settings right.
3. Contepass (tm) - for everything else - membership sites - training - online store etc.

My main site is Contepass (tm) all others are mostly Joomla - you can usually tell the Wordpress ones by scrolling down to the bottom.

On the "HTML" thing - not quite sure what you mean there - the basic idea for a CMS is to provide an easy way to deliver lots of content dynamically and some will make it appear as a page ending in .html - like Contepass (tm).

Brian

[MarkR]

Tom,

I had the same issue months ago. I needed a CMS for an HTML site (not Wordpress, Joomla, etc.) A static HTML site. Some that already exist and others that are in development (by me).

My priorities were:

1. Cheap (my recommendation is free)
2. Dead easy to install (mine is web-based, nothing to install)
3. Incredibly easy for non-techie users to use (mine is dead easy)
4. Dependable (me and 1000's of other users haven't had issues)
5. Great support (mine has a very active forum)

If that fits your needs, the only that worked for me was CushyCMS. It's awesome. Their improving it all the time. It got limitations that high-end power users might miss, but that's not what I needed. I just wanted a way for my non-techie customers to update the text on their site.

I am not affiliated with CushyCMS in any way, other than a happy user!

Mark

[upnorth]

My vote goes to:
Wordpress

• tons of useful plugins
• easy to learn/manage
• lots of beautiful templates (free or commercial)
• indexes fast in Google

I used WP on a regular basis for small/medium size sites.

For larger sites my vote goes to Joomla.

Dan

[tinkerbelle]

I know that there a lot of Drupal developers but when I was given a project that needed to be completed in 3 days, obviously I didn't have the luxury of time to study Drupal nor the patience to understand it and I ended up with ModxCMS which took me a day to put up the site and half of their requirements in place. The ease to setup SEO-friendly URL's is really amazing. For any help that you might need, no developer will get lost inside their wiki and for additional help there are lots of free help in the forum.

It is very flexible and making modules for it is not a pain in any way so Modx is a real treat for developers and I'd recommend Modx even for non-techie folks.

[flashgordon]

I'll put in another vote for Joomla. It took me a little while to figure it out (about a month), but once you understand the structure and naming of things, it kicks ass. And the number of really useful and free modules and plugins is amazing. Anything you could think of is there. And it is just as SEO friendly as any other platform (if you know what you are doing).

[CBSnooper]

I've built a few using Joomla, but also found CMS Made Simple (cmsmadesimple.org) very easy to use and set up. It is a lot more lightweight than Joomla, and has Seo friendly urls out of the box.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by easy does it

Hi,

I know Wordpress does a decent job, but I want to go the html site route. So please suggest other alternatives to WP.

a site for my own content, possibly hundreds of pages. SEO friendly urls, no dynamic content, easy to use.

I've looked at a ton of CMS software and apart from stuff with a big learning curve like Joomla the simple to use stuff isn't flexible enough to allow me to design my site as I would like it.


Tom

Anyone else think Tom should use Joomla or Drupal or some other db backed cms? He's asking for other alternatives to those types of systems.

XsitePro, DreamWeaver, CityDesk, Frontpage, Expression Web, or the EZCMS someone mentioned when it goes WSO maybe.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by kkchoon

Blogspot is great for fast money generation! If you want to build a serious business...host your own blog!

That's funny. Google "make money online" the two top spots are blogspot sites. I'd call them "serious business". I think Grizz and whoever owns number two make out alright.

If you mean serious as in nice looking, you can get good looking blogger templates. People making money on blogger laugh at the wordpress snobs.

...and I know no one on this forum is interested in fast money generation. It's all about a few quality sites that are painstakingly built. Ok, now I'm just being a smartass. Sorry.

I think blogger is a great way to go for people that are:
1. Just starting out
2. Don't want to host their own
3. Aren't technologically savvy
4. Keep getting their self hosted stuff hacked
5. The seasoned pro that realizes the value of the time savings and lack of headaches that lead to increased productivity by using a hosted solution.

[Michele Miller]

I think the person that told you to host it yourself if you're building a serious business meant that if you don't host it yourself, Google can wipe out your blog at anytime without notifying you or giving you a reason since they do own blogger.com. This happened to one of the members here, and he lost a few thousand a month in revenue because of it.

Sounds like you took that remark a bit personal, and I doubt it was meant that way.

Michele

Originally Posted by WareTime

That's funny. Google "make money online" the two top spots are blogspot sites. I'd call them "serious business". I think Grizz and whoever owns number two make out alright.

If you mean serious as in nice looking, you can get good looking blogger templates. People making money on blogger laugh at the wordpress snobs.

...and I know no one on this forum is interested in fast money generation. It's all about a few quality sites that are painstakingly built. Ok, now I'm just being a smartass. Sorry.

I think blogger is a great way to go for people that are:
1. Just starting out
2. Don't want to host their own
3. Aren't technologically savvy
4. Keep getting their self hosted stuff hacked
5. The seasoned pro that realizes the value of the time savings and lack of headaches that lead to increased productivity by using a hosted solution.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by Michele Miller

I think the person that told you to host it yourself if you're building a serious business meant that if you don't host it yourself, Google can wipe out your blog at anytime without notifying you or giving you a reason since they do own blogger.com. This happened to one of the members here, and he lost a few thousand a month in revenue because of it.

Sounds like you took that remark a bit personal, and I doubt it was meant that way.

Michele

Michele, sorry, I didn't mean it to sound personal. I just think way too many people think you need to run to paid hosting when a lot of times you don't and the aggravation of paid hosting is sometimes more trouble than it's worth.

There are quite a few on here that probably aren't technically saavy. Probably many gifted marketers would be in that group. It just seems to me that their time might be better spent marketing rather than managing a site. At least when they are starting out after they roll in the dough they can hire the techy stuff out if they want a fancy site.

I do agree that .blogspot.com is a risk in some respects, but I doubt that google blows to many legitimate sites away. Networks of splogs on the other hand were fair game a few years ago and many got nuked. For $10 a month you can get your own domain through them and I don't think you'd have much of an issue then.

I stand by my comments as far as blogger, but agree I should have worded them better/less sarcasticly. Sorry kkchoon, if you took offense. I didn't mean to kill the messenger. I'm just expressing my opinion based on what I've seen and I'm sure you are doing the same.