[SATLUG] CMS Solution

[Daniel J. Givens]

Brian Lewis wrote:
> I do believe that your opinions are just that: opinions. every person 
> who writes code thinks the way they write it is "great" and the way other
> write theirs is "Crap". Why not write your own cms if you think working 
> with a cms is crap? If they're so bad, don't use them. Most CMS's are 
> tailored to whomever the distributor's audience is. Just because you 
> don't want to write your own extensions, and/or do the work in coding 
> the whole site yourself, doesn't mean that you should just bash someone 
> else work. Where is the "Daniel Givens CMS"? Oh wait, it hasn't been 
> released because it doesn't exist. Before bashing on someones hard work, 
> write one yourself, and see how much better yours is. Thanks!

Go look at the code and see for yourself. It's terribly inconsistent, 
poorly documented, and major features (groups in Joomla for example) are 
only half-way implemented. This is the core of a site, the platform for 
which every other piece of functionality relies upon.

I worked with both Xoops and Joomla in the past because someone 
commissioned the work. I wasn't commissioned to write a CMS. The CMS 
solutions that my team recommended were not used because the staff 
employee "knew" Joomla (and he really didn't). This was after xoops was 
abandoned against our recommendation.

It's not that I think working with a CMS is crap, I think a lot of CMS's 
are executed and written like crap. Big difference. I also think that 
for most sites, mammoth projects like Joomla, Drupal, and Xoops are 
overkill. Wordpress, despite its past security issues, fits most 
people's needs. I use it myself and find it decent to use. I haven't 
written any extensions for it, but haven't had a need to.

And why haven't I written my own CMS? Several years ago, my first PHP 
project was a very lightweight CMS of sorts for a site I had that died 
long ago. It was more along the lines of wordpress in functionality, but 
I only used it very briefly. Admittedly, it wasn't very good and I never 
had a reason to release it for public consumption because I never got it 
to a releasable point. Since then, I haven't ever had the need to write 
my own. Wordpress works fine for me now.

Besides all that, the more important point is this. I don't think I need 
to write my own to be able to voice an opinion. That would be like 
saying I don't have the right to say Yugo's suck because I've never 
built a car. In that case, like with Joomla, compared to the 
alternatives, Yugo's suck compared to a comparable class Toyota. You can 
object all you want, but our opinions are our opinions. You have the 
option to ignore mine. When someone is asking for opinions, I would 
think they would want to hear both good and bad.

Like I said before, I have written extensions for Joomla and Xoops. I've 
fixed bugs and enhanced functionality in other's extensions and given 
the maintainers patches. I did that because I need to use those 
extensions. I'm not going to fix Joomla's shortcomings because I have no 
need nor do I have any interest in using it again.

Don't get me wrong. There are some really great extensions for Joomla 
and Xoops. If you want to see an awesome one for Joomla, look up 
FacileForms. I wish FacileForms or something like it were available in a 
form that I could drop it into another site not running on Joomla. And 
Joomla, in particular, isn't all bad. It just lacks in a lot of areas 
compared to other offerings.

I know I'm not the only one that feels the way I do about Joomla and a 
lot of the other CMS systems out there. The sad fact is that there is a 
lot of code, and subsequently, applications out there that are absolute 
crap. I don't think I'm out of line at all in stating my opinion on that.

I suppose I should wrap this up with some sort of positive and 
productive input because I have no intension of continuing this 
conversation into flamewar hell.

The best CMS I've seen, based on the last time we looked at CMS 
solutions early this year, was CMSMadeSimple. That one was the highest 
scoring based on the evaluations of me and my partners. We chose 12 
CMS's that seemed to be the most popular and most promising and rated 
them on functionality, usability, extensibility, documentation (user, 
administrator, and developer), and code quality. That one was by and 
large ahead of the others in pretty much every category. If you need a 
CMS in that scope (not a "blog" app), CMSMS would be a good place to 
start evaluating.