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Content Management System

Discussion in 'Computers & Technology Forum' started by mnw, May 13, 2006.

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  1. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Has any one got any experiance using CMS on their site. I am just wondering how easy the set up is and what the best one would be.

    I am looking into Wordpress, Mambo, Joomla and a couple of others.
     
    #1 mnw, May 13, 2006
  2. tinytim

    tinytim <img src =/tim2.jpg>

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    good question, I was wondering the same thing.
     
    #2 tinytim, May 13, 2006
  3. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    I finally have Wordpress working, but it does not seem as adaptable as the others. Wordpress seems the most user friendly but I hope I can get some themes that look less like a standard blog and more like a personal website.
     
    #3 mnw, May 13, 2006
  4. exscentric

    exscentric Well-Known Member
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    I was wondering how much trouble it is to set up if you already have a huge bunch of files online - worth trying to change or more trouble than it is worth. :rolleyes:
     
    #4 exscentric, May 13, 2006
  5. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    My hope is to streamline future sites I do as well as make it easier to update and maintain present sites.

    It will be more work over the next few days, but in the long term I think it will be better... if I can get it to work.

    Wordpress seems more like a Blog than CMS. But it may work if I can tweak it a little.
     
    #5 mnw, May 13, 2006
  6. MRCoon

    MRCoon New Member

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    Look up e107. This is a CMS that I found to be a little better and easier to use. For the average personal website it gives too many options but for a site with growth potential...say multi-ministry webapges and church forums...wahtever this e107 can handle it. I don't have a link right now...just google e107. Check out this website as a sample (www.thegamernews.com). I just sold this site!

    For simple informational sites Frontpage is the easiest way to go. If I build a website for a church and then they maintain it then a copy of Frontpage is easiest for them, well supported by Microsft and tons of schemes/templates. I personally use the coffee cup webdesign software suite...again google it but this is for a more knowledgable person. Here is a church site I made using coffee cup (www.calvarybaptist-yuccavalley.com) now it is purely inofrmational and bet of all is exapandable when the church provides more info or wahtever.
    IMO, CMS is easy to maintain and easy to mass update a website but is very vanilla and limiting if the content changes often then people may not notice the site much but if it is informational or static then CMS is (IMO) not ideal.

    PS. If you need more info or help let me know and I can send ya some ideas or links depending on what level of web developement you're at.
     
    #6 MRCoon, May 14, 2006
  7. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Thanks MrCoon.

    Last night I kept working on Wordpress but it does not seem like it will work for me.

    I may use it when making sites for others because it is easy to setup, update and maintain.

    But I want something more customisable. So, I am currently uploading Joomla. At the same time I am downloading e107. It looks promising so once I've tried Joomla I'll give that a go.

    What level am I at? Well, the only coding I know is from 2000 basically.

    The sites I currently run are:

    www.faithbaptist.co.uk
    www.ifmfocus.com

    I did have www.thewickens.info but playing around with CMS has currently wiped that site. [​IMG]
     
    #7 mnw, May 14, 2006
  8. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    Might depend on what type of files you are talking about. If you are talking about migrating articles from static pages into a CMS, probably just copying and pasting them would work. It might take a while if you have a lot. Someone with a little php skill could probably automate the process easily.
     
    #8 James_Newman, May 15, 2006
  9. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    If you need help with getting Joomla up and running let me know. I have installed it a few times and I think I have it down pretty well. It has a couple of quirks, but for the most part the install is pretty simple. I have it running at http://jnewman.christservant.com

    Which reminds me that I need to write some content.
     
    #9 James_Newman, May 15, 2006
  10. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Thanks James, I have finally gone back to and settled with Wordpress. I think it is CMS for dummies! [​IMG] and I'm a dummie. I could probably get my head around the others but I am tryign to get away from web design as a time consuming thing and have more time for what God has called me to do now - pastor a church. I want to still help those with even less experiance than me, but it has to be a more streamlined process.

    Joomla looks great, but it just has so many options and I did not know where to start.

    Well, how long or easy is it to get your head round it?

    If I could figure out how to get a custom graphic for the header I would be getting somewhere.

    So far it looks this way: www.thewickens.info
     
    #10 mnw, May 15, 2006
  11. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    take a look at the joomla site demo.

    http://demo.joomla.org

    Then you can click on the administrator link, and login with user: admin password: admin and this will take you to the backend configuration. Everything is managed through this control panel, and its pretty simple to figure out how to add features, turn things off, etc... It will give you an idea what kind of learning curve it has. If it is just installation that is stumping you, I'd be happy to put it up for you. I work in an internet call center, and I have too much time on my hands sometimes.

    As for custom headers, you would have to edit the template that you are using on your site. The joomla templates mainly rely on CSS for formatting, with special php tags to indicate where the content should show up. Your wordpress themes are probably similar.

    I looked at wordpress a little. I'm sure it is probably very adaquate for what it does. I know it has a lot of users. The developer community for joomla seems to be a bit larger, but I see some good stuff for wordpress. If wordpress suits your needs I don't see anything wrong with it. Either one, joomla or wordpress, should keep your site maintainence to a minimum once you have it set up to your liking. Adding the content is probably simple on either.
     
    #11 James_Newman, May 15, 2006
  12. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    I did have joomla setup for a few hours and did what I could but perhaps did not give it a chance. I think I will play around with Wordpress a little tomorrow, give joomla another go and make up my mind then.

    I really appreciate your offer to set it up, thanks. I may shout for help with customising the header if I go back to joomla if that's okay.

    I'll keep you informed on how it goes.

    Thanks again.
     
    #12 mnw, May 15, 2006
  13. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Okay, I am back to Joomla and flying! But, how do I edit the front page to get my own banner up, and what can I do to remove the adverts?

    If there is a better template maybe one could be suggested?
     
    #13 mnw, May 16, 2006
  14. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Things are going well, but I still havenot figured out how to get rid of the Joomla header/banner and the advertisement slots. I can get my own banners in, but would rather get rid of them all together.

    If I changed templates would I lose all the customising I have done changing to other styles and back to the one I have?
     
    #14 mnw, May 17, 2006
  15. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    Looks like things are coming along there! In the control panel, go to the modules/site modules menu, and there you can unpublish anything that you don't want to show up, like the rss syndication, newsflash, banners, etc...

    Changing templates is painless, just upload a new one and see how it looks, switch it back if you don't like it. You can have as many templates as you want installed. Go to www.mambohut.com and look at their collection. Any of the mambo 4.5.2 templates should work with joomla, and I think they have started to compile joomla specific templates as well.
     
    #15 James_Newman, May 18, 2006
  16. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Thanks James. It is proving quite painless. Once I found I the "edit css" selection on the templates page it was a great help... well, one of the pages anyway. [​IMG]

    I'll check out mambohut now. Thanks again.
     
    #16 mnw, May 18, 2006
  17. mnw

    mnw New Member

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    Just changed a theme and it was so easy! To think last week the thought of a theme change on my site would have invovled completely re-writing html for a site!

    I genuinely thank the Lord for this technology!
     
    #17 mnw, May 18, 2006
  18. James_Newman

    James_Newman New Member

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    Looking great, brother! I was really impressed with mambo the first time I saw it, and it just keeps getting better. The one drawback I have run into with it is its weak user management. I know they are working on it, but I wish they would hurry up [​IMG]
     
    #18 James_Newman, May 18, 2006
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