David
18th Nov 2004, 05:15 pm
As some of you may know, I've been searching over the past 6 months for the perfect CMS/publishing system and I think I may just have found it.
I am planning to move CADTutor.net from a 3 year old static design to a new dynamic LAMP site. The first phase is now complete - moving the forum to the main domain so that I can plug into the user databse table and pull content from the forum into the main site. The second phase, which I'm just about to begin is to translate the static html site into a modular php site, including a complete and proper CSS implementation. The third phase will be the integration of a publishing system that will allow content authors to publish to the site.
For some time I have been looking at Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/) and I had pretty much settled on that. It's a great piece of software design with a big and enthusiastic user base. Anyone looking for an "out of the box" dynamic website that can be maintained without any knowledge of HTML should certainly take a look. My only worry was that the publishing workflow is fairly limited - the review and revision process is almost non-existant.
More recently, I have been defining more clearly how I want the site to work and it became clear that Mambo was always going to be a compromise (although a good one). So, I've been taking a serious look at my number 2 option, Drupal (http://www.drupal.org). I have a test installation of Drupal here (http://www.watest.co.uk/drupal). There's not much to see yet but it's already clear to me (having had a good look at the site administration) that this is a really impressive piece of software AND closely matches my requirements. It's totally modular, making site integration easy, content can be delivered in a variety of formats including HTML and PHP. In addition, the publishing workflow is superb. Authors can submit articles to be reviewed, revisions can be made and the editor can publish whenever and wherever required. I'm still getting to grips with the system but I have that good feeling you get when square pegs start to fit in square holes.
I am planning to move CADTutor.net from a 3 year old static design to a new dynamic LAMP site. The first phase is now complete - moving the forum to the main domain so that I can plug into the user databse table and pull content from the forum into the main site. The second phase, which I'm just about to begin is to translate the static html site into a modular php site, including a complete and proper CSS implementation. The third phase will be the integration of a publishing system that will allow content authors to publish to the site.
For some time I have been looking at Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/) and I had pretty much settled on that. It's a great piece of software design with a big and enthusiastic user base. Anyone looking for an "out of the box" dynamic website that can be maintained without any knowledge of HTML should certainly take a look. My only worry was that the publishing workflow is fairly limited - the review and revision process is almost non-existant.
More recently, I have been defining more clearly how I want the site to work and it became clear that Mambo was always going to be a compromise (although a good one). So, I've been taking a serious look at my number 2 option, Drupal (http://www.drupal.org). I have a test installation of Drupal here (http://www.watest.co.uk/drupal). There's not much to see yet but it's already clear to me (having had a good look at the site administration) that this is a really impressive piece of software AND closely matches my requirements. It's totally modular, making site integration easy, content can be delivered in a variety of formats including HTML and PHP. In addition, the publishing workflow is superb. Authors can submit articles to be reviewed, revisions can be made and the editor can publish whenever and wherever required. I'm still getting to grips with the system but I have that good feeling you get when square pegs start to fit in square holes.