Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : Anyone design a CMS or want to?

[Courtside]

I've researced several different CMS scripts and haven't been able to find one that completely suits my needs. I'm not a php/db kind of guy and can't say I really want to be considering my limited free time to learn.

At this point - it has come down to either Coranto (Newspro) which is a free cgi based script - or Article Manager which is a php driven program that costs $299 US. Both would take pretty major customization - so I'm thinking maybe I should ask around and see if you guys (the experts) have any better ideas.

What I need is this:

- News publishing program with db driven backend
- Multiple templates/themes depending on section of site (or subdomain?)
- Multiple writer support with approval system/heirarchy
- Automatic archiving, deletion, etc...
- Prefer short, simple addresses (ie: www.site.com/news/story123.php)
- Ability to supply my articles thru webfeeder (moreover type thing) to other sites

There will basially be one theme to start - but I'd like the ability to add new themes for new sections of the site (different sports teams, for example) - and still use one db.

Does anyone know of anything like this that might possibly be cheap or opensource? Things like typo3 or egrail are probably too complex and require custom server settings that my host may not want to go along with. Things like phpnuke and phpCMS don't seem flexible enough to someone who doesn't know php and also have those confusing urls generated, that I'd like to avoid.

If someone was willing or able to customize something for me, how much would it cost? It would basically be streamilned version of a site like www.nba.com with a unique theme for each team and relatively simple structure that is similar for all, yet unique thanks to the template/theme.

Am I asking this in a clear enough way?

Any help, comments or advice is greatly appreaciated.

[henrychoo]

hi,

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- Multiple templates/themes depending on section of site (or subdomain?)
- Multiple writer support with approval system/heirarchy
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The above function are normally found in enterprise or mid-scale level CMS. Try this link for some listing
http://www.cmswatch.com/ContentManagement/Products/

A system with the above feature would also needs heavy documentation especially on template/theme if they use custom tags in template. You much be ready to hire someone with at least minimal scripting knowledge or be ready to learn it yourself.

The cost for custom build from sratch (LAMP) or custom extension for establish platform like broadvision might range from a few thousand $ or more.

My advice is to work on what you can afford.

[ellebi]

check out ezpublish, I believe it is what you're looking for.
http://developer.ez.no

[CirKit]

There's also openACS (http://openacs.org), but it runs under AOLserver, not Apache. Of course, you could host it with me....

[charrington]

Hi,

I'm in the early stages of coding the second version of my CMS. It will either be provided on a hosted basis or else I will make it open source (or perhaps both). It has most of the features you have mentioned.

I am looking for clarification on the archival/deletion feature. Would this basically mark for archival or deletion those files which are both not referenced anywhere and which are past a certain age? Further clarification on this would help me in considering such a feature in my product.

My app is called IntrasightCMS. I'll be publishing more information to WHT over the next several weeks. The CMS uses a web browser to talk to my SOAP CMS server. It basically puts XML into inherited and included templates based on XSLT. Content is then assigned to a location in a publish tree and then published using WebDAV. With three levels of template inheritance, you can create just about any web site structure imaginable. The webfeeder (like Moreover) is built in and supports both HTTP GET and SOAP.

My current version runs on .NET. But if demand warrants, I would do a port to Java. Since my framework uses only open standards and no "scripting/tagging" for templates, it should easily port to any platform with good SOAP and XML/XSLT support. I don't think that you will find any script-based CMS's which will offer the richness of capability you requested.

Chris

[Courtside]

charrington - thanks for the detailed reply.

I'll try and reply to your points one by one:

I think the archival / deletion should be determined by the user. For example - I could choose to keep headlines on my news page for a certain time period, or say, the most recent 5 headlines regardless of age. Some ebsites update daily and others on less consistent intervals - so some sort of flexibilty makes some sense. Any article should automatically go into the archive as soon as it's published.

Terms like SOAP, XLST, WebDAV... they're all over my head so I can't comment on the programming side of things. I think it needs to be kept as simple as possible and what little tweaking I have done with php leads me to believe that a php-based CMS would work quite nicely... or one built on ColdFusion since Macromedia has a WYSIWYG editor available to those who aren't "coders".

If you want a good example of how my site should "function" then DO check out www.nba.com and skip from one team to another. You'll see that the basic structure for every team is pretty much identical and it's all built on one db with one CMS (or so it would appear). The navigation and links are the same for every team, except for the name (team directory) and the theme each team's site uses.

Another excellent example would be www.clutchcity.net which was built little by little by a guy who knows his stuff (or learned as he went along). The one major difference would be that I want my forum to be fully integrated within the site and use the same theme. Is it possible to have a forum within for your CMS which isn't a "phpBB add-on" which still requires "integration"? That it could be a part of the CMS that can be turned "on" or "off" - or would that require it to use the same db?

I have never successfully installed a CMS (played with typo3 and php-nuke in the past) so maybe I am asking for things that can't be done. If I am on the main page and want to view the story archive I'd want the url to look like www.sitename.com/archive rather than http://www.sitename.com/index.php/?m...e=archive.php. Is that a result of the webmaster not doing something right or is that a function of the CMS?

I think the webmaster should be able to login after the install and make a site tree that includes all the possible pages (except for updated news content) and then go back and fill them in later. I think that any CMS should come with a choice of templates that the webmaster can later design images to fit into as need be (header, footer, navigation in different sizes etc...) or would it be easier for the php file to include multiple html files (templates) into the page to create the theme?

Am I making sense? Chris - feel free to email me courtside@rogers.com or ICQ 27022757 if you'd like to discuss this further or pick my brain to try and figure out what a novice webdesigner would like out of your product.