Hey all,

 

Was just wondering what CMS people use / prefer and why....

 

Id like to learn at least one, as in create my own designs / templates and build from scratch, and am leaning towards Wordpress (found Joomla quite hard)Is this tutorial any good? http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/

 

Thanks

G

Hey all,

 

Was just wondering what CMS people use / prefer and why....

 

Id like to learn at least one, as in create my own designs / templates and build from scratch, and am leaning towards Wordpress (found Joomla quite hard)Is this tutorial any good? http://www.wpdesigne...ess-themes-huh/

 

Thanks

G

 

This tutorial has been recommend to me wanting to learn wordpress themes, it is supposidly the best out there at the moment. But not very current. But a very good start to get the basics.

I'm a very happy Expressionengine person.

 

1. Total freedom with templates and design. Templates are pure HTML/CSS with no PHP in sight

2. Total control over content and publishing, makes it easy to create different publishing pages for different types of content by setting up your own sets of input fields.

3. Many ways to organise content, via Channels, Category Groups, Statuses and so on.

 

The one thing I love about EE is that it doesn't assume how you set your CMS up, and it can be precisely tailored for the site and it's content.

Thanks for your replies.

 

Is how difficult would you say EE is compared to say Joomla and Wordpress?

 

G

My personal fave, like BD, is Expression Engine - but of late, I've been looking into Drupal on account of the fact there's such a big job market for it at the moment. Lots of enterprise entities are turning to Drupal as their go to CMS, so while Wordpress is trendy, Drupal might be more advantageous to learn in the long run.

Is how difficult would you say EE is compared to say Joomla and Wordpress?

It really depends how you look at it. I spent years playing with the "popular" systems but kept on running into brick walls, and needing plugins to do even the most basic of tasks. When I tried EE I picked up the logic of how it works very quickly because it suited my way of thinking and workflow, and as a PHP numpty I found I could build dynamic sites with oodles of different content types and not write "PHP" once! Other folks do struggle to grasp EE, but when you get that lighbulb moment it can be like a breath of fresh air.

 

Systems like J and WP, I think, tend to generally too rely heavily on plugins/modules to do even basic things. Joomla I found much too restrictive, both with managing different content types and templating, and Wordpress too limiting when you try to do anything outside the realms of single blog post page management.

 

Recently I had to work on a site that specified Wordpress. Part of the brief was to create a list of categories each with an icon and short description for the sidebar, along with a full page version listing certain user specified categories where each category had an extended/longer description. That should be a pretty simple thing to do in a CMS, but if you've ever tried that in WP it would require some custom PHP and lots of messing about - in EE it's a 2-minute job and using core functionality.

 

Of course the only way to find out about these things is to try as many as you can - you'll soon find out the ones that confuse the hell out of you! Don't limit yourself to just trying the big 3 (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal) because there are 100's of alternatives and you might find one that you can create a niche developmet service for. Systems like MoveableType, ModX, Concrete5, Plone, Symphony all need good developers as well

My personal fave, like BD, is Expression Engine - but of late, I've been looking into Drupal on account of the fact there's such a big job market for it at the moment. Lots of enterprise entities are turning to Drupal as their go to CMS, so while Wordpress is trendy, Drupal might be more advantageous to learn in the long run.

I could never get my head around Drupal, but yes, if you crack it it's a good one to have under your belt!

I have used WordPress for a while now as a CMS for websites, I find that it is quick and easy to setup templates and to use WordPress as a CMS, personally I like the fact that there are many plugins out there that can help and assist with requirements, sometimes they need a little tweaking to provide exactely what I need but overall WordPress delivers on all the basic needs for a CMS and in my opinion is user friendly for most.

Thanks for all your replies. Am going to have a look at EE.

You may learn WordPress as you are already feel bit inclined towards it. It is very easy and simple to use. Moreover, after the arrival of WP 3.0, it has got the identity of full fledged content management system.

OK, Ive contacted EE and they are going to get me started on their developer program with a free trial.

 

Thanks for all your replies

I guess WP is the easiest but not the best in terms of performance. I no longer use CMS nowadays.. even if I have a lot of experiences in WP, Drupal, Joomla etc..

 

Coding from scratch and use Codeigniter + DX-Auth can make development faster and easy to update, like adding a new features.

 

Unless of coarse, you just need a blog or a forum, right? but if you are building a dynamic websites, it's better to code from scratch and use frameworks , then add a bridge for WP or PhpBB later on.