April 10, 200818 yr Hey all, Need a little help from you guys deciding on a CMS for the following things. I have a client (a primary school) who wants a CMS to update their site (one of those now typical meetings where they think they know what they are saying ) to do the usual stuff such as adding a new page, adding pictures (gallery and onto the pages), adding content and news to the homepage, links etc etc. They want ALL their teachers to have access to it to add stuff so would need multiple permission level users. Obviously a good design, so for my sanity a easily customised one, also having a huge community behind it for help and advise that yourselves are part of. Obviously I have the good people of this forum which are always such a great help. I used to use e107 as my CMS but it is soo unreliable and slow with it being hard to set multiple user rights and editing for complete novices. If I can find the right CMS I can use it for another 3 schools I have tenders for! I've thought about Expression Engine, but I've not got a long time to learn (hoping theres some serious walkthru's etc.)
April 10, 200818 yr ohh look a sticky topic http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2417 That might help you out as you are able to view and use all the CMS on there to find the one that is best for you
April 18, 200818 yr I'm a fan of Textpattern. It has multiple "authors" built in, but I'm not sure about permissions. It has an image upload thingy built in, but I haven't used it. Loads of plugins here - http://textpattern.org/plugins and you'll find more on the official forums.
April 18, 200818 yr Your requirements smell of Joomla to me. Joomla does all the things you want it to, is dead easy to use in terms of the teachers all getting the hang of the back end, and it is reasonably easy to template once you wrap your head round it.
April 18, 200818 yr If you are new to CMS's in general then all of them have a learning curve. I have used Wordpress before, but more recently (and successfully) Expression Engine. It has membership features straight out of the box and I found it extremely powerful and it gives a lot of control over design and layout that some others don't necessarily allow, or not without even more learning and trial and error. Also, if you are not proficient in PHP for example, then something like Expression Engine can achieve a lot without ever having to write a line of PHP code. Arguably, the main downside to Expression Engine is that it is not free like so many other CMS solutions. However, for something like a school, the Personal licence is valid to use and works out about £50. Very reasonable and their support is second to none. EDIT: Thought I would just add that I went from never having heard of Expression Engine to having coded and set up a fully working site within about 3 weeks. And there are some pretty good walkthroughs available on the web if you decide to give it a try.
April 19, 200818 yr Second recommendation for Expression Engine here! the templates are pure XHTML/CSS which won't cause you a problem and it's system of content tags is relatively quick to pick up, plus you have professional assistance on the company forums.
April 20, 200818 yr Hi I'm a fan of Joomla. It already has built in permissions for Editor, Author, Publisher, but thiere is a good add-on JACL (you can use the free version or buy a subscription) which gives you even more flexibility in terms of who can access what. I've used this many times as for a number of my websites I have Members sections. I'd advise using Joomla 1.0.15 rather than the newer 1.5.2 - it will do everything you want it to do and there are heaps of add-ons that you can add. Regards Toni
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