Well I'm still chasing round in ever decreasing circles looking for some sort of Content Management System for creating a web site for my wife's business.
Thus I want a CMS (or, it seems increasingly likely, something else) with the following sorts of functions and abilities:-
Easy entry of text *and* formatting such as headings, tables, lists, etc., preferably WYSIWYG or nearly so. This needs to be accessible to a non-techie but computer aware user.
Consistent professional look for the whole site, it would be nice if a lot of templates/styles were available but just a few nice ready-made ones which are easy to tune (this can be a bit more 'techie') would be OK.
Simple 'ready made' menu structure and navigation.
What we *don't* need is the ability to have forums, news feeds, blogs and all that sort of paraphernalia, they might be nice to add on at some time but are unnecessary at the moment.
Installation doesn't have to be particularly easy (I've already installed Drupal, CMSMadeSimple, Exponent and TWiki!) and I'm quite prepared to put some 'techie' input into it but the content creation *must* be straightforward and more than just text.
From what I have seen so far playing with Drupal and Exponent the
current CMS systems are really of little use for what we want to do. They make it easy to add different sorts of content and also make it easy (some of them) to manage the structure of a web site but they help very little in making it easy to add the actual content.
We don't even really need a web based system as there will only be two of us involved in creating the site, so although a wiki-like system might be somewhat more like what we're after the whole co-operative input thing would be lost on us.
So, has anyone any comments or ideas? I suspect that I may need to look for something other than 'Content Management' but I wish I knew what it was!
I have just installed pivotlog for my home page, and I normally use Joomla for bigger sites, but it sounds like pivotlog might be what you are after.
Hope it helps
Michael
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of cl@isbd.net Sent: 28 January 2007 16:44 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] Content Management Systems - or not!
Well I'm still chasing round in ever decreasing circles looking for some sort of Content Management System for creating a web site for my wife's business.
Thus I want a CMS (or, it seems increasingly likely, something else) with the following sorts of functions and abilities:-
Easy entry of text *and* formatting such as headings, tables, lists, etc., preferably WYSIWYG or nearly so. This needs to be accessible to a non-techie but computer aware user.
Consistent professional look for the whole site, it would be nice if a lot of templates/styles were available but just a few nice ready-made ones which are easy to tune (this can be a bit more 'techie') would be OK.
Simple 'ready made' menu structure and navigation.
What we *don't* need is the ability to have forums, news feeds, blogs and all that sort of paraphernalia, they might be nice to add on at some time but are unnecessary at the moment.
Installation doesn't have to be particularly easy (I've already installed Drupal, CMSMadeSimple, Exponent and TWiki!) and I'm quite prepared to put some 'techie' input into it but the content creation *must* be straightforward and more than just text.
From what I have seen so far playing with Drupal and Exponent the
current CMS systems are really of little use for what we want to do. They make it easy to add different sorts of content and also make it easy (some of them) to manage the structure of a web site but they help very little in making it easy to add the actual content.
We don't even really need a web based system as there will only be two of us involved in creating the site, so although a wiki-like system might be somewhat more like what we're after the whole co-operative input thing would be lost on us.
So, has anyone any comments or ideas? I suspect that I may need to look for something other than 'Content Management' but I wish I knew what it was!
On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 05:38:18PM -0000, Michael wrote:
I have just installed pivotlog for my home page, and I normally use Joomla for bigger sites, but it sounds like pivotlog might be what you are after.
At the top of it's home page I see:-
"Pivot is a web-based tool to help you maintain dynamic sites, like weblogs or online journals."
... which is not an encouraging start, but I'll take a look anyway.
A small business' web pages are a world away from a blog or a journal.
Although it may be complete overkill and in some ways it is rather bloated.I don't understand what you need that Joomla doesn't provide.
You can do all the things you ask for by logging into the site as an author and going to the correct category and clicking "add article"
The only downsides I can see are that the free templates can be a little bit rubbish (see my site www.digimatic.co.uk for an example of a bad template that I haven't got around to tidying up yet) but you can just start with something close and modify to suit.
and that site structure changes would require logging into the admin interface which there is a lot of in joomla so adding new categories can be pretty daunting for non technical users.
My own joomla installation really only exists for the purpose of playing with it and the various plugins. If you want a author or admin login to mine to play without having to install it first then mail me off list
I agree with Wayne, check out www.busitness.co.uk or www.thechocolatefountaincompany.co.uk for a couple of Joomla sites. I have setup a pivotlog site tonight, www.theangel.net
Hope that helps muddy the water! :s
Michael
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Wayne Stallwood Sent: 28 January 2007 17:52 To: ALUG Subject: Re: [ALUG] Content Management Systems - or not!
Although it may be complete overkill and in some ways it is rather bloated.I don't understand what you need that Joomla doesn't provide.
You can do all the things you ask for by logging into the site as an author and going to the correct category and clicking "add article"
The only downsides I can see are that the free templates can be a little bit rubbish (see my site www.digimatic.co.uk for an example of a bad template that I haven't got around to tidying up yet) but you can just start with something close and modify to suit.
and that site structure changes would require logging into the admin interface which there is a lot of in joomla so adding new categories can be pretty daunting for non technical users.
My own joomla installation really only exists for the purpose of playing with it and the various plugins. If you want a author or admin login to mine to play without having to install it first then mail me off list
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On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 05:51:41PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Although it may be complete overkill and in some ways it is rather bloated.I don't understand what you need that Joomla doesn't provide.
It's not the size/complexity that worries me, I have just as complex tools for other things that I do. For example I have a TWiki installation on my home system just to use as a personal wiki because I like TWiki and it works for me. It ha far more facilities and extras than I will ever use but it's the right 'shape' and works the way I expect.
You can do all the things you ask for by logging into the site as an author and going to the correct category and clicking "add article"
No I can't, not easily. What I/we want is a way to visualise the web page as a whole as one enters the content. Even with a WYSIWYG editor (that we don't necessarily want) all one gets to see is the little chunk of content currently being edited.
The whole philosophy of Joomla, Drupal, etc. is to manage (very well) lots of 'bits' which may be text, forums, blogs, calendars, etc. but they're no good (for me anyway) at showing in an integrated way what the resulting web pages look like.
What the (naive?) user wants is a way to put a page together that is integrated, it's very difficult with Joomla etc. just *because* the structure is separated from the content.
The only downsides I can see are that the free templates can be a little bit rubbish (see my site www.digimatic.co.uk for an example of a bad template that I haven't got around to tidying up yet) but you can just start with something close and modify to suit.
OK, so I choose a template and a style (not sure what the pair together are called in Joomla) and then try and create a page. I go into the content editor and am presented with a blank page and no way to do anything much except enter a stream of text. That's absolutely fine for a blog but not very useful for a small business.
and that site structure changes would require logging into the admin interface which there is a lot of in joomla so adding new categories can be pretty daunting for non technical users.
As I keep saying, I'm not really a non-technical user, but that isn't really the problem. I want the result to be usable by non-technical people but techie bits on the way ar fine.
My own joomla installation really only exists for the purpose of playing with it and the various plugins. If you want a author or admin login to mine to play without having to install it first then mail me off list
Again as I said before installation isn't an issue, I have installed three or four CMS systems already to play with them, and these postings are the result.
Further searching has turned up a few possibles - xdbms, voidspace and miki.
-
cl＠isbd.net -
Michael -
Wayne Stallwood