PHP Content Management Systems: Build or buy

[Alan Shutko]

Of course, the other fundamental truth is that coding workflow (i.e. support for review cycles before publishing to the outside world) is a real pain, and very hard to get right.

Very, very true! That's why, even though our department has purchased three pricey, commercial CMSes and tried out several open-source ones over the years. I think we may be on the verge of finally settling on one, but our business has tried and abandoned workflow in all the CMSes up to this point. (We also have two other non-content workflow engines, and are building a third.) We've got all the budget we could want (we're in the Fortune 150) but that makes our customer's expectations scale up just as fast as our budget does, and it's been easier to write our own systems than it has been to rewrite proprietary products to meet business needs.

But this is a bit offtopic. For a personal user, the important thing is to find a package that you can live with. You need to be happy with whatever workflow comes with it, and you need to be happy with the product's assumptions. Basically every CMS wants to own your entire site. Make sure that out-of-the-box, it does EVERYTHING you want. If you start needing to modify it to do anything, it starts getting easier to write your own than to modify a product.

And if you want to integrate it within some other system, just give up now.

Oh, and one more thing. Once you pick a CMS, you're stuck with it. Migrating content between CMSes is more difficult than recreating it ALL from scratch.

 

[ssampier]

Hmm, good point about integrating with another system. I was hoping to integrate WordPress into the site. I suppose I don't necessarily need to integrate that fully; I could use RSS to display the news article I need.

 

[Cergorach]

Mind you, your homegrown CMS will also suck. However, it will mostly suck at doing things you don't want to do, so while other people will hate it for their projects, you will be able to make it work well for your application.

This is why there are so many CMSes out there. Honestly, they aren't hard to write for any given need, but I think it's impossible to make it work well and be generalized.

It will suck in the security department, most of the folks that make their own CMS are not security experts. The larger CMS projects have large teams behind them (with experts in all fields) and a huge user tester base that will find most holes before someone with bad intentions will.

You can write your own components/modules/plugins for most modular CMS solutions, that way you can get what you want without having to rewrite the basics (database layer, user management, login, caching, etc.). You don't have to reinvent the wheel for the 6 billionth time, save a huge amount of work, nd be generally more secure.

The are also some CCMS frameworks out there, that give you the tools to assemble a CMS like you want to. Zope and TYPO3 come to mind.

 

[ssampier]

For the non-programmer, can you casually explain the advantages of those frameworks? I am sure I could look at Wikipedia, but it goes over my head.

 

[Cergorach]

For the non-programmer, can you casually explain the advantages of those frameworks? I am sure I could look at Wikipedia, but it goes over my head.

They are a kind of cms lego, ready made building bricks and a sound foundation to create your own cms/site. If your not a 'programmer' i would advice a ready made cms or pay someone to make it for you.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I would advise against any of the *nuke variants. They all have a variety of security issues.

Xoops is touted as being very secure, but I've used it extensively and it's a pain. If you want to use the default, out of the box, then it's fine. But customization is a nightmare.

I saw a few things in the OP, like templates etc, but I think the platform really depends on what you want the site to do. What are your exact needs?

 

[ssampier]

They are a kind of cms lego, ready made building bricks and a sound foundation to create your own cms/site. If your not a 'programmer' i would advice a ready made cms or pay someone to make it for you.

Thanks. As I previously mentioned I'm a novice coder; my coding would be copying others work and changing the variables to fit.

I would advise against any of the *nuke variants. They all have a variety of security issues.

Xoops is touted as being very secure, but I've used it extensively and it's a pain. If you want to use the default, out of the box, then it's fine. But customization is a nightmare.

I saw a few things in the OP, like templates etc, but I think the platform really depends on what you want the site to do. What are your exact needs?

Never used *Nuke or XOOPS. Drupal out of the box was fine. There was a few things about it that wasn't my cup-of-tea, but none were a show-stopper.

Exact needs are pretty simple: templates, breadcrumbs, and archives. Ideally, I would like search and RSS feeds as well. Blogs and wikis out-of-the-box would be nice, too, but not required.

 

[ssampier]

Holy thread resurrection batman

I decided on Drupal again. Oddly enough it was article about Popsci website redesign that I looked more into it.

Drupal Dojo is really helpful.

 

[XCorvis]

Never, ever, write your own CMS. It's time wasted that you'll never see again.

I think I know a certain RPG making company that should have taken that advice...

 

[Cergorach]

Another very good reason why you shouldn't write your own CMS is because somewhere down the line you might decide to sell the site or let another organisation run it. Then someone else will have to deal with the mess you made ;-)

I'm currently helping out a small organisation, they have a couple of websites, all of them run different CMS software. One of those CMSes is custom written (in 2005), the person who made it isn't with the organisation anymore (hasn't been for a long time), and now folks want to use new technologies with the website. I have to find out how it works, and hope I can fulfil those requests. The other sites use CMSes that range from very user friendly to extremely user unfriendly (someone thought that she was entering a new article, but instead deleted a section of the site). I'm currently very tempted to, and might eventually be forced to, just implement another CMS (and if at all possible use it with all the sites they own).

Drupal is a very good choice btw!