Advice on which CMS to use?

[JohnNightingale]

I guess we all respond from our own experiences. Yes a learning curve exists with joomla but you are getting a full blown cms not simply a blog page with some modules. For those wishing to keep it basic wordpress is a good option. If they really wanted to keep it simple then blogger or a squidoo lens would also suffice.

I do agree with your main message though. The choice would have to match the persons technical ability.

It's an overused statement but KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies 100%.

Originally Posted by lin robinson

I'd disagree with that last sentence.
I did a site in joomla and found it to be a total pain in the neck. I did another one for a client who knew nothing about html, etc. and she got hysterical trying to use the anti-instinctual controls and Rube Goldberg media tools.
Final solution... the site in HTML and she learned how to edit simple codes to add info by herself.

From this point on I would never try to do that. It's just so much easier, quicker, better-supported (in English, not Geekese) more flexible and WAY simpler to use Wordpress. The more familiar I get with WP, the less I see the need for standard site design. Almost anything I come with that requires a straight html site, turns out there's some WP trick or widget or plug-in that can do it.

[monaghan]

Referring back to an earlier post I made, you need to match requirement and product, there's no general one size fits all. WP can be a basic CMS, Joomla can be a basic blog, WP can be extended, Joomla can be extended there are multiple plugins for each system, there are multiple CMS systems each having their own strengths. Just because you can get a WP widget or Joomla module doesn't mean that it is the right way of doing it!

You need to do your homework, define your requirements, your customer's requirements and your customer's user's requirements and then design based on this. If your favourite script / application / template fits the requirement then fine, if not you need to forget your favourite tool and use what does meet the requirement.

[A4D]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

Wow A4D, that's a pretty impressive lash-up, there. Did you use all those CMS to solve certain problems, or just kind of for the fun and challenge of doing it that way?

Hi lin apologies for not seeing this earlier

My main focus has been on vBulletin due to the excellent admin backend for the handling of users as well as the massive amount of hacks available to the software.

Wordpress was added due to the search engines loving it as well as the ease of use and WP continues to grow in the plugins being developed

Drupal is considered the future of CMS and there are a few nice features (plugins) that I can add due to www.vbdrupal.org

The Mediawiki integration was great due to the WIKI format (sadly the coder has gone on walkabout, so it is soemthing I will need to fix in the future)

All the components together allows for the kind of information portals and networks I am keen on devloping

Cheers

A4D

[Brian Turner]

vbdrupal? Sounds interesting.

[A4D]

vbdrupal is interesting

here is an example of how to add blogs via vBdrupal to your vbulletin

http://www.globalbuzz-sa.net/forums/data/

simply setting the user permissions in vBulletin admin

and yes, the layout is not magnificent but that has been by own lack of applying myself

there is of course a learning curve however the Blogs are quite easy to achieve

[Brian Turner]

Ah, I was thinking more of Drupal as a CMS, using vbulletin as a forum instead of a module, rather than Drupal trying to emulate vb - considering the features available to Drupal, seems a potential step backwards if not careful.

Also note vb has official blog software as well.