Which PHP/CMS is the best for me?

May 23, 2005 6:51 PM

I'm lost in the sea of PHP/CMS systems out there. Help me find the best one for me.

I need a CMS system on a website so the non-techie users of the organization can pop onto the site and update a page if need be. Nothing fancy. My guess is almost all CMS systems will let you do this. (My research on the web overwhelms me with the number of systems out there, I can't separate the wheat from the chaff).

From the development side I'm familiar with html with a smidgen of PHP knowledge, so I would like the learning curve to be easy/moderate. However, in the future, I would also like to use this CMS system as a tool to introduce student web designers to PHP and learn how to use databases- in other words what is the best CMS for non-programmers? And it doesn't necessarily have to be free.(Bonus points for Dreamweaver MX 2004 integration - I will endure all admonishments to hand code.)

posted by jeremias to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I just installed Drupal and I am very happy with it. It's one of those Open Source projects that renews your faith in Open Source. Very easy PHP-free installation and set-up, clean modular design for adding/removing functionality, lots of contributed modules, active community of users.

The previous "CMS" I used was MoveableType. Drupal is cheaper, easier, etc+er.

I'm not sure if it has Dreamweaver integration, you might want to ask Google.
posted by hifimofo at 8:04 PM on May 23, 2005

I have used Mambo (mamboserver.com) which is GPL as well. There is a windows-based MSAS (stand alone server) which runs on windows, and a number of template-building tools that plugin to DW. I was not thrilled with the absolute shite documentation, but the software was good. I won't be using it in production; I'm going with Drupal, phpAdsNew, and Wordpress whenever possible.
posted by wzcx at 8:14 PM on May 23, 2005

For what you describe, Mambo and Drupal are overkill. Look at something lighter like Wordpress or Textpattern. Textpattern's got a fairly nice built-in template and CSS editing system, too.
posted by ubernostrum at 8:46 PM on May 23, 2005

If this is on an intranet, it seems to me that a wiki would be sufficient. I like Instiki.
posted by neckro23 at 9:18 PM on May 23, 2005

I asked a similar question a little while ago. Soon after asking the question, I found this. It's very basic (which is what I wanted), and pretty well implemented, though there's no authentication, so be aware of that.
posted by bitpart at 10:43 PM on May 23, 2005

I love wordpress and have pieced it together to do all sorts of tricks, Non-techies generally like and can use WP also. While researching some things on my own, I was pointed here, which seems to be (installed and played with, but haven't used yet) a pretty effective CMS based on WP and a lot of plugins.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 10:56 PM on May 23, 2005

opensourceCMS has demos of a lot of PHP/MySQL systems you can try out.

ExpressionEngine is good.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:07 PM on May 23, 2005

Once I had mysql working, I couldn't believe how easily wordpress installed. I usually dread crap like that, but it worked right out of the "box." I have a buddy who swears by Drupal and the community that has formed around it.

I really like the open source education cms "Moodle." It also has a nice support community.
posted by mecran01 at 7:41 AM on May 24, 2005