Mystified by choices for CMS or blog of some kind

February 7, 2007 11:31 AM

Suggestions for a CMS or blog for a website whose main draw is a very, very busy forum?

The forum is vbulletin run on a Linux server. I run the forum in a backseat manner with a dedicated group of moderators, and I'm thinking I'd like to concentrate on the front page now and write stories and content. A blog will work, though it would be nice to have a CMS to integrate with vbulletin somehow if it's not too complicated.

I tried Wordpress a couple of times, but I've seen all sorts of squirrely problems with it on blogs that use it (like vanishing comments and stuff), and in my case I found it to be abysmally resource-intensive and slow. Also its comments module seemed to be where spammers came to party down.

I looked at Mambo, but it had a very steep learning curve and seemed overboard for my purposes.

As far as phpnuke, I tried that a few years ago when the board was phpbb. Though I got the latest release and followed all the instructions, it was defaced in a matter of days from a php exploit, so I scrapped it.

So I'm not keen on just rushing out and installing whatever is popular.

Any ideas what I should do? I guess I'm looking for, mainly, an easy solution so I don't have to brush up on Linux, learn a bunch of scripting, and set aside a weekend just so I can make a nice looking front page. But reliability and freedom from exploits, as well as basic effective spam control for any user comments, is important too.

My skills: I am fluent in basic HTML, slightly so in CSS and PHP, and can get around in Linux without knocking things over.

posted by zek to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I've seen a number of people use Movable Type for this (which isn't surprising, I work with the MT team), and it scales like crazy because you're not hitting the database each time someone views a blog post.

People have definitely integrated MT with vbulletin, though I'm not up to speed on the details there -- it's probably non-trivial, especially if you don't really know PHP or how to hook into a database. You can use OpenID signins, which I think vbulletin supports, and that takes care of spam as well by requiring a sign-in.

What's nice is, you can design an MT template with just basic HTML/CSS, no PHP scripting required, and you can even knock it together in Dreamweaver if you're so inclined. And we actually email people and post on our blog on the (infrequent) occassion that there's a security update, so you don't have to go looking for info when the inevitable exploits are found. That being said, I don't recall us ever having a security vulnerability that's been publicly exploited in the 5+ years that we've been making MT.

Hope that helps!
posted by anildash at 12:01 PM on February 7, 2007

can't get much easier than vbadvanced, if you're already using vbulletin.
posted by empath at 12:01 PM on February 7, 2007

Related to forum management but not related to CMS, this article about managing online forums was recently posted to Metatalk. As a busy forum manager, maybe you'd find it interesting.
posted by Milkman Dan at 12:05 PM on February 7, 2007

ExpressionEngine is a CMS/blogging tool with an intergrated forum (sharing members and groups). But switching from VBulletin would not be easy, as there is no default script to do it, though some people have done on their own, I think. Ask around on the forums. Has good spam controls and security though.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:42 PM on February 7, 2007

Well, if you really want CMS features without a steep learning curve, I'd recommend Django. While it's not strictly a CMS, you can be up and running with a blog in a few hours using only default views. One of the best features of Django is it automatically generates a nice admin interface for any kind of data structure.

All the pieces are loosely coupled allowing you to swap out the template engine, abstraction layer, cache systems etc. if needed later.

Briefly Off Topic --

I'd also like to point out that anildash's comment about OpenID isn't exactly true. Just because you implement OpenID auth doesn't mean you're going to get less spam. That's not the intention of the scheme. There's nothing stopping spammers from running their own ID servers. The reason people using OpenID currently see fewer or no spam from users choosing that auth method is simply because of obscurity. A recent estimate has OpenID enabled sites at around 500. Most of those are running standard auth alongside it. There's no reason for spammers to go to the trouble of targeting the scheme yet.

That said, there will be a time when they do. You should always verify your new users even if that just means queuing first comments for review or validating their email address. The one thing I read about recently that OpenID does make easy is white lists. If AskMe started accepting OpenID, and then published their white list of ID URI's, I'd be inclined to trust it on some other site for example.

Anyway, I've been off topic more than on here so I apologize but I just couldn't let that one go.
posted by sipher at 2:48 PM on February 7, 2007

Just because you implement OpenID auth doesn't mean you're going to get less spam.

Agreed, I was a little inaccurate due to brevity. OpenID doesn't protect you from spam by any means... but having authenticated comments (which OpenID can help you do) will greatly reduce the amount of drive-by spamming you get today. It can also let you restrict commenting to people who are already contributors on your forum.

Thanks for the clarification, sipher.
posted by anildash at 6:51 PM on February 7, 2007

Have you tried out WordPress with WP-Cache? Although what I've seen of WP's code is a mess, I doubt you'll get significantly better performance without creating something yourself that's highly optimised for your situation.
posted by malevolent at 12:06 AM on February 8, 2007