Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with CMS

Single-user CMS?

Mwongozi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:06:44 -0800

Best open-source CMS for a single user? I currently have most of my self-generated "content" out there on the web as part of other services. My photos are on Flickr, my videos are on YouTube, I have a blog on Blogger and Tumblr... etc.

I want to bring it all together into a single site. (Whether that means just linking or embedding to the above outside stuff or actually moving all the content locally... I'm open to both options.)

But my site will be strictly just for me, no other users, and most of the popular CMS's seem to have major features geared towards multiple users. I'm not interested in that.

Can you suggest a good CMS for a single user? It really doesn't have to be particularly complicated. The biggest feature I want is to be able to create a hierarchical category of pages, as well as have a "What's new" chronological list.

Oh yes and I'd prefer open source. Thanks. :)

IMDB, except it's "I M Another DB"

edjusted — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:46:08 -0800

I'm looking to create an info web site with similar features as IMDB. I'm hoping I can just adapt an existing CMS but I'm not sure where to start. I know I can go through and peruse all the biggies like Drupal, EE, etc, but I'd like to narrow my starting point, especially because of my message board requirement below. Here's what I'd want, using an IMDB movie info page as a template: no need for ratings
various info fields (e.g. a la IMDB's Genre, Tagline, Plot, etc)
links on the side to different info pages (e.g. combined details, full cast and crew, company credits, etc)
no need for user comments
but this is the most important part: a message board for each record
and similar to IMDB, I'd like to show the most active or current message board threads shown

FWIW, my usage will be completely related to IMDB. It's just that the structure of their web site happens to work almost perfectly for my needs.

Any suggestions?

They hacked our Joomla, help!

wile e — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:43:42 -0800

We've been hacked! We were just about to upgrade the Joomla version, and then we get this. Looks to be a ransom page, but we obviously want to reverse the hack. How do we do this? We can still access the administrative panel, but obviously our user/pass doesn't work. They were able to manipulate the hole in the older version 1.0.x (I forget the exact version it was, and can't check now) so can we do this as well? I don't want to publish the site name here, but if someone has valid reasons for requiring it, I can PM it.

Not sure what other info is relevant, but I will be watching all day so ask away.

Thanks.

CMS recommendations for paid gallery access?

Acetylene — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:25:59 -0800

A friend has asked for my help designing a site to sell access to photo galleries and videos (yes, porn). The way he'd like it to work is this: on the main page, you see a list of models. You click one and see that model's available galleries and videos, with some sample images and video clips. You then purchase (via credit card) access to the galleries and videos you want, rather than the usual porn subscription model. Can anyone recommend a CMS for this sort of thing? I'm at a loss.

Metafilter clone for dummies

bokane — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:33:17 -0800

Dear Lazyweb: I'm looking to create a MeFi clone for a relatively narrowly focused website, and would love to find something that can do so more or less out of the box. Any suggestions? I've tried installing MetaPhilter only to have it die nastily after configuration. An earlier Ask Metafilter threat on this topic turned up a suggestion for Wordpress, but I'm looking for something a bit more multi-user friendly than that.
Drupal seems like it would be able to do what I want, but it scares me and Dreamhost's one-click Drupal installation is locked down so as not to allow installation of any new themes or modules -- and a lot of Drupal's functionality seems like serious overkill for this.
Scoop seems like it could do a lot of what I want, but I don't (and shouldn't) have root access on my server, so that's out.

What's the path of least pain here? Should I bite the bullet and try to write my own system, bearing in mind that my l33tness is limited in the extreme, or is there something out there that I'm overlooking?

Looking for a fix to Joomla's non-friendly content editor.

wile e — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:00:03 -0800

Joomla filter: I have a client with a Joomla site already built, but they do not like the built in editor for it. Is there any way of changing it, or is there a plug-in that can added? I am a web developer, but do not know much of Joomla. I am taking over a project that has a Joomla site attached to it. As I or anyone who works with me knows very little about Joomla, I have decided to hire out on Elance for a Joomla developer to help me out.

However I would like to know a few things before I do that. The main problem my client has is that the content editor is horrible. He wants to be able to make his own articles and updates to the site. But the built in editor only allows you to be able to see the section you're working on, not how it fits into the page as a whole. Are there any work arounds for this? Perhaps a plug in or something that improves this? Or even a trick that others use?

I've contacted a pretty major company's developer who is also using Joomla in the same fashion, and their response was that they don't use the built in editor at all, instead using an outside editor and then just using Joomla to plug it in. This is not the best solution for my client.

Open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks.

What CMS does BNET.COM use? What CMS is similar?

omidius — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:15:42 -0800

What content management system (CMS) does the site BNET.com use? Or, what is the currently available CMS that most closely matches the capabilities of this CMS? Bonus points to open source....

How to set up an Event/RSVP system in Drupal 6.x?

nokry56 — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:42:42 -0800

I'm setting up a website for a Community Service group that I am a part of. I have Drupal 6.4 installed on my server and need something set up where we a user can add an event, and others can RSVP for that event. The RSVP module doesn't work with Drupal 6.x, so am looking for other solutions.

This is my first experience with Drupal so semi-detailed steps are appreciated.

A solution that would also allow users to sign up to bring something to the event is a plus, but the main concern is being able to create an event that other users can RSVP for, so the creator/users can see who is planning to attend.

Drupal: How to automatically group users?

l33tpolicywonk — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:36:20 -0800

Drupal: How do I automatically assign users into groups when they register? Is this something I can do with Organic Groups? Profile tags? A different module? Background: I'm using Drupal to build an online course in which each student is assigned an instructor. I want to assign each student an instructor automatically and I want it done so that each instructor has roughly the same number of students (that is, not randomly). The instructor needs an easy way to read comments made only by his students. Is this something I can do with the Organic Groups module? Something I can do with Views? Something I can do with profile tags?

Google-fu for modules has failed me and nothing's happening in my question on Drupal's forums. Come to the rescue, AskMe!

Which framework to use to build a Community website for my family?

mountainfrog — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:24:55 -0800

Looking for community building tool to create a family website. I have family all across the US and would like to create a website where each family member could create their own profile, make posts, share photos. Like a MySpace or Facebook but something more private and to a degree less complex. Something that is just for invited users, something that is easy to use for non-technical users and something that I can host and administer. Open source solutions would be preferred. I have used wordpress, drupal, and joomla but each requires tweaking and modules, and lots of research to setup. Just wondering if there are any prepackages solutions or easier to use modules for WP, drupal, or joomla. Thanks.

Wiki or CMS that will work for this?

andrewzipp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:44:48 -0800

I need a Wiki or CMS that has a WYSIWYG editor for a site with about a 100 static pages, sorted into categories. I'm trying to revamp an extranet website for an elementary school, where they store all the information about their programs, tution, phone lists, fundraising, etc., and parents and staff can login and look at all that and print it out.

Right now I've got this site setup with Edit-Point, a really lightweight CMS, which uses TinyMCE for the WYSIWYG editor and just saves to .txt files. It's great for editing existing pages...as long as the navigation part of the site never changes.

That's the problem. They want to be able to add new pages, and change the names of existing pages, and have that be tied to the navigation. But I've got the navigation set up in a Javascript drop-down menu, which I have to go in and manually edit whenever they want to change anything. It's a pain in the ass.

I've used Wordpress before, and like it for some stuff, but I don't like how adding new 'pages' works. Maybe there's a plugin for sites that only want to have a lot of 'pages' sorted into categories, but I feel like that kind of goes against what WordPress is.

Something like PmWiki is closer to what I'm looking for, where there is just a long list of pages on the side - but you have to use their special markup, which I really don't like, and won't fly for this.

There's no budget for this, so open source would be great.

Podcast CMS needed

arniec — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:52:31 -0800

What CMS would you recommend for my podcast company? I've searched the previous Asks and not found a solution that fits my needs, so here goes:

I run a start-up company with 5 regularly published podcasts and we need a CMS. I have tried phpNuke and I am currently using, and very unhappy with, Joomla.

Here are the requirements I must have:
--VERY customizable look and feel so that while all 5 of our sites will be on the same CMS, they shouldn't feel like the same site. I have a graphic designer who has come up with some tremendous site layouts, but I need them implemented.
--EASY to customize templates (I know php, HTML, CSS, SQL... but still Joomla templates are a nightmare for me).
--Must be able to store the Podcast RSS feed in its database, while still handling non-podcast items, such as news articles, etc.
--Must be PHP based with a MySQL back-end
--Must have image gallery functionality
--Must have a fairly easy to use (blog or forum like) "Article add/update" feature so my podcast hosts can add content themselves without need for web design help.
--Site statistic logging (number of views, banner rotation, etc)

Features I would like:
--Blog integration
--Topic database search (with possibly thousands of topics)

After looking at solutions such as Drupal and Joomla and none of which do what I want without heavy modding and customization I am on the verge of starting my own Podcast-specific open source CMS (I have several experienced programmers on staff with me who can do this), but I have absolutely no desire to reinvent the wheel if the perfect CMS is out there for me and I'm just missing it.

Suggestions?

Backup web interface?

Aanidaani — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:55:23 -0800

I recently got a new web host that I'm going to use for backup and I'm looking for a free AJAX web interface / CMS to manipulate files online. See inside... Essentially I'm trying to create my own hosted version of an online backup service like Dropbox or Mozy. I found a cheap host that gives me a lot of bandwidth/storage and I'd like to find a good web interface that I can use to access and manipulate my files when I'm not at home. Does anyone know of an open-source (or otherwise free) CMS that I can use for this?

Also, are there any programs (again preferably open-source) that I can download to regularly back up files to my server? I use Windows, OSX, and Linux. For Linux and OSX I know I can use a variant of Rsync, but I'm at a loss for Windows.

If you were designing a website that relies heavily on photos and text, what CMS platform would you pick?

jrholt — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:39:55 -0800

If you were designing a website that relies heavily on photos and text, what CMS platform would you pick? We're looking for a content management system that allows for more flexibility than our current platform (Joomla). Our site features concert reviews and lots of high quality concert photos. If you were designing a new website where you planned to publish reviews and photos, what's the cutting edge CMS you'd pick?

Looking for a CMS with inline or front end editing.

bristolcat — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:48:33 -0800

A simple CMS with an inline or front end editor? I searched the archives and I was surprised that for all the questions about CMS solutions, there weren't many mentions of inline or front end editing (assuming those are the correct terms for what I'm looking for, of course).

My holy grail of web design right now is to find a CMS that is dependable, simple and dead easy for the client to edit. I usually use Joomla, but I'm finding that it is anything but simple for my average client to use.

The ideal solution would be a system in which the person in charge of content could edit directly on the page. It would also be necessary to be able to add images and video. An added bonus would be the ability to add new pages from a front end editor, but I don't know if that would work well or be any easier than logging into a backend.

I searched and found a reference to Plone, which seems a bit complicated and unfortunately isn't demo-ed on Open Source CMS. I haven't found much else. I remember a friend of mine using a simple ASP CMS back in 2003 that had inline editing, but I know that it changed its name and now I can't find it back.

I've seen some mentions here and there in searches of plugins that would do this for Wordpress. I'm not crazy about that idea, but it would work. Does anyone have any experience with them? I have also seen a plugin developed for Joomla that did this, but the developer I spoke with had it custom programmed for a private organization and wouldn't share any information about it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It would preferably be either free or really worth the money. Any help or leads would be appreciated.

On preview, I'm seeing a few related questions with interesting solutions. Would like to see if anything new has come up in the last year since the previous question, though. Thanks

Need simple php flat file cms.

zorro astor — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:14:09 -0800

I need a simple php cms. I'm building a site for someone and they have a simple site. They only occasionally need to change the content, things like links in the side bar , content on the front page and adding and deleting images. I don't really need a database for this, but he user doesn't know any html and isn't interested in learning any. Any ideas?

Name this CMS...

puffin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:40:45 -0800

Help me remember the name of this minimalist CMS. It was free, very simple, and designed to be easy to use. All the sites it generated had roughly the same layout: narrow column on the left with a list of all the pages within the site, and the content of each individual page to the right in a fairly wide column. I want to it say it was intended to create something like digital media "exhibits", "galleries" or "portfolios," but I can't remember exactly, and Googling hasn't gotten me anywhere.

Which PHP CMS?

hatmandu — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:56:11 -0800

I'm involved with an arts festival, and want to use a CMS. I think one (possibly any) of the following would be suitable, to varying degrees: Joomla, Drupal, Textpattern, Expression Engine, Wordpress. (I've deliberately gone for PHP.) Which would you recommend and why? Here are the functions that are vital:
- managing several mailing lists, with customisable fields to gather data on subscribers
- a discussion forum
- facility to upload files such as PDFs and Word Docs
- events programme (with dates, times, venues, ideally with option of pictures)
- picture gallery
(I'm aware that some of these things will need plug-ins.)

Design doesn't matter so much - probably an out-of-the-box template will be fine with minor tweaking. One crucial thing is that the users of the site are very non-techie, so will need to have something easy to use (this is to save me having to do it for them all the time!).

Sorry - I know there have been a lot of CMS questions at AskMe already, but I wanted to narrow down the question more precisely. Each package seems to attract love and venom in equal measures. Thanks for your ideas!

A world made by hand, or a proprietary solution?

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:49:30 -0800

Blogging software vs. roll-your-own? I have begun to experiment with a personal portfolio / travel website that will likely include some kind of blog. As a web developer, I would like the site to be something of an experimental testbed, so I plan to use CSS2 and 3, as it becomes better supported.

I have looked at a few blogging systems - MoveableType, WordPress, etc - but they appear to be "all in one" systems that impose their own template language and themes (although some give options for customising the latter). I am comfortable enough in my XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and JavaScript skills that I can create my own back-end for dated blog entries, search functions, RSS feeds and the like, and I'd enjoy doing so. Is there something I'm not seeing in the blogging systems: some technical advantage or difficult-to-code feature that would make Blogger or one of its competitors a better choice than building a solution by hand?

Many thanks in advance for your answers!

open source questions for ya

yonation — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:58:09 -0800

drupal vs joomla. some questions inside. 2 questions:

a) we're setting up a website for a film client who wants to be able to add a lot of multimedia (esp. video) to their site. bandwidth providing, which is the better CMS for this kind of serving?

b) which is easier to skin/template/etc? i'm quite comfortable with php/css and the concepts of of semantic skinning (eg wordpress and shopify). which of these follows more easily from knowing those two sites?

What web portal software for PDF/HTML search?

RecalcitrantYouth — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:35:27 -0800

I’m trying to build a simple web portal to share PDF and HTML documentation with our customers, and allow them to search the documentation. I figured this would be many FOSS tools available to do this, but I keep running into roadblocks… My requirements are fairly simple (at least I think they are):
1. Indexing and search of PDF and HTML files (ideally with Lucene or another search engine with similar capabilities)
2. Indexing and search of files not directly linked from portal pages (e.g. HTML sub-pages within Doxygen docs)
3. Access control so customers can only see and search content they‘re entitled to
4. Easy file upload would be nice

I’ve looked at a bunch of different Content Management Systems and Portals (Drupal, Joomla, Jahia, Liferay, Hippo, Magnolia and others), all of which have many other nice features, but none so far have been able to do simple PDF/HTML search with access control.

From the feature list on cmsmatrix.org, most CMSs seem focused on other areas (blogging, news, portlets), so I'm not sure anymore that a CMS is even what I'm looking for.

Any recommendations? Am I missing something obvious here? Should I be looking for something other than a CMS?

I am looking for a certain CMS for a startpage

tseo — Thu, 22 May 2008 06:44:44 -0800

Anybody know a CMS for a catalogue-like startpage like the one for this site: http://dnb.neverseenbefore.com/ ?

Looking for a CMS or Forum that supports anonymous posting.

ilikebike — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:44:10 -0800

Looking for a CMS or Forum that supports anonymous posting. I'm creating a complaint/gripe type of site, and I need a script or method for visitors to post items to the main page (probably w/ verification), and then allow a comment or forum system tied to it that also supports anonymous posting.

If no such CMS is available, is there are forum solution that does this?

Can you please help me find a working script (CMS) that will allow easy implementation of a gallery & the ability to post Youtube videos.

cheero — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:58:17 -0800

Can you please help me find a working script (CMS) that will allow easy implementation of a gallery & the ability to post Youtube videos. I've wasted the past 4 days trying to get Joomla 1.5 to play nice with a RS2gallery module but that was a dead end. After Joomla I tried Wordpress (newest version) but quickly got frustrated due to its errors.

For example, on a fresh install of Wordpress, the categories and tags do not work, they go to a 404 page even though there is content within the category. No one on the Wordpress forums has any clue why that is so, they suggested that plugins might be the issue but the only plugin I have is Akismet.

Is it possible that a working script exists that will allow two simple things; a gallery of photos and youtube posts.

WYSIWY.... - wait, you want what?

jmnugent — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:48:23 -0800

My employer is searching for an end-user friendly, drag-n-drop, WYSIWYG webpage editor that is neither a CMS or a web hosting panel. Does something like this exist? I think my employer is asking for the impossible, but I'm trying anyways. Can anyone suggest solutions to solve the following requirements:

1.) A very simple/basic drag-n-drop WYSIWYG web page editor for small "mom/pop businesses" that might only need less than 5 static web pages (doesnt need to handle dynamic / complex content)

2.) Is an online (server side) editor (NOT an application the user has to download or configure). We need it to be drop dead stupid simple to use.

3.) Wont require much (if any) support on our backend. (in a perfect world, the ideal solution would be some kind of a PHP script we can automate the installation when a customer calls up to have the service activated.) (for the record, our backend is mostly FreeBSD and Apache with a minor amount of Windows IIS)

4.) Not a CMS or Hosting Control Panel (cPanel/Plesk). Those things are overkill for our needs. We are primarily an ISP, not a hosting company. (unless you can make a good argument for a hosting control panel)

The closest thing I've found (from searching past AskMe's) is Flyspeck , unfortunately their website appears to be "down" at the moment. Its a clean simple PHP script that is only $200-ish for unlimited license. Problem is its functionality is almost to basic. (its not "drag-n-drop" enough)

Other than that. I'm kinda coming up short. It seems like the industry has really moved away from simple editors and towards CMS/Hosting Panels. I'd love to recommend to my company to tweak our backend to support installs of Wordpress/Drupal, but they seem reluctant to consider that as a viable option. ("Our target customer for this project isnt savvy enough to handle a CMS" - and - "we dont want to burden our web dev or support team to have to support CMS questions that might come up.")

Its frustrating me because its kinda like that old joke. "For technical solutions , your options are: "Fast", "Cheap" or "easy" but you can only pick 2. (and my company wants all 3)