Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and CMS

How can I rename the default 'Blog' in a fresh Movable Type installation?

jaffacakerhubarb — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:47:01 -0800

Just set up a Movable Type blog/site/whatjamacallit for the first time for someone else, and though I'm pretty tech-savvy I can't for the life of me figure out how to rename the path to the blog part of things. Help! The main parts of the site are made up of several pages, and all of that's fine, but I want to repurpose the 'blog' part as a news thingy instead. I'd have thought this would be easy, but adding a new blog brings with it a sort of nesting arrangement. As I said, I've never used Movable Type before as a admin, and while this may be embarassingly easy, I can't figure it out. I hate to waste my AskMe question on something that seems so trivial, but there's a bit of time pressure involved so I don't have time to trial and error the answer like I normally would. Thanks!

P.S. I'm using the latest version off the website (4.31) if that helps.

PHP Script to Socially Network The Elderly...

bleucube — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:26:08 -0800

Performing community work for a elderly care facility. They are interested in hosting a "facebook" for their 100+ residents. Plenty of computers around. Need help choosing an open source package. Requirements:
1. Self-hosted
2. Dead simple to use from an end user perspective
3. Each client has their own page
4. Main component is allowing family members to communicate with resident and vice versa through blogging, messaging, and private email.
5. PHP and MYSQL (if needed)

I would love to use an open source package.

Any suggestions? With your suggestion please list any mod/plugin/addon that might be needed to do the job :)

(I've looked at Wordpress MU, Elgg, and Drupal. Haven't ruled them out but default install and few hours led me to believe they wouldn't fit the bill.)

Whats the best platform and tips for a new band's website?

schindyguy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:22:48 -0800

I am trying to help out a band with a website. Whats the best platform and tips for a new band's website? It needs to combine youtube, flickr, twitter, myspace, facebook. I am trying to help a band out with their web development and marketing.

I think the site should contain:

blog
built in music player
picture section (maybe linked to a flickr account)
video section (linked to youtube maybe)
sometype of twitter integration
sometype of myspace and facebook integration
a way to purchase merchandise
a subscriber/fan database for email newsletters communications

I got some the above ideas from the jonasbrothers.com website, however the band that I am doing this for is a completely different genre of music (it is an alternative rock band). The members are completely into talking to fans via their website, but I want to make it easy enough for them to just post in one place and have it update to all these social media sites. (ie if they post a picture, it will put it on their myspace, facebook, flickr and main website). I am thinking that there has got to be an out of the box solution that I am not aware of.

My gut says the major decision I am going to have is which CMS to use (I am leaning towards wordpress). I am very interested in knowing what the hives suggestion would be for me. I know they have a small budget to work with so maybe any custom programming could be done by some freelances. Thanks for the hives time...

[it stands for getting my own fucking blog]

heeeraldo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:39:40 -0800

Help me pick a CMS, so I can GMOFB (among other things) I'd like to pick a CMS to build a personal webpage off of; although it wouldn't be too difficult to put up HTML pages, I'd like to get some experience working with CMSes in case I need to do so in future.

I'm fairly proficient with X/HTML and CSS; I use mostly Coda to put stuff together (but have Dreamweaver CS3) and would like the following sections:

an about me page
multiple photo galleries
a portfolio section
a blog, mostly for detailing what I'm working on and/or interesting, work-related links
a fairly static colophone page
a contact page

As you can see, it's not really anything that would tax a CMS but it I would like something that is fairly flexible and tweakable because, frankly, I like poking around in the guts of things.
I've worked with Blogger before, and thought it was alright. At this point I'm leaning towards Wordpress but Movable Type also looks like an interesting option.
Thanks, folks.

CMS for a resource website

divabat — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:59:19 -0800

What would be the best CMS solution for a blog that I'm trying to expand as a resource/community site? I'm expanding one of my blogs (link in profile) into being more of a resource and community site (since most of my visitors show up Googling for information on certain things).

I'm looking for a CMS that would allow for the following:

* A blog with content contributed by the visitors. Anyone can make a post, which is then held in moderation. The moderators look through it, edit for spelling/clarity, delete spam entries, and post. So similar to the Communities on LJ, except moderators can't edit posts on LJ.

* A directory, with the following subsections:
- Programs
- Organizations
- Grants/Funding
- Volunteering
- People
(this list can grow)
Each sub-section would have different form fields - for example, the Grants would have a close date, while the People listings would have a phone number. There should be an ability to add tags that can be searched across the listings (so any searches for "travel", for example, brings up all the organizations and people and grants related to travel).
The directory should also have a rating system, where people can leave comments.

* A reviews section, for books/websites/other media. A lot of my entries right now are reviews, so I would like my review to be the core information in the entry, followed by people's ratings. I realize I could do a blog entry like this, but I would like a way to integrate title/ISBN/author/purchase link/etc easily.

* Forums

* An events listing, which links back to related blog entries (I was thinking that any entry tagged as "event" would allow for me to enter certain dates and then they'll show up on the events listing by date).

* A file uploads/downloads section.

* Great search capabilities across the site.

* Allowances for monetization (ad space, ecommerce, etc)

There are further ideas, but these are the basics for now.

I've looked at a few CMSes and Joomla seems to be the best bet since it's easier to understand (Drupal's terminology is a bit confusing). I do NOT want to use Wordpress as I am frustrated with their "support". I love Textpattern, but I don't think they allow for this level of flexibility. I'm fine with addons, but would rather not have to code anything myself.

Is this doable? Which CMS would allow me to painlessly do this? Would it be better off for me to hire a web developer to do this? I'm just a sole young person so I don't have the $5000 that's usually the price for these things, and I would rather hire a young person anyway (but I don't know where to find good help.)

Also, because my boyfriend is being a pain about this and insisting that me asking for "CMSes" is somehow limiting my options - what other integrated solutions can I look at? :P

Multiple user CMS

shinynewnick — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:41:26 -0800

Looking for a multiple user CMS/blog solution for our website. I'm developing a fairly basic site for a home builder, and I'm looking for a super simple CMS that will allow individual users to log in and see certain pages related to their job (plus a couple of pages for all users to see).

Ideally, I'd like each user to be able to add posts to their own page (questions for the builder), but not edit any other posts on the page.

I've looked into a few systems: I installed Joomla, it seemed to be overkill for what we need. Wordpress may be perfect (I'm not sure how to implement the multiple user login system), Textpattern looks promising, as does ModX.

Thanks for anything you can recommend.

Find me a content management system that can hide posts!

aprivateperson — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:30:06 -0800

Find me a content management system that can hide posts! I'm looking to install a simple Blog/Content Management System to create a blog which will hide certain posts or categories from unregistered users, and ideally allow some users to view all posts, and other registered users to view some posts. A lot like LiveJournal's friends-post system.

I've installed Movable Type and Wordpress, but neither of them seem to do the job. So any suggestions? :)

Website for the masses!

sirliberal — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:05:32 -0800

Non-Profit Website: How to allow non-techies to edit! Problem: I work for a small (150 ppl) non-profit as a netadmin and we want a webpage (zomg 2007 right?). My specific issue is I want a platform that will allow:

Adding content/deleting content/adding PDF's/adding images

Without requiring input from me. The bureaucracy of our organization means that this will make life MUCH easier for me. As a result I prototyped the site in Plone, which worked out great except Plone is a flaming turd of a product.

I really like Plone's in-template editing, drag and drop content ordering, staging (ie, bits can exist on the site ONLY when logged in). I need something that will run on Dreamhost (which is pretty much anything PHP/Perl/etc).

I have looked at: (ask://cms)

WordPress
Expression Engine (I'd love to have their main site tempate)
TextPattern (Perfect Implementation)
SilverStripe

This seems like a rather trivial adventure, except all of these products seem geared directly towards running a blog, with side static pages, as where Plone was a content manager with a blog addon.

Is CMS a synonym for Blogging these days? My users are fairly inept, and I do major styling (ie, they can handle textarea with buttons for formatting). I would love something where they can easily add sections. Let's use the Library site linked above as 'implentation' which uses features that aren't available to the public.

* Major sections, subsections shown on the right in content area
* Each major section has a 'landing page' that is styled differnetly
* User's can concievably add a new content area and it is automatically added to the navigation system.

One specific gripe with MT is that it seems to be all static pages, and I see a benefit to having dynamically built pages so I can add in php code later to do things on the fly (database lookups in page?).

I don't need any blogging functionality at all, which is the biggest stumbling block here. Everything I look at is primarily driven off this 'articles' idea, whereas I simply want 'pages'. I want to have a way to specify the display order in the navigation. All things Plone did, but I cant find something more lightweight (preferably in PHP) that can do the same.

I am on the edge of just writing my own custom app in PHP/Smarty, but it seems silly to do that when SOMETHING must automate this all for me. There are great examples of sites running off these platforms.

Comments with or without a blog

dance — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:53:02 -0800

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way (and the best script?) to implement a commenting system for normal web pages? I am currently torn between setting up WordPress as a CMS which would provide that functionality or trying to find a script I can add to a page (and there are to be 40 or so separate pages each needing separate comment fields). My thoughts thus far: WP as a CMS

Never done it before
Could be difficult to modify a theme to be none 'bloglike'
Would integrate with Akismet to stop the spam

Comment script added to existing page

Might not integrate that well with look and feel of rest of page
Need only be a more professional 'Shoutbox' type script, no real need for commenters' location, email etc though I guess it cuts down on nonsense posts simply because it takes longer!

Tonight I'm gonna blog like it's 1993

Kadin2048 — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:26:02 -0800

What blog/CMS software would you recommend that doesn't rely on MySQL or another database backend? So, I finally broke down and bought a vanity domain for myself, and I want to set up a small site there, just to provide occasional updates to my friends and family, and maybe host some other content that I want to share. It's nothing big, I don't expect much/any traffic, and I'm not looking to make money off of it.

I decided to go with Nearly Free Speech for hosting, because they offer a nice metered plan that only charges me for the bandwidth that I actually use, which is cool. But they (quite reasonably) charge extra for SQL processes. So I'd like to find some sort of simple CMS that doesn't require a database to run. PHP4 and CGI (all major languages incl. Perl, Python, Ruby) are both OK.

The only things that have turned up so far are FlatPress, which is a sort of WordPress clone that uses flat files, and Simple PHP Blog. Are there other packages that I'm missing? Has anyone ever used either one? How bad are they to set up? FlatPress seems a little light on documentation...at least compared to regular WordPress, which has a lot of 'Howto'-style documentation because everyone and their cousin seems to use it.

This question last August was about alternatives to popular blog packages that don't require complex coding, but I'm less concerned with that than I am in just avoiding SQL completely.

I don't care about anything very fancy, like the ability to use plugins or customize the style very much. I just want a way of throwing content up onto the site, without having to maintain, organize, and edit a lot of static HTML files. I don't really even care about comments, although they're a plus.

Maybe what I'm looking for really isn't "blog" software. Really, I just want some sort of management system, that avoids the static-HTML morass that I dread from my early-90s experiments with personal web sites. (I used to manage things by keeping a local mirror of the site, adding my content by hand, and then using an FTP client to sync the server's copy. It worked OK, but I want to be able to update from the road, without being tied to the machine with the local mirror.)

Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions, experiences, or anecdotes that folks would like to give.

Easiest CMS/blog to get into design-wise?

dinkyday — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:40:13 -0800

I'm an experienced webdesigner looking for a CMS/blog whose themes are easy to change or build from scratch (preferably just through CSS).

Mystified by choices for CMS or blog of some kind

zek — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:31:15 -0800

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.

How to Build a Micro-myspace

benjh — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:26:32 -0800

What Open Source web application can I install that would make a good online community? Looking to build an small online community web site for some people in a grouping. Looking for blogging functionality, picture uploading, and that kind of thing. Kind of like building my own micro-myspace.

Any suggestions on an existing open source platform to base such a project?

Grouphug-alike platform?

thedaniel — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:29:22 -0800

I'm looking for a platform to run a "grouphug" style site - in the sense that anyone can post, and all posts are moderated and anonymous. I know that there are probably ways to do this with the larger CMSes but I'd like to keep it very light and simple. It seems like something that wouldn't be incredibly difficult to create from scratch, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Updating, Editing, and Archiving Parts of a Webpage

JuliaKM — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:44:39 -0800

What type of content management system can I use to update small parts of an existing page? I apologize in advance if this is confusing. Currently, my employer puts out a monthly online newsletter of funding opportunities for researchers. The problem we are finding is that it is very hard to archive the funding opportunities and avoid reprinting the same ones. We also want to add funding opportunities more frequently than once a month. My boss wants to have parts of the webpage of funding opportunities be entered and then archived through a blog-type format. However, the only change we want to make to the look and feel of the site is to have a date listing for when the funding opportunity was added. So, the page would ideally look something like this. I have put everything in brackets that I would like to have as part of a blog or other content management system.

Intro…..

Federal Opportunities
[Opportunity 1]
[Opportunity 2]
[Opportunity 3]

Regional Opportunities
[Separate Opportunity 1]
[Separate Opportunity 2]
[Separate Opportunity 3]

Other Information
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2

Is this even possible? Is there a blog-like editor that would allow us to easily edit, write, and archive only certain paragraphs on a page. Ideally, the archives would be separated by category. The additional constraint is that we do not have access to a SQL server and are not allowed to install one.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Julia

Why do I get blank text in MovableType 2.661 on IE6 until mouseover or scroll up?

soyjoy — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 08:12:41 -0800

Blank text in Movable Type 2.661 on IE 6 - until mouseover or scroll - then text shows up. What's going on? I run a few MT blogs and encountered this previously with an earlier version of MT. When you first go to the page there's a field of white instead of text. But the text immediately shows up if you mouseover it or scroll to get the screen to redraw it.

In the previous case, it seemed that the CSS didn't want "blogbody" to have any hard HTML display elements like horizontal rules in it. At least, the problem stopped when I replaced the horizontal rules with CSS-generated rules. But this is now happening on both the extended entry (individual archive template) and on the pop-up comments window, the latter of which I have done nothing to change from the template other than editing the color of the banner in the CSS. Has anybody encountered this bizarreness? I've trolled the MT forums without any success.

What do you think about these BlogWare options?

geekyguy — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 19:43:56 -0800

BlogWare: b2,WordPress or Nucleus? My hosting provider is set up for easy auto-installs on each of these freebies. Are any of these worth checking out? What do you recommend?

A good backend for a MetaFilter-type site?

kirkaracha — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 08:53:40 -0800

Would Expression Engine (or maybe pMachine) be a good backend for a MetaFilter-type site?

Free or cheap CMS options?

ringmaster — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 13:03:31 -0800

I'm thinking of establishing a new personal web site for the risque/opinionated stuff that I don't want on my family-oriented site. The thing is, I'm not convinced that MT and it's bloggerific ilk nor Nuke and it's bastard children can maintain the stylized newspaper/-zine site that I want to erect. What other styles of free or dirt-cheap CMS software are out there that I should consider for the new site?

Is the CMS TextPattern worth checking out yet?

wendell — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 12:12:33 -0800

CMSFilter: After hearing about Dean Allen's TextPattern on and off for the longest time without being able to actually try it, it's now available in what he calls a "gamma" version that he's been updating and bugfixing for the last week. Is it worth the time to check out or not, or not yet? And what's so special (or not or not yet) about this particular pile of code?

What opensource CMS would you recommend for ease of use, robustness, and customizability?

signal — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 05:45:29 -0800

Some of the answers I got to this post made me think about developing cheap, easy-to-use interactive Intranets for various corporate clients (a la this), based on opensource CMS and/or blogware, thus eliminating licensing fees and saving a bundle on programming costs / time. I am looking for advice on what application to use. [more inside] I am not a programmer but rather an enlightened web designer (and an architect in my previous life), and have played around with Blosxom and Mambo, both of which I like. I am aware of MT and Plone, but have no experience with either.
My question is: what open source content manager would you reccomend which meets:
a) Easy to install, maintain and use (and by easy I mean easy for me and my clients, not for a programmer with 15 years experience in the field).
b) Easy to cutomize look and feel
c) Robustness, active dev community.
Note: "free" is a huge issue, and a main selling point for the clients.