Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cms

Convert Drupal URL's to SEO friendly

diode — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:55:27 -0800

I'm looking for an explanation of how to convert a Drupal URL to a more SEO-friendly URL. I'm likely to be asked to do updates and changes on a Drupal-based website. I'm just starting my learning curve with respect to Drupal.

I can see the website has a mix of SEO-friendly URL's (domain/general-category/specific-pagename.htm) and URL's with 'node in them (domain/node/56).

I've recommended that the pages with non-SEO friendly URL's be updated to friendly ones. So far I've found that to create a SEO friendly URL I need to alias the node, but what that process actually is I don't know.

I'm going to be queried on this process. I need the general overview so I can give some semblance of knowing what I'm doing while I get up to speed on this.

How to send phone pics to a spartan web site via Flickr?

ehamiter — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:16:59 -0800

What's a minimal self-hosted "blog" that hooks into Flickr's API so I can send photos from my camera directly to my web site? Ideally, I want a blog that is not a blog. I don't want tags, or articles, or categories, or spam filters, or any of that stuff. A perfect solution workflow would be this:

I take a picture with my phone
I send it to Flickr via e-mail
Flickr then posts it to my website with no interaction

The ideal layout would be a main site title, and each time I send a photo it appears as the newest one, using the title I typed. There would be maybe 10 photos on the main page. You could access earlier photos by clicking "older" or something like that which would serve as the archives.

I can do this with wordpress, movable type, typepad, etc., but they are all way too huge feature-wise and not what I want. I can also do this with blogger or tumblr, but they are not self-hosted. I tried this recently with textpattern, but the templates and general admin are much too complicated for my needs.

It should be very simple, aesthetics-wise. You could maybe change the color scheme / typography via CSS, but that's about it.

Does something like this exist? For the Flickr hook-in it needs to be a MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog or other Flickr-approved application.

Thanks for any suggestions.

How Can Wordpress Easily Provide A Voting and Commenting View For 5 Page Layout Possibilities?

peter_meta_kbd — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:50:23 -0800

How can I allow anonymous users to access "Media" wordpress pages (ie a jpg image) so that it appears to anonymous users the same way as it appears to admins? Right now, when I create a media item, I can view it as admin by going through the Media then clicking on view, eventually I end up at http://christian-filipina.com/blog/?attachment_id=31 which is a nice reduced version of the image (which can be clicked to appear large), and which has the nice feature that there is a place to leave comments at the bottom.

This is great - for administrators. But I want anonymous users to be able to look at 5 different, fairly similar images, and make comments on the pages separately. So I'd like for the anonymous users who navigate to http://christian-filipina.com/blog/?attachment_id=31 to find the same page the way it looks to admins. But when going to that URL as an anonymous user, I get "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria" instead of the image with comment form.

So, how can I enable this permission for anonymous users? If this is not possible, please rephrase the question as, "What is the best way to use Wordpress to get a bunch of anonymous people to vote on 5 different layouts and also to be able to comment on each of them separately, as I am trying to do at http://christian-filipina.com/blog/ ? (None of these are public URLs, please don't link to them.)

Do I need to create a page for each of those separate layouts and then use HTML to link to the variously-sized versions of the images?

Thanks very much.

help me get a small site built!

canine epigram — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:57:45 -0800

what's the best way to get a web site built for a non-profit? I'm in the unenviable position of having taken on the webmaster position for a hacked together web-site (php/mySQL) for a small non-profit - mostly because nobody else would or could do it.

The web site desperately needs overhauling and it's impossible for any non-technical users to update it. Most of the content (with the exceptions of event pages/calendar/seasonal info) would not be updated that frequently.

I don't know php and my html skills are decent but basic. I'm in grad school and working full-time, so I don't have time or the inclination to build something by myself.

I'm leaning toward trying to find a pro or semi-pro who we can pay a nominal fee (remember, non-profit) to help us set up something relatively simple that meets our requirements and can be maintained by our non-technical members.

I read this previous thread which had
some good suggestions about possible platforms. I hoped that if I listed the basic requirements, people might point me in the right direction and suggest how to find a web-savvy developer interested in a small job for a non-profit.

It needs the following:

the pages should be easily updatable via some sort of user-interface, including text and pictures.

ability to add pages and a way to navigate to them.

an integrated updateable calendar (being able to set reminders for events would be nice) and events page.

whatever software should not require a lot of patching or be a security nightmare - we have no IT. None. Zip. Nada. (this suggests that WordPress might not be ideal)

internal members pages and file repository system that can be accessed via a web interface

easily maintainable mailing lists for the community.

some customization - our logos, colors, etc.

Best CMS to handle file uploading by users?

clockworkjoe — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:34:03 -0800

What CMS should I use for a community podcast site where users can upload, tag, rate and review each others' podcasts? I run Role Playing Public Radio and we regularly record game sessions and then post them as podcasts. They're very popular and some of our fans have started recording their own games. I'd like to set up a community site where people can upload their own MP3s, have them verified by a moderator then made available to the members. The files can then be tagged, categorized, reviewed and rated by other members. In terms of structure, I imagine something like a video game mod community site.

I'm most familiar with wordpresss but that obviously won't work. What kind of CMS would work best and how would I go about setting it up?

Drupal looks like a possible candidate but I'm not familiar with it.

Make Wiki do Retail

webhund — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:41:31 -0800

How could a wiki be used by a small retail business selling tangible products? I'm looking for ways to use a wiki in a small retail business to better serve its customers. Looking through example sites of various wiki-species (mediawiki, dokuwiki, etc...) leads to a dry hole of wiki usage in the retail sector.

The only authorized wiki authors/editors would be the shop owner and her staff, with editing locked down to the general internet public. The business sells high-end food ingredients to a niche culinary market, both online and at a brick/mortar store. Principal customers are restaurant chefs and home cooks/foodies.

The business uses its blog for "what's happening/good now" type of stuff and then has static product pages on its site where the details of each product are explained, all linked to the online store. Where does (or does not) a wiki fit in this?

Are there things that a locked-down, but publicly-visible wiki could do that a blog or other non-wiki CMS could not in this application? The business owner is technologically adept, is an active blogger, and is looking for new ways to use technology in a traditional retail setting.

I want to build a web site where gamers can converse via video. Where do I begin?

raddevon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:16:08 -0800

I want to build a web site where gamers can converse via video. I'm thinking of something a bit like a Seesmic targeted toward gamers. Where do I start? I'm not a developer, but I can poke around in code a bit on my own. I wouldn't be opposed to using a roll-your-own-social-network solution and doing it all myself as a hobby. I also wouldn't be opposed to hiring a developer off elance and positioning this as a business. I don't really know where to start in either direction. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have experience with Wordpress and Drupal.

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.

Joomla header logo help.

futureisunwritten — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:14:56 -0800

How do I add a header logo to my Joomla site? I'm building a website with Joomla and I'm using the JS Education template because it's free and I can do drop down menus on it (actually, this part is already done).

The one thing that has me stumped is how to add our organization's logo to the header (instead of the text that's already there). There are tutorials out there that explain how to do this on the default template, but since I'm not using that, they're of little use to me.

I'm doing all this on local host, if that matters. And I'm a total noob and I don't know much about css/html, so please be gentle. Thanks!

Expression Engine file upload won't work. Why?

davebush — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:56:37 -0800

Why won't Expression Engine's file upload work? My first Expression Engine website has gone smoothly, with the exception of the file upload function within the Edit window. The server path and directory permissions are both correct (I've checked and re-checked). The file browser works fine (which I assume confirms the path is right), but attempted uploads give me the error message "An error of an unknown type was encountered."

EE's support staff haven't been able to provide a solution yet (via my forum thread) and searching through past forums threads shows me others have had this problem, but it's normally the result of server path or permissions issues.

I've begun to think the problem might stem from an issue with the host's temp directory. Apparently, uploaded files initially reside in a temp directory before being copied to the final destination (my "uploads" folder).

One more troubling aspect - the host's control panel file upload works fine.

Any suggestions? I'm baffled and frustrated. I'll attempt phone support with the hosting company tomorrow, but I'm hoping to know more about a possible solution before then.

Drupal vs Joomla vs Wordpress vs ...?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:59:33 -0800

Drupal vs Joomla vs Wordpress vs ...? I'm a web developer with a fair bit of experience with both front- and back-end. I've done plain-HTML websites and I've done completely custom CGI websites, but I'm realising I should probably start working with frameworks.

So ... which one, for which kind of task? Does anyone have a rule of thumb, like "the site is of size X and content type Y and you want to spend no more than Z amount of time looking after it for the client, so you should choose this framework"?

My question is a little open-ended, and I realise it may turn into framework-chatfilter or even "your favourite framework sucks", but that's OK, I wouldn't mind taking part in the same kind of conversation I'd have if I was having a beer with a bunch of web developers.

I'm inspired to ask partly because I've got a project coming up and I have to decide on a system, and partly because I see people discussing the frameworks on Ask all the time and I see offhand remarks like "Oh, but Wordpress is a security nightmare!" and "Drupal, Ugh! Half the contributed modules don't even work properly!" and so on, and well, every system has its fans and its haters, I'd like to hear, politely, from all sides.

Drupal structure? Help me structure my structure!

suedehead — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:12:11 -0800

I'm trying to create a magazine via Drupal, and I'm having some problems using node references. Should I be using books or taxonomies? Or can you just help me iron this problem out with what I'm doing now? I'm having trouble trying to determine the best possible structure for a Drupal 6 installation.

Some information about the site I'm making:

it's an online magazine organized into less than 10 articles grouped underneath a single issue. I don't have a use for categories for each article or each issue -- all I need is the structure.

Each article has around ten images associated with it. In addition, I need to designate a 'representative image' for each article that will show up as a thumbnail in the issue page. Also, each article will have small links to the other articles within the same issue.

So far I've been creating three node types: 1) an Issue type, 2) an Article type, 3) an Image type, using Imagefield. Each Image references the Article that it's part of, and each Article references the Issue that it's part of. Also, the 'representative image' for each Article is a node reference to an Image. I'm using custom php code to tie it all together, and it's working, albeit I'm working pretty slowly. Here's a diagram:



Issue --- Article

      --- Article

      --- Article --- Image

		  --- Image

		  --- Image

But now I'm starting to think that I'm overthinking this, and that I should use the book module. The problem with that is that the book module seems to have limited flexibility in terms of making custom themes/layout. I can't even find a good google result how to customize the Book tree that appears within the Book navigation menu.

So what should I be doing in terms of structure? Should I be using Taxonomy, or Book? Or should I just continue to customize things by using node references and hacking php code to tie everything together? Has anyone had similar experiences with Drupal and found the best possible way for this sort of website? Thanks!

Academic personal website CMS solution advice

k8t — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:27:31 -0800

Academic personal website CMS solution advice. I'm going on the academic job market this fall and I need to update my website from boring to awesome. I need to have a PDF version of my CV hosted, but more important will be a web-based CV.

I want something that looks great and professional, but not out of the box. I will need to add things to my CV fairly often, so something that I can edit with ease would be nice.

BUT, my coding skills are stuck in the HTML days, although I am pretty good with using content management systems - I know Wordpress, MoveableType and Drupal okay.

Any recommendations? I'd be hosting on GoDaddy and a university webserver (although I could do a redirect from one to the other). I'd *like* to keep my personal stuff on my GoDaddy domain and keep this professional page on the university webserver, but if it isn't flexible enough, GoDaddy is fine.

I need a simple CMS for managing flat xml files

grumblebee — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:15:58 -0800

I build Flash applications for a living. I generally make them configurable via an xml file. I'm looking for a quick and easy solution that would allow me to set up a form that clients could fill out when they want to update the xml. NOTE: everything needs to be hosted on the client's site, to which I often have limited access. So I don't want a solution that involves complex DB management. Say I've created a Flash app, and the client can skin it by entering color values in an XML file. Non-tech-savvy clients often get frightened by raw XML, so I'd like to start offering them simple CMSes that are customized to their particular config files. Some config files are super-simple, allowing my client so, say, just pick a background color and a video to play. Others are much more complex.

WHAT I DON'T WANT is anything that involves managing or setting up a database. My clients might not have access to one; the might not know how to manage one; they might not be able to give me access to me. So this all has to be based around flat files.

I also don't want an desktop app. I want something browser-based, so my clients can update the Flash app from anywhere.

Finally, I don't want anything that I have to host. This should be a solution that I can upload the to client's site and that they can manage from themselves. It should be password-protected so that other people can't much around with the Flash app's settings.

Ideally, what I'd like is something that can take my xml file (or a schema) and auto-generate an HTML-form based on it. And a simple PHP, Python or whatever script that can take the info they enter into the form and update the xml file.

How long will it take me to impliment CMS for a client?

Fuzzy Dog — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:10:36 -0800

How long to deploy CMS? I have STRONG web design and development skills and I have been asked to give a quote for implementing CMS for a client as part of their rebranding efforts. The catch is that someone else is spearheading the rebranding, which will include the new look for the site -- with input for me.

So hive mind how what is a reasonable estimate for how many hours it will take to develop, deploy and test a CMS (like Drupal) for my client?

For those folks who have done this already, I would appreciate any hindsight advice you might share with me.

Thanks in advance for your opinions, time and advice!

Best CMS for a static website?

twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:37:23 -0800

Best CMS for a static website? I'm maintaining a small website with about 10 static pages for now and probably more later.

I'd like to find a CMS system that would let me easily change the content of the pages without affecting the template, but it seems like the only CMS's I can find are built around sites with more dynamic content -- blogs, portals and the like*.

So far, I've been handling it with PHP includes, but I'd like to work with something where I don't have to juggle half a dozen different includes for the template just so I can insert a paragraph of content.

Ideally, the CMS I'm looking for will:

a) let me enter the content I want into the specific places I want it on a templated document
b) let me specify where I want the page, i.e. domain.com/page, domain.com/page.html, or domain.com/dir/page.html, etc.

Any ideas?

*If Wordpress et al are the best options that's fine, but I just wanted to explore all my options.

I need help updating our town's website

dukes909 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:24:15 -0800

Looking to move a FP2003 / Dreamweaver municipal website to a CMS or other solution and need design help! I have a small town website that is quite robust in it's content (agendas, meeting minutes, contact forms, job postings & applications etc.) However, the site, for all of it's content has not been updated with web2.0 stuff and is stuck in the 00's. I've looked and re-looked and re-re-looked at Joomla and Drupal (and modX and CMS made simple etc.) but can't land on a square on what to change the site to, or whether it even should be.

The more I think about it the more I think I'm mainly looking to change the look of the site with good clean CSS, that is accessible for all including those that are on mobile devices or with disabilities - 508 compliance if possible. Just a small task!

The site currently has about 200 html pages and several more PDF documents of minutes, forms, ordinances, etc., that are currently searched by Google.

While I like the idea of a CMS, it seems counter-intuitive to have limits on the structure (3 levels in Joomla or whatever), but maybe I haven't figured out how to adapt the site correctly. Also, it appears to me a CMS is great for new sites, but moving large static sites over into one are a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Keep in mind that as the IT person, I have many other responsibilities, not just the website, so I cannot devote 100% of my time to it. The town does not have the money to sign up for something like civicplus.com, nor will it pay a graphic design firm to come up with a prettified solution - so it has to be an open-source, and something an IT person that can't devote all of their time learning and working on. Is there such a beast?

Things I see that needed and lacking in current site: an image / CSS makeover from text & tables, 508 compliance, ease of maintenance (department update-able?), breadcrumbs, "mail this page", "print this page" etc.

What is the best free online document management for academic use?

Outis — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:54:20 -0800

What is the best free online document management solution with the intended use by a few individuals for academic purposes? A few of my friends and I trade academic papers via USB drives right now, but we'd like to move to an online solution. More precisely, a private (user:password) CMS driven solution run on a personal webhost.

In some ways something like a private version of Scribd is what we're looking for. We want it to be able to search all the PDF files (they're already OCR) that we upload from within the site, if possible.

Automated organization is a must, and simple upload also. Currently I've got three gigabytes of just text PDFs and don't want to spend much time uploading them. They're already organized systematically according to file name.

Leaving comments on them and such is hoped for and it will eventually have a wiki to share updated information. Also, it has to be open-source/freeware.

Thanks for the assistance.

What's the best CMS for our site

Hartster — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:08:50 -0800

What's the best CMS for our site? Yes, another one of those questions. No, I don't think Wordpress is the answer. We're building a website. It needs to be in a number of different languages. The URL structure wants to be in the form of (for example):

example.com/ca/fr/product/price
example.com/fr/fr/product/price
example.com/de/de/product/specifications
example.com/ch/de/product/specifications

so we'd know the first URL would show the Canadian French version of the site (price in Canadian dollars, maybe Canada specific pages in the nav), the second would be the French version of the site (price in Euros, French specific pages) with both sharing the same template and language files etc.

We need to have a good work flow e.g. staging and approval of content (both new and editted) before it goes live and also ease in creating specific URLs.

It needs to be PHP-compatible - i.e. we want to (easily) be able to use PHP in both templates and content.

We also want very strong flexibility in terms of being able to design the site. (Obvious I know but still)

We're also slightly short of time, so a lowish learning curve would be appreciated.

We've looked at Expression Engine. This does 90% of what we need (I think) (including having a good learning curve), but has no easy stage-to-live feature (if you want to do both content and templates at the same time) that I can tell of. Also, having only used EE Core at this stage, I don't know how much I'd like using the Pages module to force /template/article to our URL structure.

It's for a commercial site so we're happy paying, however we wouldn't want to pay at this point multiple thousands of dollars. (Although if a product is awesome let me know as we may be doing a very similar but much bigger site in the future).

Hold my hand, teach me Joomla

wundermint — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:23:05 -0800

What are the best resources for learning Joomla? Help a poor designer wrap her head around the CMS. I usually build websites with Dreamweaver and use my knowledge of html and css to get everything just so. Now I need to enter the (wonderful?) world of CMS templates and administration. The experience I have in this area is basically limited to Wordpress.

So far I am overwhelmed by the amount of information out there for Joomla, and underwhelmed at its quality. Every video tutorial I've watched is along the lines of "log in to the administrator area and look around, it's pretty straight forward." Nothing concrete on how Joomla structures everything or how to control where content goes. The interface is — to me at least — not intuitive at all. I need a guide to hold my hand and tell me exactly what everything does. And not only does the interface throw me; I also need to understand how to edit/create templates and shape the design.

What are the best resources out there? What was helpful to you in the beginning? Books, video tutorials, webinars, pdf guides, your advice... anything that is clear and specific to help me get started would be much appreciated.

By the way, I am using the most current version which at this time is 1.5

Image-heavy CMS: is Drupal the right choice?

xiaolongbao — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:13:03 -0800

Drupalfilter: Image-heavy CMS with specific functionality - your thoughts on the best option? I am developing a site using Drupal with a custom template. Drupal is well-suited, I think, to the CMS. The functionality is to be:

- store and display many images with many tags. images must be zoomable, which I believe can be accomplished with jQuery
- manage a few disparate user types who will need to see different forms of the site
- handle form entries which will be collected and stored in a database
- payment processing
- bookmarking system

If you have a better suggestion than Drupal for these requirements, shoot.

I'm using Webfaction to host, and I like it thus far, though I do worry a bit about bandwidth if we grow, particularly since we are image-heavy. I'm using MAMP for local development. I can elaborate on details to some degree as needed, so ask away.

Big question: I also need to - and this is the challenging part, in my view - swap out different color samples for the images. We won't have images of all the pieces in each color, so we're trying to engineer a system to show samples. So if I have a bag in a blue fabric, I need to overlay an orange, green, red, or etc. or different patterns - polka dots, stripes, paisley, etc. These will be for different things than just bags, but the functionality desired is similar to this. This loads slowly, however, IMO. Wrinkles in fabrics makes this kind of hard.

I'm wondering if we could contract out for someone to create this part, and then do the rest myself. I looked at the oneybags code and it seems complicated. I think they are using image overlays - can someone maybe elaborate on what's going on there? If we contract it out, what would you say is reasonable to pay for this functionality? Or, should we have someone do the whole site?

Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

PHP Book that teaches how to build a small CMS?

zobot — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:29:24 -0800

Good PHP book that walks you through the building of a basic PHP/MySQL content management system? It's can be PHP 4 or 5 based. The content management system does not have to be super-complex. I realize there are lots of open source options out there, but I want to learn to create a small one from scratch that I can build on.

CMS game backend?

twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:08:19 -0800

Can I modify an existing CMS to serve as the backend for a browser game? I'm not sure if I really want to build a database from scratch. If I could conceivably use a CMS like Drupal or some other recommendation to handle all the data related to the game, I'd rather do that instead.

Basically it's a very simple RPG wrapped around a forum. So there would be two parts: activity in the forums would affect the user in the game, i.e. a certain post count might give the user access to a new avatar or something.

The other part may or may not be part of the CMS already. It would involve actually advancing the user's avatars. If I used a very simple mechanic, i.e. clicking on the character adds a random point to intelligence or strength, is there a function in any existing CMS that could mimic this mechanic? A sort of click-counting function or something? The game would actually be more complicated than that of course, but what I'm basically wondering is if I can use a CMS to generate dynamic pages for avatars and track the "NUMBERS MUST GO UP" part of the game. Or if I'd have to code something separately and tack it on to the CMS.

I have no experience with MySQL or PHP whatsoever, but I do have experience setting up and using some simple CMS's (Movable Type, Wordpress, MediaWiki, currently using TikiWiki for another project) and letting them handle the messy stuff. I don't mind learning MySQL/PHP eventually, but I'd like to do it by getting started looking under the hood and tinkering around with CMS's instead of just diving in and learning straightaway.

So is this feasible? Are there other (hopefully simple) ways to build this data-driven site? Feel free to also tell me that there is no way to do this and that I just have to learn PHP/MySQL already.

Opensource CMS?

wanderlust_babe — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:34:40 -0800

Are there any good opensource CMS systems? Need to develop new CMS for a fairly big media site. Are there any open source CMS aplications that are any good? Thanks.

What is the ideal CMS for a user-controlled directory?

carnival of animals — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:28:12 -0800

What is the ideal CMS for a user-controlled directory? I want to create a directory of companies and their products. I would like for companies to be able to edit only their own entry through a minimal customized back-end. They would be editing their address, URL, phone number, etc.; and adding products to their entry as discrete items which can be called up separately in search results, perhaps also uploading the occasional PDF. The lighter the CMS the better, and it would ideally have some flexible queries built in so that I don't have to spend too much time wrestling with PHP, at which I'm a beginner (certainly don't know anything about how to get PHP to talk to databases). I'm not expecting much traffic, at least not for the first year of its operation.

I've used and customized WordPress to act as a small CMS before, but I doubt it's the best candidate in this case. The front-end is no problem, but WP's back-end is clunky and even if customized, I wouldn't know how to give users permission to edit their entry only. And I don't like the feeling of hacking things together which I get whenever I use WP for anything other than what it was meant to be, a blog.

I looked at Joomla, but it seems overblown for what I need and more difficult to customize. (I guess it might just be necessary for me to learn PHP?)

Textpattern is my leading candidate at the moment. It's light and using its js queries seems simple. But again, I'm not sure how easy it would be to customize the back-end and permissions. Is there any reason I shouldn't use Textpattern to handle thousands of entries?