CMS for Newspaper Sites?

March 16, 2005 9:00 AM

I'm working on a project to bring a relatively new local GLBT newspaper online. Is there a CMS product (preferably open source) out there that I can setup for this purpose? My web skills are minor, so I'd like something as out of the box as possible that won't have me in fits trying to set it up. I know there are several options for non-open source software, but they get very expensive, very quickly.

The ideal solution will allow for a main story on the front page, with links to stories/sections along one or both sides. In the perfect world there is a easy to use archive system where old stories are still accessible. Additionally there should be options for integrating advertising in the near future.

Bay Windows is pretty close to perfect, but they use a hosted, outsourced, web-based product called Broadband Publisher, which requires a one-time fee for design and set-up, as well as a monthly maintenance fee.

Gay City News is awesome and appears to do everything we want and a bit more, but I fear it's a spendy bit of software.

And finally OutcomeBuffalo looks like a contender as well. I actually like that it's a little more lively than the somber Gay City News.

Suggestions?

posted by FlamingBore to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I can't think of any reason why WordPress wouldn't do the job.
posted by davidmsc at 9:24 AM on March 16, 2005

The number of open-source CMS products is stupefyingly huge. My reccomendation would be Mambo. Another popular option is ezPublish. I use Zope for all of my development nowadays, and there's a company called Infrae that has recently come out with a CMS called Silva that looks very cool. All three of these are widely used and backed by actual businesses, although they're available for free.
posted by gsteff at 9:28 AM on March 16, 2005

Well, Silva is not yet widely used, but its built on Zope, which is.
posted by gsteff at 9:30 AM on March 16, 2005

Response by poster: gsteff - Silva looks interesting, can you point me to any sites currently using it? Or exPublish for that matter? I've seen a few sites using Mambo and while it's a fine tool, it's not quite what I'm looking for.
posted by FlamingBore at 9:37 AM on March 16, 2005

I base a lot of my own work on EZ-Publish -- it's a great product. It does require considerable configuration in order to be useful, however -- but I don't know of too many CMS products that are much easier if you want them to look other than completely generic.

More choices here.
posted by killdevil at 9:47 AM on March 16, 2005

I had heard the Globe and WaPo run on Plone, but that might have been crap.
posted by yerfatma at 9:51 AM on March 16, 2005

don't forget about Quark/Indesign and their plugins/extensions/options. How is the actual paper designed?
posted by amberglow at 10:17 AM on March 16, 2005

Response by poster: I think that it's now being done in InDesign.
posted by FlamingBore at 10:43 AM on March 16, 2005

You can automatically export as XML if that helps at all--it's built-in to InDesign CS.

We have people who extract text from Quark files as html using a plugin. I'm sure there's one for InDesign too.
posted by amberglow at 4:16 PM on March 16, 2005

there are definitely solutions here on InDesign's plugin page
posted by amberglow at 5:54 PM on March 16, 2005

MadPenguin.org has an article on Bricolage, an open source CMS that began at Salon.com and is now used (among other places) at MacWorld (via slashdot)
posted by WestCoaster at 8:04 PM on April 14, 2005