CMS recommendations for a relatively simple site.

May 23, 2006 2:24 PM

CMSFilter -- recommendations and de-recommandations. Say I can get Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress installed with equal ease. Which do I want for a relatively simple site?

The client is a friend and will be with Dreamhost. They have one-click installation of various CMS systems.

The requirements are relatively simple, but include a kind of database functionality.

They want to make lists of businesses in areas, so there would have to be some kind of free-form data attached to items so that we could generate lists of drycleaners, lists of drycleaners in the northern part of town, lists of all businesses in the northern part of town and so on. Plus a blog.

I have fiddled a bit with WordPress and didn't love it (particularly the documentation or lack thereof), but I'm thinking that the other two, which I've never worked with but constantly see recommended on the internets, might be overkill for a relatively simple site like this ... but of course the client will inevitably want something more complex down the track.

The other main consideration is that I can make it simple for the client to run the site without me, i.e. leave them with a simple interface which doesn't need fifty pages of documentation.

I can code Perl, PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS already but I wouldn't be scared to learn a new language if I had to, although that would obviously slow the process down a bit.

My only real experience with CMSs has been Movable Type and quick-and-dirty ones I've coded myself, plus a custom/proprietary one where I used to work which I can't tell you about without turning into Colonel Kurtz ... "the horror, the horror" ...

posted by AmbroseChapel to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Have you looked at http://www.cmsmatrix.org/? They have pretty much every CMS rated and compared. Might be a little overwhelming at first, but you know your needs better than we. All we can offer are opinions on how CMS's have worked for us.
posted by JJtheJetPlane at 2:34 PM on May 23, 2006

I've recommended Drupal in the past and it's always served me well. It allows you to embed PHP, which may let you work the drycleaner thing easily.
posted by unixrat at 2:46 PM on May 23, 2006

For another option, check out Django. It's a framework, rather than application, but it makes it pretty easy to bang out content management applications. A big bonus in that regard is that it will create a production ready administrative backend for entering, updating and managing content with very little effort beyond the creation of the underlying data model.

It's a python application, which makes deployment a bit more complicated, but I think I've heard of people getting it running at dreamhost.
posted by Good Brain at 3:18 PM on May 23, 2006

django: "It's a framework, rather than application"

That statement very much applies to Drupal as well. Based on experience with implementation and administration of sites on both, I would advise folks choosing between the two to flee joomla, flock to drupal. I don't have a ton of knowledge outside those 2 and wordpress though.

I'd also like to derail for a few lines and say that folks who have tried drupal in the past (say six months to a year ago) and had issues with it should really check it out now - since 4.7 it's extremely flexible as well as super tasty.
posted by thedaniel at 4:26 PM on May 23, 2006

Response by poster: All we can offer are opinions on how CMS's have worked for us.

That's OK! I'd be just as interested in war stories and anecdotes and that kind of thing as formal analysis. But thanks for the link, I'll check it out right now.

I think I've heard of people getting it running at dreamhost.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I want to avoid though.

I don't want a framework that I build a CMS on, I want to get in and get out relatively quickly because I'm doing it for a friend and charging a nominal rate, plus, I want my friend to be impressed with me, not hear how much I struggled with compiling this or upgrading that.

Hmm, guess I don't really want to learn a new language if I can help it...
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:27 PM on May 23, 2006

Response by poster: That's interesting, thedaniel, can you give even a rough idea of how quickly I can build a small site with Drupal, and how simple I can make the interface for the user?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:28 PM on May 23, 2006

You could combine the free version of Movable Type with RightFields to do something like this if you're used to MT. Works fine on Dreamhost, though they do like to fuss about MT.
posted by anildash at 5:27 PM on May 23, 2006

Response by poster: Never heard of RightFields ... Checking it out.

The free version of Movable Type? I long ago gave up trying to understand what that was.

No seriously, this is a single user, for a commercial website. What's still free? 2.661? And I really want two users, don't I, me the admin and them the user who can't break anything.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:49 PM on May 23, 2006

i'll throw out a shout for wordpress. Nothing really to learn except for it's structure. Since it's completely coded in PHP/mysql you should feel at home.

it has a great theme management system and your files (php, imgs and css) will be stored not in the main directory but in wp-content/themes/yourthemename/. I don't think you'd run into too many problems, and if you have any questions the wordpress codex is great and so are the support forums.

Not much fluff you have to worry about. If you want fancy stuff you can check out the plugins and make all your pages dynamic by creating a "page" through your admin interface.
posted by freudianslipper at 6:08 PM on May 23, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks freudianslipper -- the key question about WordPress seems to be, can it do that database stuff I want, i.e. can I assign a particular page the following:

• "drycleaner"
• "north"

and quickly write three other pages which list

• drycleaners anywhere
• drycleaners in the north
• businesses of any kind in the north

is that out-of-the-box functionality for WP or plugin type functionality?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:17 PM on May 23, 2006

The free and paid versions of MT are the same, currently on version 3.2. The difference is in the number of authors and paid users get support -- both have unlimited blogs, etc. I'll defer to the website for the rest, but feel free to email with any questions.
posted by anildash at 1:49 AM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: Will do.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:40 AM on May 24, 2006

Excellent guides to setting up Django on Dreamhost and Djanjo for non-programmers.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:00 PM on August 6, 2006