Your Favorite Free CMS

[divinedesigns1]

what is your favorite "free" cms? mines is joomla "i would like to create my own someday"

This is just to say which one your perfer, this isnt a topic to critisize the cms

[justsomeguy]

I've got a question for you: how do you decide what text to place inside quotes or a quote box?

[divinedesigns1]

thats something i can not explain, umm let me try to explain it, how i know what to put in quotes is basic on what i think people going to over look, so say for example im talking about how to write a good php write and i stated you need to know your basic first, most likely some people will over look you need to know the basic first and keep on going so i would just place it in a quote...............if that makes sense, i just know which goes where. why you ask tho?

[justsomeguy]

why you ask tho?

Because it appears to be completely random and doesn't follow the rules regarding normal use of quotes (e.g. something that someone said, that you are quoting, or marking a word or phrase as having a different or special meaning, or irony). I just find it sort of weird that you'll put part of what you're saying inside quotes, and part of what you're saying inside a quote box. In other words, I think it's weird that you quote yourself the first time you say something.

[divinedesigns1]

...........k.............

[Krewe]

I prefer to make my own. It gives me the freedom to give customers/myself the features we need and to not have the features we don't. Plus I learn a lot when i don't rely on a third party.

[Guest So Called]

I made my own too, sort of like WordPress but without guest comments. (No comments = no comment spam.) I probably would have been better off with WP but then I would have never learned as much about PHP and MySQL.

[davej]

Well, I am curious about this topic because I don't know how easy it is to implement/modify/customize these "pre-fab" offerings. If WordPress is great except for guest comments can't you simply kill them? Also what are the top CMS's ? Thanks.

[Guest So Called]

I didn't set out to design my own CMS, I just started writing a website and never knew when to stop. I never added comments because I was never interested in them. I would have been better off to just install WordPress and be done with it. I probably will one of these days. Actually my site has a lot of things WP doesn't have, things like advanced logging and powerful search engine analysis/control. One of these days I'm probably going to write a few WP plug-ins and add all my fancy stuff to WP, then switch over. I'll put my plug-ins out for the public as donation-ware. I think anybody who wants a CMS should find the one most suited for their purposes, and use it. The only one I know anything about is WordPress (including internals) and it's a pretty good platform for what it is. Only thing is you have to stay on top of security because once a flaw becomes known the hackers are relentless. I can see WP attacks in my log all the time. In fact I even know when there's a new vulnerability out because I see the typical scan background change. I ran WordPress for a couple years with parallel content to my main site and I liked the way WP works, and nice appearance too since there's so many themes available.

[justsomeguy]

I would stay away from WordPress in particular just because it gets attacked so often.

[Guest So Called]

I'm not so sure it's that bad. As I said, you just have to stay on top of the security. There's a lot of eyes on WP so attacks and vulnerabilities get recognized pretty quickly, and lots of code support so they get addressed quickly too. Unfortunately you have to be well enough informed to apply the patches or upgrade your version level quickly once a vulnerability has been identified and fixed. I guess it's sort of a cattle mentality. One or two beefs get attacked by wolves, and eaten, the rest go on to chew more grass. That's going to be a problem with any free CDS/CMS. They're free because they are open source and have a lot of volunteer work, but because of the open source the hackers/attackers get to peek inside and spot flaws, and make use of them. With any such system it's a good idea to backup your database frequently. I was never attacked when I ran WP but I backed up every time I added a new article, so even if my site was attacked/defaced it would have taken me only perhaps 20 minutes to replace the files and restore the database. Those who add content more frequently need to backup more often, particularly if you want those comments preserved. Might be a good idea to have a cron job to backup daily or twice daily, but I don't get crons with my shared hosting account.

[justsomeguy]

I'm not so sure it's that bad.

I didn't say it's bad, I said it gets attacked often. Part of the reason is because a lot of people don't bother to update it. Another part of the reason is because a lot of the plugins have problems rather than WordPress itself. Look at how many of these exploits contain the word "plugin": http://goo.gl/cOvYK This of course leads to things like this: http://www.zdnet.com...d-malware/11008 Here's a nice example that can result in the entire system becoming compromised, and effects every version except the current stable version (3.3.2): http://www.cvedetail.../CVE-2012-2400/ So WordPress can be a good way to go, but if you're going to use something that has a database of published vulnerabilities and exploit scanners ready to go, then you need to understand that you need to keep everything updated. If that's not something you want to do then WordPress might not be the best choice for you. Other than that, I personally hate working in WordPress. The code structure and architecture design feels like something that someone created straight out of college and never bothered to fix, but that's just my opinion.

[Guest So Called]

Well that's pretty much why I quit running WP with my main site and duplicate content. I wasn't getting that much benefit from the WP side and decided that I didn't want to have to stay on top of vulnerabilities. I'm not totally thrilled about their design either, but I figured out how to get my hooks in it and I don't have to worry about maintaining their code and fixing their bugs. I had an earlier version of some of my fancy logging stuff working as a plug-in (although that's far behind now). Once I had the hooks in all I had to do was keep track of the hooked code and change the hook if they changed the code. At least for my application they are not very well designed to aid plug-in authors. I don't mind modifying their code too much, but I've been wondering if I go public with my plug-in, how many people will be able to edit in the necessary hooks? In fact my most important place to hook was right in the beginning of their index.php. I could have hooked in much later but their code apparently intentionally destroys some data I needed, as a security measure. I guess it's sort of "if we don't need it let's throw it away, because maybe a hacker will find out some way to use it against us." But I still think it's an okay package provided anybody who runs it stays on top of security and keeps to latest version.

[davej]

I am on the hook to provide my club with a website. I think all my club needs is a log-in, a message board, a photo album, some simple file storage, and a calendar of events. At what point do you decide that an open source CMS is justified, and if so how would you even choose from the dozens of such offerings? Thanks.

[Guest So Called]

Dave I think you could do everything you want using SMF (Simple Machines Forum) with various modification packages they offer, all for free. Added benefit, their code is IMO pretty damned well written, and very easy to add other people's modifications or your own modifications. They have a mod package manager that handles all the script modifications automatically although of course the mod author has to figure that stuff out. But once coded you can add and delete mod packages easily. I myself used SMF for a while as a cheap 'n dirty CDS. Rather than use the forum feature I just made it all read only and I was the only one to post articles. I've heard of others taking SMF as CDS a lot further, and it's easy to change the whole look with various themes and styles.

[davej]

Dave I think you could do everything you want using SMF (Simple Machines Forum) with various modification packages they offer, all for free. Added benefit, their code is IMO pretty damned well written, and very easy to add other people's modifications or your own modifications.

Is SMF simpler than some of these other alternatives? It looks plenty complex to me.

[Guest So Called]

You don't really need to know their code to use the software. It's designed to be used by beginners who have no programming experience. Read the download and installation instructions. It shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so to upload and install to a typical shared host provided you have the usual PHP, MySQL... If you decide to use it, install a second copy (perhaps on a subdomain) so that you can test things before going live with them. They have good support too, should be able to help you with any of your questions. I think it's about the same complexity as installing WordPress, and a little harder than installing phpMyAdmin.

[davej]

It is possible to evaluate these things without installing them? Can I just go look at a typical installation somewhere? Thanks.

[Guest So Called]

First of all just visit their main site: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php That's an example of a really big SMF forum. Then look down to General Community -> Hosts, hosting... -> Free Hosts & Hosting. You can sign up for a free forum (preinstalled) which is paid for by required advertising banners. You can just check it out and play with it, no need to install, you can create some member accounts or have friends join you. They'll delete your forum if 30 days passes with no new posts. It would be a good way to experiment before installing on your own server (which is really easy). It's sort of like blogspot.com where you can have a free blog, same type of free service paid by advertising banners idea.