I'm newbie in back-end development, that's why I want to start learning not from pure coding but choosing framework. Want to understand, how it works and start writing unique code by myself.
I've tried to choose framework basing on my future project and couldn't do it without the qualified help. I've searched before to write here, but couldn't find all I need. I don't ask for deep pieces of advice, manuals or so here. Hope, that you as more experienced can show me few ways and I'll choose the one by myself.
What I need to do with framework capabilities:
Forum:
one (or crossing) users' database with site
one header and footer for forum and site
changeble design themes (full CSS support)
groups' rights and design
user's rights and design
moderators, admins, plain users
forum sections, that could be nested
themes
visual post formatting
images inserting
symbols counting in posts
symbols counting for each user in theme
Site:
same to forum users, their groups and rights
user profile with settings
guest book
education module: timetable by user group, courses with lessons, homework sending/discussing, homework statuses, marks/journal of all users and user groups, educational statistics for user groups
public user profile with text form data and all marks, forum activity, statuses and other information
autoposting some data from user profile to forum and updating it when changing the profile
inactivation/activation/ban for user accounts
IP viewing for admins: can see, what users/forum's messages have the same IP
messenger: private chats, private and public chat groups, auto-adding users to chats by users' group
private user notes, that are visible only for admins
bonus accrual
store, when users can change bonuses for virtual goods and session of playing game for random gifts
visual map, where everyone can see all forum sections and what users are on them
plain newspaper: issues with structured articles (a la usual blog posts), commenting for users, offering article feature
I know, that it's so much, but project is mine. And it can be developing for a long time. If I need to study a year or few, it's okay.
How do you think, what frameworks have the most of modules for described functional? Please, don't argufy. Write here if you had experience (or you know somebody who had) of realising features, that're described above.
Programming language doesn't matter (because I'm noob in all of them), but I think about Ruby and PHP (and PHPBB forum). Others are ok too, if them can afford what I need.
Sorry if I unknowingly said something wrong. Tell me and I'll fix it.
Your wanting to build a lot for someone that knows nothing about any languages.
First you need to pick a platform/OS.. Windows or Unix/Linux?
From there, you can pick a Web Server to run on based on that OS.
Then that filters out what kind of language your going to write with.
EDIT:
When someone wants to be a mechanic, do they go to each mechanic shop and ask what is the best car to work on? Each mechanic would have a different answer. No one here, will be able to give you a non-bias answer. So here is what I like....
I write code in 18 languages and been have developed software for 25 years. I've written code for DOS, Windows, and Linux/Unix. Each language has it's own limitation and perfections, but I'm not a fan of open source and most Linux/Unix preferred languages even though some can run on Windows. I have a tendency to lean towards windows and enjoy back end development. I've written Web UIs in Angular, JSP, Java Spring Boot, WebFOCUS and ASP Classic. Now that you know more about me, here are my favorites.
I prefer Windows. I prefer C#. If I have to build a web UI, I prefer HTML 5/CSS3/Javascript with an ASP.NET/C# backend. I don't like bootstrap or jquery as I like to write with a small footprint as do most any older developer. The internet is full of garbage that isn't being used by most every site you go to, just so the developer can get a few shortcuts. Bootstrap and JQuery are just javascript libraries of which most sites can do what they want with 1/10 the code the client has to download, if they really knew Javascript.
There ya go, my bias opinion, take it or leave it, but most likely the only honest answer your going to get here.
Related
While I found quite some interesting suggestions on this site (the typical WP vs. Joomla) I just couldn't find an answer that could help me get started.
I know this is close to some of the other CMS questions but I'm missing specificities that need answering.
I'm looking for a CMS that can provide me with the following key functionalities, either through minimal programming or additional plugin installations. I'm stating this because it won't be just me, who can program, but also other trainers who are not technically inclined that will handle the site (in the future).
The functionalities I'm looking for:
Schedule management of training
Trainees of the club must check-in before or after the training to proof attendance, thus site must be mobile friendly. This is more proof-of-concept since not everyone has/wants a smartphone.
Each trainee has his own profile that logs said attendance
Possibility to provide feedback on training. For example: give a thumbs up on the last training, give a "yellow card" if the trainee misbehaved, two/three/four and you're prohibited from training ones/twice/thrice.
The attendance allows the trainee to become eligible for the next exam
Schedule management of said exam
Yearly subscription reminders for the trainees and if under-aged required parent information
Management of trainee profiles and subscriptions
Is the above possible through a CMS or is it too specific and will I need to program this myself? Either is fine by me but I'd first like to find out if a CMS can offer this.
I've decided to Go for a custom solution using ReactJS.
There are very good open-source solutions for the admin part and the open/client part is fairly simple so React is perfect for what I want to achieve. Additionally, it also challenges to think differently since I never worked with ReactJS before.
With ReactJS I have a lot of freedom in how I implement the above scenarios while at the same time have a lot of support available online in cause of issues.
I'm currently designing my very first Website for a small business Intranet (5 pages). Can anyone recommend the best way to manage content for the Company News section? I don't really want to get involved in day to day content updates so something that would be simple for the Marketing guy to create and upload a simple news article, perhaps created in MS Word, lets assume the author has no html skills.
I've read about Content Management systems but,
A. I won't get any funding for purchase and
B. Think it's a bit overkill for a small 5 page internal website.
It's been an unexpected hurdle in my plans, for something that I'd assumed would be a fairly common functionality I can't seem to find any definitive articles to suit my needs.
I'm open to suggestions (even if it's confirmation that a CMS is the only way to go).
Your requirements are : small site, no budget and the need for it to be easy for the marketing guy to upload a news item.
My recommendation would be to go with an all in one CMS e.g wordpress which has the kind of functionality you're talking about out of the box.
My guess is this organisation is just getting into "intranets" so something quick and simple that can be used to justify expenditure if value is returned is the key. Perhaps look at a plugin that automatically emails a summary of the blog posts to all employees once a week would be useful ?
There are many options and you can use any one of these:
Joomla
SilverStripe CMS
ModX
Cushy CMS
Frog CMS
Drupal
Additional in what Mr. Mckinnon said, you must keep in mind that if you don't want to get involved in daily updates of the people who is going to use the platform, you should consider the following:
What kind of data you want to be displayed
Who can view/modify that data
Who can create/remove data
How you will be organizing all that data
Your intranet should not be limited to display or create data, eventually all that data can turn into a beautiful Knowledge Base (KB) for your company that eventually your coworkers can share their solutions to common and rare problems that company can present eventually. This KB is amazing and time-saving, it is recommended to start it as soon as possible, so newcomers to your Company have access to it and see the most common issues and they can enter into production asap (we all know time is a luxury in every company regarding size).
Just keep in mind too, that all that knowledge and data is beyond valuable to you and your coworkers, so you should also consider some additional login credentials so your Company System Administrator can manage those credentials and also eventual audit for unauthorized access (if applicable).
I hope this helps from the administrative point of view
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I am looking to help out a non-profit get a website up and running.
Only, they don't just want a website with content, they also want to maintain a database of members, and allow those members to register and pay for classes/events/seminars held by the club.
It seems to me, that if all they wanted was to post content, nearly any of the available CMS's out there would fit the bill.
But the registration portion would require some customization.
I have considered just installing a basic CMS for them, and then creating separate web application for the registration section. And this would still work...
But if I wanted to hook into the users/roles from the CMS and use them in the registration side, I think I would have to have some way of either extending the CMS or easily using it's data in the sub-application.
I have been reading about the following CMS's:
Orchard
Umbraco
C1 Composite
All of them seem to have the ability to be extended, but I'm not certain how much "work" is involved to extend each. Given that my requirements are rather simple and the fact that I don't want to spend a ton of time doing this (it is free work, after all), does anyone have a recommendation?
I'd pass on Umbraco and C1 Composite, as they generally aren't user-friendly. I think Orchard is best, as it has the best feedback of them all. Umbraco is aimed more at developers who want to tweak a lot of things.
Orchard - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1978360/anybody-using-orchard-cms
Link - Reviews/Comparison of Open Source ASP.NET MVC CMS
Umbraco would be a very good choice because it:
is mature and has a proven track record.
is very easy to use for most use cases.
has a built-in member system which could (and should) be used for the member registration.
has a Big and friendly community always glad to help out.
has lots of plugins and extensions covering some special use cases.
If you will go outside of .NET and IIS, Joomla is another popular CMS in LAMP. This can be hosted in either Unix or Win environments. There's a large community, lots of implementations and robust API for plugins. I run it on MAMP on my Mac, and it also runs on WAMPServer, for development.
Last year I created a membership style site in Joomla using Mighty Extensions for a bed and breakfast listing service (http://uurehome.com). Mighty User and Membership was enough, this adds custom user fields and subscription plans. You do have to pay for Mighty Extensions. Payment for the B&B listings is done thru Paypal, Mighty Membership enables this.
The subscription plan feature is Mighty Membership is very good. You can have length of time, cost renewals, renewal nag messages. Could have written myself, but why at this cost :-)
Joomla can certainly handle the community side of a non-profit site, there's the usual assortment of content, discussions, news feeds and so on. It's also ok for mere mortals to administer.
Not so sure about comparing to Orchard, as I haven't kicked the tires on Orchard. I have done enterprise web CMS for a living in the past, so I am used to evaluating these sorts of products. Orchard looks similar to Joomla in how it works, based on the screenshots I see in the docs. One thing I will say with confidence is that it's easier to standup Joomla (or something LAMP/WAMP/MAMP) than on the MS Webmatrix. However, if you already have a Webmatrix provider, then it's similar. Said by someone that has done a bunch of IIS and pretty much all the web technologies going back to the beginning of time (that's 1993).
Another aspect of using Joomla for me in this project, which is for a small business, was knowing that there's a bunch of Joomla knowledgable web design shops this owner could use if I stop helping her. While I am not going to say there isn't a base of folks doing web design that are doing Orchard, my sense is that its much smaller than Joomla. This is a factor for me in helping non-profits, churches and so on, not leaving them in a place where I am the "only" person that could keep whatever it is running. Still, if there's even a couple of local web design shops that do Orchard, I'd say that's enough to feel comfortable.
We built http://aclj.org on Orchard with a custom membership implementation within to support millions of members. We do form processing through Kimbia for donations and petition signatures. We're very happy with the implementation and feel that Orchard worked out well for us as a platform. It is VERY extensible and we developed 32 custom modules in-house.
For a non profit organization it is unlikely to maintain a costly server where LAMP stack has both low cost server and some decent CMS which meets your requirements perfectly. Some of them are :
Drupal
Joomla
WordPress
Any of them are highly extensible, got a great community support , plenty of themes and modules readily available and you can get awesome things for free though there are some paid once too.
And if you want my recommendation i would go for Drupal as it provides :
Build in role management service.
Very matured and friendly community.
Great scalabilty.
Secured out of the box
And some more .......
Hope that adds a new dimension to your search :)
Best of luck
I would recommend wordpress for your requirement.
Advantages:
1. More forum support.
2. Easy to learn.
3. Very less server cost to host the site.
4. You will have N number of plugins and widgets etc...
Hope It gives some sense :)
I'm a front-end designer/developer whose weapon of choice for the back-end is WordPress. Up to this point all of my projects involving WordPress were fairly basic and it has handled everything beautifully. I just landed a new client that wants some extra functionality built into his next project and I'm hoping some of you WordPress wizards can give me some good advice while I'm putting together the quote.
I'm trying to limit the need for any subcontracting for the back-end functionality, so my question is whether or not WordPress can handle the following (via plugins or light custom manipulation):
The idea behind the site is to be a community calendar based on location that Health Care providers can log in and post their events to, as well as participate in discussions, blogs and all the other WordPress goodness. The specific functionalities that I'm unsure of the best way to accomplish are:
Full featured calendar that members with access can add their own events to - must be searchable by date/type of event/location etc
Event generator module for members that integrates with calendar - includes upload field for images and forms for details event info
Interactive map to filter both of the above by location (I'm assuming this will need to be flash, but I'd rather find another solution if possible)
I know there are other solutions out there that may be more suited to this than WordPress (Drupal, custom build, etc) but if it's at all possible to tackle this as a one man show then I'm going to charge it head-on!
Stack Overflowers and fellow WordPress fans...your insight would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time.
This graph grants your experience with your weapon of choice, but the results are still clear. You can still tackle this as a 1 man show, it will just take a bit of a learning curve to conquer the fundamentals of a CMS more suited to the task at hand. I'm sure plenty of WordPress affecionados will come along and strangle my reputation, but I've worked with both and have found that in terms of flexibility, WordPress is not king, and for the custom coding you are going to have to do (hope you have some PHP?), I feel that you will find it easier to integrate with another platform. This task will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish without writing code, even if there is a set of plugins that appear on the face to match your needs perfectly.
But anyway, since you probably don't really care that much about my opinion, for WordPress, your plugin options look like..
Calendar - Events Calendar
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/events-calendar/
The screenshots don't look terribly promising though.
Most plugins I have found are geared toward being administered from the admin panel, it may be difficult to provide a user interface to such plugins, and it does not look like the event calendar is an exception. An experienced developer should be able to hook into the event publishing code with relative ease, but it could be a frustrating experience for the inexperienced.
For interactive maps, the Google Maps API is very feature rich, and you should be able to adapt it to your suit your mapping needs, regardless of platform.
If you want all of your providers to have their own blog, etc, what was once the WordPress MU plugin, but is now core-bundled WordPress MS (multisite) is what you need.
This again may also prove rigid, and you may encounter difficulty trying to bend the iron of WordPress enabling all your multisite users to be able to post to a common community site. I've only built 2 platforms with MU, so I'm not positive about this.
To unapologetically reiterate my first point, what would be light custom code may turn impossibly frustrating using WordPress.
I like WordPress, and choose it often for my clients. I have never extended it to suit a larger project.
If you do decide to use it, I look forward to hopefully helping you with any questions you may have along the way, feel free to ask.
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I have the task to build a web-site for a smaller non-profit organization. I have a bit experience with ASP.NET but because ASP.NET hosting is rather expensive here in germany (we will also need a lot of webspace and traffic) and aslo because there are quite a hughe list of features I think I should go with a PHP/MySQL based CMS (correct me if I am wrong). The question is wich one? There are are so many free CMSs out there. If I tell you what I need, can you tell me what would be a good choice?
Here are my requirement (sorted by priority):
Ease of use (installation, configuration, maintainance) for me who builds the site but also for the members of the organisation they must be able to easily change the the content of some main pages, add supages, add a new mailinglist upload a file to the repository etc.
A membership/role management system. Based on the role of a member access to certain subpages, subforums or folders in the file management system etc. must be restricted. Only certain roles must be allowed to add new mailinglists or moderate the forum.
A mailingsystem that allows me or the members of the organistation to add new adresses, maillinglists or newsletters.
A file management system. Members should be able to upload arbitary files on the server and browse them via a web frontent. Access to folder should be restrictable based on the member rights.
A pulbic forum with private subforums.
Localization. As much as possible of the final site (if not everything) that is presented to the visitor of the site as well as to the members who maintain the site should be presented in german.
Good control over design/look and feel of the overall site. I should have good control over how I want the site to look like.
A lively community with enough momentum to find ressources and help when I am lost.
Extensibility. In case there are some smaller features missing or f the behavior of an existing feature is not quite the way I want it, it would be cool to easily add it myself.
As mentioned by others, Joomla might be a good option for you, although Wordpress may also work (and it's easier). However, I highly recommend that you check out OpenSourceCMS.com, which hosts demos for many of the free and open source CMS's, blogs, forums, shopping carts, etc. For most of them, you can try out both the admin and the frontend. Spend some time looking them over and then when you find some that you like, investigate them further by going to their websites.
Concrete5 is a new Content management system that is excellent. Easily themable, user friendly, great little dashboard for management
and it's open source
My vote would be Joomla. It has most fot he features you discussed, if not in the core as an extension, component or theme. I've set several up and rarely have to use any coding during setup, plus there's a vibrant community if you need help. It also integrates nicely with other 'best of breed' apps like BB forums, Coppermine photo gallery's and others.
Joomla! would seem to fit your needs, and I'd also suggest Kunena for the forum (which integrates with Joomla) and DOCman for the file management solution.
Well, I'd suggest Drupal for any sort of advanced web site. While Joomla! and similar systems are a bit easier to get started with, Drupal's a lot more flexible and extensible.
You want full control over theming? Or user authentication? Access control? Database queries? User picture scaling? Tagclouds?
It's there when you need it :)
I would go with Joomla too, even though I'm a ASP.NET developer.
Joomla is very flexible and customizable, so it fills all your need, because of the big community.
As a complete CMS noob, I asked myself the same question. I started with Drupal. Sure you can do lots of things with it. Very extensible and customizable.
But after implementing my first site in Drupal, I decided to create the next one in Joomla, to have a frame of comparison. Conclusion: Joomla is a looooooooooooot easier to get started and takes a lot less time to create a functioning website from scratch. Sure, for very big projects, Drupal lets you customize more, but for the type of project you suggest: I would recommend Joomla...
I found this PDF report comparing WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone quite helpful when I was asking myself the same question recently. Nice comments with a focus on non-profits - find the comparison summary/recommendation on pp 13-14.
Definitely read the report because it talks about the strengths/issues of each package - given your prioritized list of features, I'd recommend Joomla. I think you can do what you want with reasonable effort and good recent modules like DocMan. WordPress is awesome for a blogging site, but lacks a number (2,3,4,9) of your requirements, and though Drupal is powerful and flexible, it definitely has a steep learning curve. Plone even more so.
Good luck!
I'd vote for DotNetNuke, it's ASP.Net but that saves you the overhead of learning a complete new environment, language and tool just to implement a 'free' CMS, realistically how much is your time worth? It meets all your criteria, and there are currently 600,000 users - which means that you can just get on with it, somewhere someone has already worked on your problems for you.
As for expensive hosting, why not host in another country, I get US$5/month for DotNetNuke in the states, and I code from Australia.
Ive had some experience with Joomla. Highly customizable, plenty of plugins and one of the liveliest communities in development. It has a great admin panel also.
Well, as told by Tom Deleu, yes, though Drupal is very capable and strong CMS but it is tough and complicated to work on. Coming to another option of CMS that is Wordpress. Though it is very easy to develop a content based websites with wordpress but with very limited scope and flexibility.
As per your requirement my vote will also go to Joomla. It is very user friendly, optimized and a CMS you can rely on. Small applications as mentioned by you like "mailing system", "File system" etc. suits joomla more than others.