I am looking for a CMS which allows me to code normal html but also define "fields" like {{header}} for example, which can later be managed inside an admin panel for easy customisation for the customer.
The basic idea is to be as free as possible as frontenddeveloper but also having a nice backend where the customer can edit the content (images, text) easely without touching the code.
Wordpress may offer this possibilities but is clearly an overkill. Grav couldn't fullfill my needs either.
Any recommendations?
Personally I love CraftCMS - basically it has no frontend logic, but allows you to create very convinient forms for the admin / content creators.
I always dislike having to write your own modules / plugins for most cms systems to add your own 'Slideshow' etc. - it takes way too long. Besides the CMS Backends tend to confuse the customers.
In craft you basically create the forms for the content types in the backend and create a really simple and intuitive backend for your customer that way. It comes with very handy features.
Everything the customer doesn't need to change - you can simply write in html. The amount of extra code between a craft cms page and pure html page is minimal making your life as frontend developer much easier.
Have a look at the Gantry framework. You can use the framework inside WordPress, Joomla or Grav and it basically adds a templating system where the developer builds the modular components (e.g. slider, header, video); You code those into a template, and then parameterise the fields you want to open to the user; the user drags that component where they want it in the layout builder; they can enter data to populate those fields.
I think Gantry is one of the best examples I've seen of empowering the content admin while not hindering the developer, and it sounds like what you are looking for. I would recommend downloading the helium skeleton
theme since its pre-populated with examples for you to understand.
And in terms of being 'light weight' I would recommend you combine that with Grav since it is more light weight and simpler to work with than the others.
Related
my company is considering to use OpenOlat (LMS) in conjunction with a CMS.
The idea ist that our educaters will use OpenOlat as it is, while some functions (like displaying multiple choice tests) will be handled by a CMS. This way we try to keep things simple for our customers...
Problem is that I don´t know much about CMS (an programming in general) since I´am more like an expert on education... and also (aus usual) time ist pressing...
So my question is, if someone has tried this yet and if there are any suggestions which CMS to choose, especialy from a programmer´s perspective...
OpenOLAT has a fully embedded testing tool which also supports multiple choice tests and a question item pool to share question items with other authors or for building your own question pool. Assessment is not a typical scenario for a CMS, it is a use case for a LMS like OpenOLAT.
In OpenOLAT you can also configure two sites with permanent content. This is very often used as a simple intranet/extranet solution without the need for an additional CMS. If your emphasis is on elearning rather than static web site content you should consider this path.
This is clearly the most simple solution for your customers as they only have to get familiar with one single system.
Cheers
Florian
I have a web site project, a mixture of complex dynamic pages and authored CMS-managed content. I have the tools for the complex dynamic part and would like a CMS that allows me to call it to retrieve content that's been approved, i.e. for web site inclusion.
To be clear, I need the complex dynamic part to be the master and the CMS-managed content to be served up as and when I want it.
I had thought they'd be loads of options around this - it being an obvious (to me) thing to want to do. I'd also thought that CMS's would naturally publish API's (web service based ideally) to enable this...but my research so far doesn't seem to show this. Hopefully I'm just missing a trick. Can anyone help?
I've looked, btw, at openText, Alfresco, Jahia, Enfold, Percussion, Interwoven, EPIServer, Ektron to name a few.
Ideally, I'd like an open source CMS solution if there is one, definitely can't afford the big $ that some of the vendors are looking for.
Am I right in assuming you are wanting to use an API or Service to retrieve content from the CMS that has been through some approval process?
This is definately possible with EPiServer, through either the code API or, if more appropriate, a webservice, although I think the price might be an issue here.
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.
I'm planning to build a website that has the following in the first Phase
Events List
Events Management by admin
Register for events (buy tickets)
News List
Manage News
Support Multi-Language
In the next phase i would like the site to be a social networking site (considering elgg)
I want the website to be light and fast. I've tried Joomla/Drupal. They seem to be slow.
Any recommendations for a framework/CMS?
I've been using Textpattern for a CMS based website I am developing, and so far it seems like it can handle all of the CMS work I push at it while staying out of the way as far as code. It has a bit of a learning curve like most CMS programs, but is pretty easy to pick up. You'll still have to build out the functionality for events (look into the plugin ZemEvents), as Textpattern starts out with just the base install and you add on to it as needed. You may need to handle E-commerce differently though, not sure if there are any plugins for Textpattern that could handle that.
I, personally second LocalPCGuy’s recommendation since Textpattern is, in my eyes, the most underestimated CMS in the market. I especially love it for its simple XML-like templating tags.
Talking about easy templating you might also want to check out the Python based Django framework. This is, by far, the fastest framework/cms I ever came across.
I'm creating a site for a video store and it needs to be CMS. I'm doing this for free so I need to use a free CMS like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla.
Do I need a new CMS, a plugin or some PHP of my own?
What I need:
User accounts
Categories
Custom post
Here's the site as it stands with WP: http://sundancevideo.ca. Right now an experimental site to try to work this out.
What I've done now, is created a "Draft" that includes a template table with images and text and so on. The user would then have to copy everything, past into a new post and replace necessary. This really isn't working well. As you may notice by the condition of the posts.
What I would prefer is if it was integrated into the WP UI. Like a field for "Description" and field for "Image" where they can upload the images as necessary. This would then generate post, with a table including all the information and images, for as many movies that were added in the UI.
I would suggest taking a look at PodsCMS as a great way to implement real CMS functionality in to WordPress. It allows you to create various content types, relate these content types, and more importantly live outside of the "WordPress bubble".
You'll find a fairly good codex and user guides (the ones authored by Johnathan Christopher are a great start). There is a solid API for this in the event that you need to integrate Pods in to an existing plugin or one you are creating. There are also developer and user contributed packages for Pods and there is even a YouTube video package you may want to check out.
PodsUI (soon to be merged with PodsCMS) allows you to create administration menus in WordPress very easily and allows you to pretty much make it look and feel how ever you want.
Flutter is a dead project and while it may be a little more user friendly than PodsCMS it lacks in in development, support, and over all usability.
Feel free to drop in the Pods Chat or # them on Twitter.
As for the user accounts you should read up on WordPress user roles/capabilties and also check through the WordPress PHPxref. A lot can be done in the way of using WordPress' current user system and you can even add other meta information for users if needed.
If you want a full CMS backend then you can't use Wordpress without extensive customising. You might want to check out pods cms for Wordpress which is an extension to attempt to turn Wordpress into a CMS. However, I have tried using it before and you will still be left with a confusing UI for your users. It will allow you to do the custom fields you want, however.
If you want full control over the UI, you will have to use either your own PHP or Drupal. Which one depends on how complex the project is and how much experience with Drupal you have had. If it is simple and your Drupal experience is limited, definitely go with your own PHP because Drupal is hard to learn. I think it would take you more time to learn Drupal than it will be to get a simple interface going with PHP.
I think this post will be helpful, depending on your experience, if you go with your own code.
i don't have particular suggestion for you custom need. Except beware for how much you give permission for your member. Please make sure they were a contributor and not author. In wp, the contributor role has no ability to publish. They have ability to post something just as a review. Thus, Administrator can review them and then published if it appropriated.
The problem with this situation is when you need them to upload things. The member with contributor role has no ability to upload video, image, or song. You have to custom this.
But if you only need their snippet or HTML link to the video (probably in youtube), then you don't have to change default wordpress role.
sorry if i mislead by your question. just trying to help as much as i can
I guess it depends on your shop's needs. I understand wanting to use wordpress, and you can do it, but at this point it almost makes people think... 'why?' If youre just going to use paypal and have a few products it might be a good idea but I think carts like zencart and oscommerce that are much better suited to store's needs. Though they are a little older. Magento and opencart are more modern, and all free. Though I've only ever used zen cart. None of these are terribly hard to set up. I guess You could always have you wordpress from page and use a link to your carts store menus.
MODx is brilliant for customisability - it was designed from the ground up to be extensive. It runs on PHP and MySQL.
You can create your own templates, add fields to those templates that appear in the UI when someone wants to create or edit a page based on that template. It has widgets for different data types, like images, dates etc that your users can use to add data to a page.
You also have full control over the HTML because you write the templates yourself. If the core code doesn't do what you need, you can write snippets in plain PHP to change the behaviour.
I've used it on a few projects over the past 3 years and I love it. I'd recommend MODx Evolution (v1.0.3) as that's stable. There's a brand-new rewritten version (Revolution 2.0.0) which is a release candidate at the moment, so you might want to have a play with that instead.
I reckon once you know MODx enough to create the site design, it'd be fairly easy to implement an off-the-shelf shopping cart into it (there may even be a MODx plugin that already does this.)