Design Principles for a Better Content Management System - content-management-system

May be the question is so simple for you. But many times I feel it is much complicated. Everyone would have started their website with a custom cms and later moved to Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla or something similar.
I used to look for a better book or blog posts which has design decisions made for the cms to make it such a way that it can be extended. Some of the books that seems interesting to me are
PHP 5 CMS Framework Development
Pro Zend Framework CMS
It will be great to see if you have came across such books or do you recommend any other books. I am not just looking for PHP, but I am interested to read any sort of books, which will help me to build the next blogger.
Things that make me interested are
Blogger
drupalgardens
Tumblr
and similar stuffs.
Thank you

Related

Seeking a roadmap for becoming a web developer

I am planning to learn web development during these summer holidays so that I can do some freelancing once I learn it, but I am a bit confused as to where to start and on a few terms. I was hoping to receive some recommendations about what to learn and in what order.
I'm doing my bachelors in Computer Science, have done a lot of C++ so I have a fair amount of concept for programming language. I've done a course of database, so I know a decent amount of database and SQL.
I also know a fair amount of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP (very basic PHP, just enough for interaction with MySQL).
An obvious path to me is to improve my PHP skills. but then there are frameworks, and CMS. I have read online but I can't quite grasp as to what exactly a framework or CMS is? and is there something other than a framework or CMS? which to learn first? Should I just learn a framework/CMS first?
Also, there seem to be a lot freelance projects for WordPress, so when it comes to CMS I would rather do that.
A framework usually provides premade code that you can use to "speed up your workflow" in the long run, once you've learned how to use the framework. It's not necessary for everything. I've been developing without any particular frameworks for years, though could probably benefit eventually from doing so.
A CMS (Content Management System) is the back-end or administration section of a website that the webmaster/company/client uses to insert content onto the site. It's an interface for the non-technical, which makes changing pages / updates / products etc easy. A good PHP based, free CMS to look at is Joomla, or you could look at WordPress. Joomla generally takes no more than a couple of days to learn how to use.
Hope this helps.

Good CMS for beginners

I'm trying to build a simple web page which does not require complex functions. My question is what would be a good CMS for building such kind of web pages. I haven't done any work using CMS but I've experience working with Codeigniter. As far as i know Codeigniter is a frame work not a CMS. So what would be a good CMS for me to begin with. Thanks.
Umbraco provides a friendly interface, great community, good interface and documentation, and a mature approach to content management. It is open source and requires Microsoft IIS for hosting. Easy to program templates with razor syntax and easy to define content types.
The go-to CMS for the most basic sites seems to be Wordpress.
Drupal/Joomla give you more power but need more knowledge to use to their fullest extent.
The main downside of Wordpress is that unless you put some effort in your site can end up looking like everyone else's Wordpress site.
Drupal and Joomla are two extremely popular options
I've been particularly impressed out how easy it is to create impressive looking web pages with Joomla:
http://community.joomla.org/showcase/sites.html
IMHO...
joomla is good cms as well as easy for beginner

Which CMS, if any, would be best suited for a database-driven website?

For educational purposes, I am delving into some web development. What I have in mind right now is a website where users can submit as well as view benchmark scores for CPUs, GPus etc. As is evident, this will be heavily driven by a database which will store all the scores etc.
I have programming experience with OOPs (C++, C#), and am not too worried about picking up PHP. However, I feel intimidated by front-end design (HTML, CSS etc.), and for that reason am shying away from developing the website from scratch.
I'm using MS WebMatrix, but I'm not sure which CMS will be best suited for me. Currently, I've reviewed the following: DotNetNuke, Umbraco, Joomla, Drupal; but haven't been able to pinpoint one yet.
Any suggestions which will be best suited for my kind of website?
Most widespread like Wordpress and Drupal CMS (and others) are extensible, meaning that you can create your own content types following the imposed workflow of each one's architecture. So the best suited for you will be the one that take less time learning.
I will recommend you Wordpress because I found that the learning curve is minimal if you can read their PHP source code, that is no need to read a book in its nth edition to cover to cover.
This page is a good start point to create a post type for Bechmarks. But again you could accomplish the same with other CMS, say Drupal. A sibling site of SO is devoted solely to WordPress.
hope that helps!

Expression Engine CMS

I’m looking at using Expression Engine for a new site I’m developing does anyone have any experience of using EE, good or bad?
I’ve looked at some other CMS but found they are quite big and although you get everything, I like EE as it looks like you can streamline it to exactly what you want your users to use?
The main feature I need is to not be taken away from the HTML and CSS and not feel restricted on what I design or relying on plugins to achieve certain aspects of the site.
The ability to create snippets of code and include them into a main template or page is really appealing. I looked at other CMS but they seem to focus more on creating pages where I would like to make up a page from varouis custom created snippets?
I come from a asp and MS SQL background rather than a php and my SQL do you think that would cause me any problems?
I've used ExpressionEngine before and found it to be extremely easy to get your head around compared to other CMS products such as Drupal. Plus, you have a lot more freedom with your designs.
One of the best resources I found on the web, is a site called train-ee.com by Mike Boyink. This is the first tutorial I did on ExpressionEngine (when I was first learning) and he goes into great detail while keeping it extremely simple:
http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/category/building-a-small-business-site/
Hope this helps.
Dan
Jemes,
I have been building websites on EE for a few years now and it is hands-down the most flexible and powerful system to work with. You simply can build sites faster and customize it to fit clients needs better. As a company we were so happy with it that we build our own add-on for e-commerce (BrilliantRetail).
The community (#eecms on twitter) is fantastic and there are meetups, EECI conferences (Oct 2011), Devotee EE addons and a responsive parent company (#ellislab)constantly improving the platform.
Tony
If you have a few bucks to spend (48$), and if you are more of a visual learner, you might want to have a look at Ryan Ierlan's screencasts on Mijingo:
http://mijingo.com/products/screencasts/learning-expressionengine-2-complete-series/
I come from a asp and MS SQL background rather than a php and my SQL do you think that would >cause me any problems?
I have neither background and it didn´t caused my any problems. If you don´t want to build your own plugins you won´t need to know PHP. I can´t program PHP, but never felt the necessity to learn it.
I started with EE 0.95 backthan and never looked for any other CMS, because I could build all my sites with EE. I like the concept of haveing a comercial product that is build upon an open source foundation (code igniter) coupled with a very active and friendly community.

CMS Recommendations for Auto Dealership

This question was asked here but there wasn't any positive answer.
I am trying to help a friend to build a car dealer web page like Fantasy Junction.
I think they use CakePHP plus jQuery lightBox plugin.
So far I am thinking of either ModX CMS or Expression Engine.
My friend and I are not web developers, so something simple would be nice. This will also help because I've been thinking about learning a web framework. But there are so many! I don't want to pick up something that will be totally useless and cumbersome.
Any recommendation that will help the learning process would be great!
Try jT CarFramework (http://intersofts.com). It's a free solution and has online demo so you can check it out if it fits your needs.