Is there a good Google Sites competitor? [closed]

Is there a good Google Sites competitor? [closed] - content-management-system

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A client of ours is a membership organization and they are looking for functionality that seems closely aligned with Google Sites capabilities.
They want a system where their members can have a content managed site of their own that one or more admins can create by submitting a simple form.
The member organization could then add/remove pages, add/edit/remove content, add their own users, modify their color scheme and layout.
They would like the ability to have a url structure like, "member_org_url_to_be_named/member_name" - but it could also be subdomains (i.e. "member_name.member_org_url_to_be_named").
So they need a security hierarchy to be able to have different levels of users:
Admin - can add/edit/remove sites, users, etc.
Member Admin - can add/edit content within their site, add users that are also able to add/edit content within their site.
Member user - can add/edit content within their site.
From what I've seen and read, Google Sites seems to be able to handle this functionality. It's a little difficult to get in touch with someone there who would be able to tell me this definitively, however. So I'm wondering if there are any other platforms that might be able to handle this workflow.
Obviously, I'd love to hear from anyone who has implemented a system like this before. I'd also love to hear from anyone who has actually used Google Sites.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google. I don't know much about Sites though.)
Have you actually tried to use Google Sites for this? It strikes me that it shouldn't take very long to give it a whirl. If you have any Sites-specific questions, the Google Sites help centre and user forum are probably good starting places.

This sounds like content management with roles. Drupal fits this purpose pretty much perfectly.
http://drupal.org/

I've used Google Sites (the free "standard edition") a very little bit, it was easy to setup + easy to reconfigure my DNS records via nearlyfreespeech.net to setup CNAME and MX records to a domain I own.
The mailing list stuff works nicely. The site editing is very easy for anyone to use but a bit slllllooooowwww and somewhat clumsy, and doesn't appear to "play nicely" with the concept of uploading/downloading via FTP/SFTP/etc. I don't like the idea of my group's users spending all this time developing a website, that I can't backup or transfer to someone other than Google if I run into an issue.
I don't know if these issues are addressed in the pay version of Google Sites. For the moment I'm definitely keeping the email-mailing-list features going, but looking around elsewhere for something similar that works better.
(If you find something please post!)

Related

GitHub page can only be found on google when typing "username" AND "github" [closed]

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I have created a personal website using the Academic Theme for Hugo. I am hosting the page on GitHub.
The site works, but it is unfortunately very hard to find on google. Specifically, if I type my username followed by "github", it appears as the first result. However, it doesn't show at all if I type just my username into google. I went through until page 8 of the results.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. May be useful to know that Google Console has not found an issue. Also, the page shows up as the first result on both Bing and DuckDuckGo when typing just my username.
This is the page: https://michagermann.github.io/

This has to do with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Basically how search results work is that google has bots that go through the accessible page is on the internet and compile keywords for each page it hits, these are then linked to the search phrases people use. So username + github is an easy one as that is the majority of your url, however just your username will have many other results from others that have your username in their webpages, some of them multiple times, others once but have been around for a lot longer. There are a lot of variables to SEO but there are guides which can help with this.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
Googles Starter Guide for SEO
-- edit --
I would also hazard a guess and say that google is pulling back a lot of your publications which bing and duckduckgo aren't, and as these will likely have been accessed more will I expect be higher in the search algorithm.
--- edit 2 ---
Link Building
This is very important for SEO, this is where external sites link to your sites. The easiest way to achieve this is through your personal profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Github ect.
Writing Blogs can also have other people link to your profile and thus increase your link building.
DO NOT PAY FOR LINK BUILDING
Link building for Google is based off of high quality sites - every site has a ranking, a low quality site will have a much lower affect on your SEO score, and thus not result in any noticeable movement. Paid link building usually involves low quality sites
Site Maps
If you have a multi-page site (Yours isn't) then site maps help search bots navigate the important pages easier, and can help increase rankings.
Meta Tags
These are extremely important, although some tags are more important than others, title(included with the element), author and description are some of the more important meta tags.
I'm not an SE optimizer and haven't done much SEO for a few years so this is from old experience and I don't guarantee it is all correct as of writing, however I expect it hasn't changed that often. SEO is a complex area and search engines have different preferences. But hopefully this helps. A lot of SEO comes through time rather than right away through link building so that is also something to keep in mind

First of all know about how the google search works....and if you simply type your name it won't show your website as such because there may be multiple highly prioritized websites are there with this name in the first place......
And if type yourname.github its nothing but the direct address of your page so that's why it is shown in the first place

Extremely lightweight CMS with inline editing? [closed]

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I help make promo/event websites that shoot up and come down anywhere from a month to six months.
Clients ask for minute text edits a lot during the creation period, and during the live period they sometimes like to swap out images or text every few weeks to function as updates. It's inconvenient for the client to do this all through emails and phone calls.
I have been asked to do research to find a CMS that will let the clients do minor edits like this.
I was pointed to big dogs like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3, but these are all very heavy-handed.
I settled on trying ImpressPages because of its inline editing and undo log but it too began to ask for a lot - I tried to adapt an old project to it but it insists all content calls and form submissions adhere to its framework so it's definitely not easy to drop in.
I don't need a CMS that handles page creation or any sort of overhead.
What I need is a CMS that doesn't care about any facet of the page other than editing text, swapping images, and probably a pretty secure login. Since we take care of the backend and it's only live for a few months it doesn't need detailed project maintenance and certainly the client should not have access to that.
Do you have any suggestions for lightweight CMSs that are easy to pop into a project?
11/11/14 EDIT:
Results so far:
I think a good alternative for this problem is Create.js and one of its children ContentBlocks, however they require node.js and REST which I have yet to really figure out. Quite different from what I know. However, this system allows for editing in-line on the page and saving right there, with no overhead menus or settings or anything. Just edit divs. Here's a link:
http://createjs.org/
children projects can be found by snooping the github

There are more CMS options out there than almost any other web technology. That said some are more and less easy to customize. It sounds like you've steered away from most of the common answers, although I really think you might want to look at WordPress again, with a little setup work and customizing the admin page it can be super lean and "dead simple" like Tumblr's interface.
That said there are a few more good options that are very light and yet full of potential!
Database back end
Perch – This one isn't free, but it's not expensive. It is built with the designer in mind (by other designers) and is also built with the end user in mind, thus it is light, flexible and the interface is not daunting to the non dev. And has very very good support.
Cake PHP – A lovely bit of OSS work, that will need some setting up by you or another dev, but once you have boilerplate/templates it should be simple to roll and unroll small sites.
Anchor – Another OSS project that seeks to be powerful but slight in it's footprint, but probably more structured (less pre-dev time required) than Cake PHP.
Flat file
No DB required, the user just puts their stuff in folders (like on their desktop) and then they get webpages - kinda brilliant and maybe just what you're looking for.
Pico – Uses PHP templates, but a simple file folder based structure, so there is very little learning curve to running or setting up the site.
Kirby – While this is not free, it is very well supported by original developers. It is designed with the goal of being dead simple to use and support.
Dropplets – This one is very very simple, possibly too simple, but there is very little to make a confusing interface out of. This one is very blog focused.
Hope that helps guide your search, as this list is far from exhaustive.

I have also been looking something easy and lightweight for clients to use for days. There are tons of options but there always seems to be something a bit off.
Finally yesterday I found two very good candidates:
Really impressed with both of them have been developing with Drupal, Conrete5, Wordpress.. but this is what simple sites need! Wow!
TidyCMS
http://tidycms.com/
Free / cheap license
Static pages hosted on your site + a connector that connects to the hosted editor. Basic package free.
"TidyCMS is a flat databaseless CMS that makes HTML-files editable and dynamic."
A Finnish startup who are creating a super simple product!
It could not be easier you just throw in a static html-template and put a TidyCMS-conector folder and browse to the subfolder. The subfolder connects to the hosted editor. The editor lets you click on page elements to make them editable. The interface is pretty okay. A bit rough though still, with some glithes. Seems to be in heavy development, but it's already pretty usable. The UI hangs sometimes, for instance when saving changes and you have to reload.
Instant Update
http://instant-update.com/
Open Source! Free! GNU General license.
This seems to be more mature. Also handles static html/php -files but the CMS seems to need a database. The inline editing is pretty good and stylish. The system also has backend with simple user and page management. Still in development by a small group of guys. I'm sure they'll welcome more people.

What are the questions that needs to asked before choosing a CMS? [closed]

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I want to choose a CMS that will be part of my infrastructure for my company websites.
What do you think are the questions I need to ask before I really choose one?
Choosing a CMS is almost like choosing a framework.
Thanks

Your two starting questions should be about people:
Who will be building and maintaining the technology? If your organisation's IT department is in love with Microsoft solutions, then find the best .NET CMS that meets your needs (Umbraco, Kentico, DotNetNuke etc). If you have no money but you're fairly IT-savvy and have a couple of Web designers on tap to help you out, then a designer-friendly free system like MODX Revolution makes sense. If some of your people have worked with a big system like Drupal, then that's your leading candidate.
Who will be adding content to the system? Internal users will want an interface that rewards use - it must react fast, protect the user from losing their work, make content easy to find, and ease tasks like creating new pages and including links and images. That might push you towards CMS Made Simple, or even WordPresss if your needs are otherwise modest. And if most of the content will be contributed by a user community, the CMS must support a strong forum capability.
After that, take a look at Step Two's document How to evaluate a content management system. These guys know their stuff. You may even want to buy their Content Management Requirements Toolkit. Their evaluation document gives you a starting point for your evaluation.
Do bear in mind, though, that not all requirements are created equal. For instance, many CMS texts stress the importance of complex workflow and versioning. In large publishing businesses, these sometimes matter a lot. In most smaller organisations they don't matter as much. Your workflow may consist of one person putting content into the system and another approving it to go live - the sort of task that can be accomplished with a staging server and email. Versioning may be adequately covered by a regular back-up.
And remember above all that when you put a CMS in an existing organisation, you're engaging in politics. You need to find out what people want, show you're delivering it, explain to them the considerations which they don't know about but which have to be taken into account, and convince them you're acting to bring them the best possible tool. Good luck.

Best examples of CRUD Web Form Design [closed]

Here are some examples of UI patterns:
Input Controls
Stacked Tabs
Inline Input Adder
One Page Wizards
Overlay
Generally each section will explain the pattern, how and why to use, and gives a handful of graphics as real world examples.
As an additional resource, you can also visit ThemeForest's admin template site and browse through their many products and get pictures and live tours of very well designed and styled admin pages. I personally have used a few of these templates for data heavy sites.
Hope these help you out some.
7/25/18 Update: While it is hard to keep links from nine years ago working, it seem that the website which hosted the UI examples is now gone. Read Farewell from Patternry for further information.

Links worth a look:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/04/17/web-form-design-modern-solutions-and-creative-ideas/
http://somerandomdude.com/articles/design/form-design/

The Dynamic Data Web Site that you can create using .Net 3.5 is pretty handy. Good clean dynamic CRUD ability and yet very customizable. Routing makes it possible to default to generated pages when needed and custom pages if you choose to create them.
Dynamic Data Web Site

These guys have really nice examples-
http://wufoo.com/gallery/

To me, the Django admin interface is a good example of a CRUD interface.

I've just stumbled onto this one
there you will find a couple of REALLY GREAT templates!!!
http://www.webappers.com/2009/09/18/20-professional-web-admin-templates-on-themeforest/

What is the "best" free CMS for my needs? [closed]

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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.