CMS recommendations other than Wordpress

[AGTDenton]

Wordpress seems to be the no.1 CMS at the moment but before I invest a load of time in configuring Wordpress I wondered whether there were some good alternatives out there.

What are web admins on here using or had previous experience with?
Last time I installed a CMS was about 10 years ago, I reckon a lot has changed since then.

At the moment I'm not sure what direction I want to take the site so I'm open to paid for or open source. I'm still toying with domain parking, some kind of feeds, affiliate programme or actually write a blog.

Cheers

[suedenim]

What platform(s) do you want to run this on?

[jim]

I'm interested in this as well. I spent some time working with Wordpress a few months back, and whilst it was easy to download and install add-ons, it didn't feel all that easy to customise at times. Not for free, at least.

[peterb]

Wordpress seems to be the no.1 CMS at the moment but before I invest a load of time in configuring Wordpress I wondered whether there were some good alternatives out there.

What are web admins on here using or had previous experience with?
Last time I installed a CMS was about 10 years ago, I reckon a lot has changed since then.

At the moment I'm not sure what direction I want to take the site so I'm open to paid for or open source. I'm still toying with domain parking, some kind of feeds, affiliate programme or actually write a blog.

Cheers

HEXUS uses vBulletin.

As an alternative to Wordpress you could use Joomla or Drupal, but I think you'l find them harder to configure than Wordpress, which can be got up and running very quickly. There are lots of free customisation packages available once it is up and running.

If you are self hosting...

If you want to host Wordpress on Windows, download WAMP http://www.wampserver.com/en/ which pretty much sets up and configures itself for you.

If you are hosting on Linux, you will need Apache, MySql and PHP. It takes a little more configuration, but isn't difficult. Most distributions have pre-compiled binaries for each application in the respective repository. If you want to be a bit more bleeding edge (or have greater control over the binary, you can compile the source code yourself, its a steepish learning curve if you have never done it - but very satisfying when you 9eventually ) get it working.

You may find one or two people here sneering at PHP and MySql. You can safely ignore them for Wordpress (and VBulletin, which also uses Apache, MySQ and PHP to great effect)

If you are using a hosting service, you may find that Apache, PHP and MySql are already installed (Wordpress may also be available, in which case configuration really is minimal.

[Jonatron]

HEXUS uses vBulletin.

Only for the forums.

There's so many CMSes to choose from, but wordpress is by far the most popular, and IMO the easiest to set up, use and customise.

[Saracen]

....

There's so many CMSes to choose from, but wordpress is by far the most popular, and IMO the easiest to set up, use and customise.

There certainly is a vast range, ranging from free and relatively easy, to extremely expensive and requiring a substantial development effort from a largish team.

I rather suspect the average bedroom-based self-publisher has different needs to, say, the New York Times.

@AGTDenton ... I'm no expert ... and speak for myself not Hexus, as I'm not involved in that for Hexus and never have been ... but I'd say any recommendation depends very much on your intended use, and whether you need to grow into it.

For example, is it a self-publishing idea, or do you need to support a team of writers, editors, etc?

How much development do you want to do? At one end, it's aimed at people with no programming experience, and at the other, for teams with graphics people, database people, and so on.

There tends to be a trade-off between ease and simplicity of getting something half-decent going quickly, and a highly customisable and versatile product capable of complex and customised application.

[AGTDenton]

What platform(s) do you want to run this on?

It will most likely be Linux, I've generally found that Windows Servers are more expensive, unless someone recommends some good ASP based CMS's and Forums. .
It used to be the case that most ASP based software was not free, had supersonic prices and largely lacking in choice. Of the free ASP based software most of it got abandoned or updates took years to appear. I know you can put ASP on Linux or PHP on Windows but it never used to be particularly stable unless that's all changed now.

HEXUS uses vBulletin.

Always admired vBulletin, I got a brief go when it was free just before it went to pay for only. It was very good. If there are some addons and themes which cover the rest of the site I would get it as they are not overpriced even for a personal site.
If not I'll stick to phpBB as the forum for now as its free, and I've installed it a few times in the past. Still prefer phpBB2.0 hopefully 3.0 has matured a bit more now with some decent addons.

As an alternative to Wordpress you could use Joomla or Drupal, but I think you'l find them harder to configure than Wordpress, which can be got up and running very quickly. There are lots of free customisation packages available once it is up and running.

Thanks I'll look into those 2. Both look like they have an active community.

If you are self hosting...

If you want to host Wordpress on Windows, download WAMP http://www.wampserver.com/en/ which pretty much sets up and configures itself for you.

If you are hosting on Linux, you will need Apache, MySql and PHP. It takes a little more configuration, but isn't difficult. Most distributions have pre-compiled binaries for each application in the respective repository. If you want to be a bit more bleeding edge (or have greater control over the binary, you can compile the source code yourself, its a steepish learning curve if you have never done it - but very satisfying when you 9eventually ) get it working.

You may find one or two people here sneering at PHP and MySql. You can safely ignore them for Wordpress (and VBulletin, which also uses Apache, MySQ and PHP to great effect)

If you are using a hosting service, you may find that Apache, PHP and MySql are already installed (Wordpress may also be available, in which case configuration really is minimal.

A host I use for mainly EMail is Linux based and has PHP, MySQL all pre-installed, its definitely something I'll leave to the professionals . I'll initially use that site to do all my testing and may attempt to have a couple of CMS's running side by side.

There certainly is a vast range, ranging from free and relatively easy, to extremely expensive and requiring a substantial development effort from a largish team.

I rather suspect the average bedroom-based self-publisher has different needs to, say, the New York Times.

I'm just the bedroom based

@AGTDenton ... I'm no expert ... and speak for myself not Hexus, as I'm not involved in that for Hexus and never have been ... but I'd say any recommendation depends very much on your intended use, and whether you need to grow into it.

For example, is it a self-publishing idea, or do you need to support a team of writers, editors, etc?

The plan will be just myself. I've decided to do a techie guides based site - basically covering the work I do and feel it might be of use to others. A lot of my knowledge comes from a varying degree of resources so being able to write decent step by step instructions in a nice laid out fashion and in one place would be great.

How much development do you want to do? At one end, it's aimed at people with no programming experience, and at the other, for teams with graphics people, database people, and so on.

There tends to be a trade-off between ease and simplicity of getting something half-decent going quickly, and a highly customisable and versatile product capable of complex and customised application.

Ideally as little as possible, I know some will be required mainly around the area of Themes. I'll no doubt need to install some mods.
In the past I found it almost impossible to get a decent theme without paying, so I only ever did some basic customisation of the CSS sheets or HTML. If I could find a decent theme then that would make life easier. This time around I would be prepared to pay for a theme and just design my own basic logo to go with it.
I'm not a programmer by trade, BAT files are as far as I tend to go.

Thanks guys

[finlay666]

For my 2p as a non-Linux CMS developer, there are ASP.Net based options. All of which I'll mention are free

The most popular is Umbraco, v4.x is webforms mainly with some Razor, v6/v7 (separate branches, v5 was abandoned) is Razor mostly, v7 uses Angular.js for the backend components. It's easy to work with (to me at least) the v7 is much more responsive and comes with components out of the box for things like blogs. Wired.com use this as do Sandisk. There are a load of just drop in components (called packages) that are mostly free. Site search if you want to add it is pretty decent when configured with Lucene. You can use a variety of different DB formats including MYSQL.

There is one called Orchard, it's a lightweight open souce CMS IIRC it's from MS, it's more like Wordpress in a simple to use system but I've only briefly glanced at it so haven't looked at extending it. Last time I did was a few years ago so it may not be running any longer

There is also Dot Net Nuke, this seems to be similarly established like Umbraco but is more complex. There are a range of big places using it but I've not used much to give a decent opinion on



All of the above you can host on Azure websites which IIRC gives you 10 sites free or very cheaply as you pay for what you use (if you choose to have an Azure hosted database).

You aren't limited to ASP for Windows, you can run PHP sites in Azure (you could even run it alongside a .Net CMS if you get your kicks from cross platforms systems )

You can also run MVC sites under Mono on Linux, but not many webhosts offer it as an option. It's unlikely these platforms will work on it though.

I'd have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...gement_systems and see which platforms are available and which look like they offer what you want first

[suedenim]

New forum system I have just started reading about myself - http://www.discourse.org/faq/