Need a CMS Recommendation

Some Background: I own a guitar tab web site, http://www.gametabs.net. It's on WordPress right now, and it's getting pretty big and it needs something more powerful and flexible. We are approaching 1,000 tabs and I want to make room for new different areas of the site, like articles, reviews and tutorials.

What I Need: Above all else I need a very flexible organizational system. Being a guitar tab website, I essentially host a bunch of .txt files, and I need to be able to easily organize the tabs and have good ways for the users to navigate through them. Like right now I have them listed under the tab's console and game. I'd also like to be able to list them under other categories like, composer, tabber, game series, year, etc. I've checked out Drupal extensively but it's not an ideal solution for me.

Also, I need flexible URL creation. If possible, I need the URLs to remain the same as they are on the current site.

 

Drupal sounds perfect.. Why did you decide it was not ideal for you?

 

@archard
Why leave WordPress?
There are several plugins that can help with your site and navigation structure, Like Collapsing Category Menus and others on:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Navigation

For having content reachable there is nothing better and simpler than WordPress

Drupal has its Taxonomy, but you have to put some effort in to learn how it works.
I don't know if its possible with the Drupal Autopath module to assign URLs to specific content pages, maybe Tearabite knows?

Hmm, would be intressing to know for one of my own sites

 

Drupal's PathAuto can automatically create URL's based on page title, taxonomy, category, and any combination of all kinds of variables.. but i dont think you can make it assign a URL based on specific content on the page. You can also manually assign any URL to a page..

 

@Tearabite
Just found the answer on you Blog
The question was for single page URL rewritings and that can be done via Path.

Thanks for your reply! I need to learn more about Drupal!

 

WordPress can't handle large sites efficiently, especially with the unorthodox method I'm using. Plus, I intend for this next rendition of my site to be very ambitious, and there's a lot of things that WordPress simply cannot do.

I've been working with Drupal extensively over the past few months. I'd say I have a very solid understanding of how it works and how everything can be applied, including the taxonomy system. In theory, Drupal seems like it'd be perfect for what I want, but after a lot of in-depth experimentation with the software, there's just a lot about it that I don't like. It's too open source. Theres a million modules out there, but only a few have any real documentation, and only a few of those have good documentation. Most of the modules come with a readme file that's like "1. Upload Module, 2. Active Module, 3. Enjoy". I can't tell you how frustrated I have been trying to figure out how to use some of these modules, and most of the time I just gave up. Also, even though I was running on the latest stable release, it wasn't stable at all. There are so many little things you can do that will make your site blow up, and if you don't have a backup you're screwed. It was a pain in the ass experimenting with things because I was constantly having to re-install.

The taxonomy system, again, sounds perfect in theory, but when put to the test it just doesn't work how I want it to. It's strange because even though the taxonomy system is godlike in its ability to classify, it completely fails when it comes to using that classification as a basis for navigation, which, I don't understand at all why navigation isn't at the heart of the taxonomy model. To me, it doesn't seem like there's much of a point to a great classification system if you can't utilize it effectively. Actually, there are some modules out there designed to integrate navigation with classification, but almost all of them fail to meet my specific needs. The only one that would be perfectly suited for me is the Category Module. However, it is probably the buggiest module Drupal has to offer. It's pathetic. You can't really utilize its potential because it's simply a poorly written piece of software that routinely produces errors. In fact, there's a warning on the category module page itself that says "Warning: There are some longstanding bugs in Category ....". Truthfully, I can't even use this module because of its extreme buginess.

Drupal is a clusterfuck. It has so much potential but it's highly unorganized and quite frankly a pain in the ass to deal with. Sorry for the rant LOL

 

Huh..
I've never really had any issues with Drupal.. Well.. i blew my site up once, but who hasnt? I think it was my fault anyway..

 

I suggest you to go with Joomla / Mambo..

Its well supported and is good

 

Heh, sorry if I shocked you with my negativity. I've gone through quite a bit of stress and frustration working with Drupal.

I installed it and started messing around with it last night. I'm trying to learn the ins and out and see if it's a good fit. I've heard some good things about it.

 

I suggest go for joomla , better look and better customization , with powerfull scripting and admin cp.

 

What is Joomla's organization system like? And does it have a good SEO url plugin like pathauto from Drupal?

 

go wid drupal

 

I personally believe none of the available cms's are good enough to serve a site with high traffic and the reason is not they are not good but because of hosting them on a shared server.

If you want to continue to use a shared server you will have to find a flat file based cms in my opinion because most people use database driven cms's because of which the database server load is too much.

Hence, either you should use a flat file based cms or you should think of hosting your website on a dedicated server.

Just some advice. Hope it helps!