Can somebody point me in the right direction please?

Hi,

I am looking to start using a good CMS system with my web sites. I have a php background so i would like to stick with a php based cms. Up to now i have been creating my own small custom cms's with php and FCKE WYSIWYG editor but i want to start using a more professional approach.

I know this is a matter of opinion but what cms do you think is the best for me to start using. I need something that is very flexible and not too difficult (is that possible)

Can you give me a short description as to why you have chosen the CMS system that you use and what benefits it has over other, thanks in advance for your help...

 

FCKEditor? Reminds me of time some years ago, when used SPAW.
As for part of some CMS, TinyMCE is also widely used. I would offer
to try DataLife Engine. It has nice list of features; main ones below:

01. AJAX & OpenSearch technologies; flexible creation of templates.
02. Very quick pages generating/visualizing with 0-5 requests to DB.
03. Ability to use GZip, compress CSS/Java + use caching features.
04. From v8.5 UTF-8 version is present w/o any additional coding.
05. .mkv format support up to High Definition (1080p) + YouTube.
06. Support of sitemaps with more than 50.000 news + Pingation.
07. Polls, RSS import/export, 3 types of different HRU technology.
08. Good ranks system, own API, Tags Cloud, working CAPCTHA.
09. Unlimited number of usergroups and news sub/categories.
10. Automatic smartphones support. Antileech/Word Filter.

This listing after 2010.08.2x release (v9.0) will be longer.

 

i use wordpress, and it is a very lightweight blogging platform. and i use it because when i started blogging, a friend suggested it to me, and i tried it out, and it was just VERY user friendly. i loved it. i have also tried joomla, and was incredibly confused. also, i have tried drupal, which is now slower but used to be able to become very large very easily. however, it is very confusing and has many options that have confused me time after time.

WP is very flexible and very easy to learn. i suggest WP.

good luck.

 

I've been developing sites for a few years now and out of all the CMS/Framework combinations I've used - it's down to this list as my favourites.

1. ModX. I started using this about 6 months ago and I can't believe it took me so long to hear about it! This is the best CMS/Framework (it's a little of both) I have ever worked with, hands down. Installation is easy, footprint is small, speed is fast (both development time and website speed), SEO is great, the inbuilt caching is just awesome... but what I like most about this is it's use of 'snippets', 'chunks' and 'template variables' - they add flexibilty like nothing else. Fantastic if you're a battle hardened PHP developer. It's not something I'd recommend for non-devs though. It's also terrible for running blogs or something similar (can be done, but takes too much effort).
   
2. Wordpress. You simply can't beat this for installation ease and speed. Very easy to use and sooo many plugins and themes at your disposal! The SEO plugins are fantastic. Anybody can use it! And although it's not hard at all to make custom themes and plugins - I always get the feeling I'm stretching it beyond what it was designed for. It is a blogging platform after all and this truth hits you hard when scalability becomes a factor. Don't get me wrong, it can handle a hell of a lot. But when you're getting thousands of visitors without caching enabled - the sloppy coding (some things in wordpress are terrible, check out the psuedo cron) brings the whole thing to it's knees.
   
3. CodeIgnitor. This is the next step up from standalone PHP. I've been using it on and off for the past few months (I've always prefered coding without frameworks) and I'm really starting to like it. It's one of the few frameworks with a very low learning curve but at the same time it actually makes development time shorter! I know they are all supposed to do that, but most don't deliver. I'm still messing around with this, but I like it so far!
   

 

My vote... Code your own CMS. It's not that hard and it's a ton easier to manage than sorting through other people's code.

 

Hi,
I will suggest you as well to code your CMS yourself. You'll have no limits, you'll have no tons of unwanted stuff, and as CodeEgg mentioned is much easier to manage the code. I would suggest you to read something about the MVC model in programming (in case you don't know about it).

Otherwise Wordpress is pretty nice solution