Re: Formatting question (CMS's)

At 08:35 AM 8/16/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>As for setting up a dynamic site, there are a number of good alternatives
>that you  can use that don't require much in the way of programming
>knowledge. Movable Type was mentioned but requires a good host with specific
>perl modules installed.

This isn't as big a deal as it seems, the required modules can usually be 
installed freestanding. The docs explain this pretty well and, if anything, 
they make it seem more complex than it is. Another nice thing about MT is 
the community and personal attention the Trotts put into the product. The 
initial install may be slightly more complex than similar products but the 
feature set, IMO, justifies the additional time.

I've helped develop a few plugins and the flexibility of MT continues to 
amaze me. For someone in Dustys position it may be perfect, it can be 
installed with the bare bones and when/if the site is moved to a more fully 
featured host the conversion to MySQL, export of the existing site and 
installation of additional modes is cake.

>If you have that, great, it's cool software. Another
>option, is Radio Userland. It's an inexpensive desktop application that you
>can use for formatting and that will upload your pages for you. Radio
>doesn't need any kind of dynamic capabilities on the server.

What Radio does require is maintaining the files locally, this can lead to 
difficulties when your working off site. More importantly, IMHO, the cost 
doesn't justify the features, especially considering the free alternatives 
and that it is a recurring fee. The docs aren't all they could be and are 
scattered all over the place... throw in the Winer factor and I'd be hard 
pressed to recommend Radio.

>I'm working on a non-profit site right now and chose P-machine, a php-mysql
>program. All of these options use templates and don't require the user to
>know any programming. You can customize them with just the knowledge you
>describe. Another solution, I've used in the past is Post Nuke. It is a
>slight bit less flexible but offers lots of extras like discussion boards,
>calendars and extra modules.
>http://movabletype.org/
>http://www.userland.com/
>http://www.pmachine.com/
>http://www.postnuke.com/

PHP and MySQL, from what I understand, are not available on the server. 
That pretty much rules out Nuke variants and PMachine.

BTW, this is not a criticism of either... I'm a huge fan of both and have 
used them extensively. I would, however, be hesitant to say that 
programming knowledge isn't needed, especially in the case of PostNuke. If 
you want *anything* that doesn't have the cookie cutter look of nuke sites, 
your gonna be hacking into the scripting. PMachine is a little better but 
the template system can be confusing and again, to avoid that generic two 
column look your into the code.

 From what I've read I think that in terms of a CMS she is likely to be 
restricted to the flat file/Berkeley DB varieties.

John Hiler has a nice overview of these, and other, products at 
http://microcontentnews.com/articles/blogware.htm

-----------------------------------------
Al Sessions
al(at)oldforgefd.org
http://www.fultonchaindesign.com/mt (personal weblog)

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