Looking for a CMS to meet my needs.

[Millenia]

I've been looking for a CMS to fit my needs, and I just cannot find one. I'm wondering if anyone else can help me.

It must be:
Not like a 'news' system like Joomla etc. I want to create a solid page, not an article.
Simple or easy to modify template.
Free
Secure
Fully editableI appreciate your help or thoughts.

(I don't want a link to opensourcecms.com...)

[srule_]

Why not use wordpress? Just select the option so your home page is a solid page.

[Millenia]

Why not use wordpress? Just select the option so your home page is a solid page.

Hmm..With wordpress it would be hard to build a solid website. I'd rather use a CMS that makes single pages, and have many features according to the style of use the CMS will be used for.

[Vijo]

You are missing the point.
A CMS is for news & content. Hence the name, Content Management System.

Thus, You cannot create a page in a CMS, unless you use WYSIWYG editor in Joomla.

[Millenia]

You are missing the point.
A CMS is for news & content. Hence the name, Content Management System.

Thus, You cannot create a page in a CMS, unless you use WYSIWYG editor in Joomla.

(Solid pages are content)

Ok, but whatever it may be called, i'm looking for one. Any ideas?

[Vijo]

(Solid pages are content)
Yeh, but you cant create a page. You can create content as in article.
I dont know if my explanation makes much sence, but anywho..

[srule_]

In wordpress you can makes "pages" instead of "posts" if you want.

[gnomeontherun]

Ok lets clear up some of this. CMS, yes means Con....blah blah blah. Here is what is important. A CMS provides each user with the experience of various 'pages' which are created based on a set of variables (such as what content to display, how to display it, etc). So with anything considered a CMS, your 'pages' don't technically exist. They are created at the click, and updated with the content from your stash of articles, posts, images, aka Content. However, given certain variables you can recreate the same 'pages' continually in most cases. Some CMS systems have a feature which breaks the definition of CMS and you can make hard coded pages. Joomla 1.0 (Mambo) and Wordpress both have this, Joomla calls it Static Content, and Wordpress calls it Pages. Essentially they are still pieces of information from the Content stash of your database, except the page is designed to not be constantly updated. This really is nothing different from what a CMS already does, except that its like directly linking to just one piece of the content instead of to a listing of posts or articles or whatnot.

So in short, most CMS systems will do what you ask. Joomla will do it, Wordpress will do it, Drupal will do it, CMS Made Simple will do it. You just have to work with it to setup the system structure in such a way that you are only referencing one content item at a time (so it seems like a regular HTML site, but easier to edit!).

So my suggestion for which to use is very biased, I use Joomla daily. I did find this link from a while back showing a list of some other great systems.

http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-cms-award-previous-winners

And you are asking a question like do you like Chevy or Ford. Ultimately they all do about the same stuff if you are willing to work with it long enough, but some people will swear up and down that one is better than another. If you need some very specific features (good e-commerce, maybe a great user-contribution interface), then each CMS becomes more distinct from the other.

So as far as Joomla goes, if you use 1.0 (or Mambo for that matter) you could utilize the Static Content items exclusively and ignore the full-features of the news generation. Wordpress you could ignore the postings and use just the Pages feature.

If this is a site you will be using, I would say Joomla from my experience. If others will be using it, Wordpress might be easier to administer for non-savvy people.

Thats a lot of my $0.02.

[shaunw]

I think what you are trying to do is build a site and then be able to edit the pages through cms? is that right.

I think joomla and word press are ready built systems that have added cms, not sure i`v never payed much attention to the ready made type stuff.

I use a cms for customers, called iprosite, i think they`ve finished with it now and it might be hard to find a copy. The licence was only £25, i hear there next version is open source. This is easy to install, you don`t have to add any extra bits of code to pages to be able to edit them. You just install it and go, you can add members, and set the pages /folder they are allowed to edit..
Hope this helps..

[Bengal313]

I am looking for a similar thing. The ability to have pages and be able to edit them via CMS. I have been playing around with Joomla but I thing its best feature is posting articles and the extensions/modules. But if I was to use Joomla 1.5 how would I be able to set it up so I can have pages and edit them? I am assuming I have to create separate the components of the pages like menu, content, sidebar, etc to mimic a typical page.

[gnomeontherun]

Ok, this is not very hard, but it doesn't make a lot of sense if you haven't run through it before. The problem is that Joomla is geared towards frequently updating content, so this isn't as heavily discussed.

To make a Static Content like page in Joomla 1.5

First you need to create an article, which can be categorized however you wish. You could make a Section and Category specifically for Static Content items, or you could leave them Uncategorized. Its all the same in the end, just so long as you are able to keep it organized for yourself. This is the content of the page you will be eventually linking to. So if it is about your favorite types of ice cream, dish it out. Pun intended.

Secondly, after saving the article, you will go to the menu manager. Create a new Menu Item, and at the first menu screen select Article Layout. Then you will be able to go to the next screen and select exactly which article on the right hand column. Of course fill out the menu information fully, but then it will create a single link to this article and will always go directly to this 'page'.

Thirdly, if you wish you can assign modules to the page, or remove them. Check if any modules are showing up that you don't want that they aren't set to "All" in the module manager. Sometimes new modules tend to show up everywhere, and a new link will automatically have those as well.

[Bengal313]

Thank you very much. Your are very knowledgeable. I will try it out and let you know how it goes.

[gnomeontherun]

I love Joomla!

[Bengal313]

I guess the question I have is being that Joomla is designed to create articles and modules and not traditional "Pages". But understanding what you said I know you can mimic a page layout. Is it better to learn Joomla to mimic pages or is there something out of the box (OpenSource CMS) that can be used to creates traditional web pages?

[gnomeontherun]

Well then you aren't talking about a CMS. CMS is designed to provide a decentralized content method for managing all of your content. You are talking about something more along the lines of a page editor. I suppose there is little purpose in using most of the bigger CMS systems if you are just wanting to use it as a template engine, so non-web developers can make minor changes. Then we are talking about a WYSIWYG editor, and we break away from the point of the CMS.

So in short, you aren't looking for a true CMS then. I suppose there are probably things out there, or you could have a small script written that can update small chunks of text that are loaded into a page. I don't know about these types of scripts, but I'm sure there are lots of snippets out there.