thoughts on which cms for me to use

manuleka · 07-23-2009, 04:51 AM

i haven't created a site using any CMS tool before, but i'm quite interested in learning one... i've worked with creating static html/css sites and a little bit of php, but creating from scratch like this (and maintaining) can be time consuming!

i'm going to start working on a tag/touch rugby site... the main goal for the site is to display information about game schedules, game results, and other related upcoming sports events

the site will enable organizers to update game schedules and news (Which will most probably be in the front page)

there is also a likely chance that an extension will be added for an online Community Discussion Board (Forum)

at the moment i'm looking at Wordpress (Which i think is the easiest to learn - and can have some powerfull features/plugins without overdoing things)

can some one make some recommendation on suggestion on this? thanks in advance...

anyways, i've created a simple layout for a start http://www.centraltag.co.nz

budgitek · 07-23-2009, 03:45 PM

I've worked with both Joomla and Wordpress and feel Wordpress would be the winner at least in my opinion. Creating the template files are pretty simple and straight forward. Here's a little example of how the structure of Joomla and Wordpress would be.

Joomla!
http://docs.joomla.org/Jdoc_statements

<html>
<head>
<jdoc:include type="head" />
</head>
<div id=wrapper>
<div id="navigation">
<jdoc:include type="module" name="menu" />
</div>
<div id="maincontent">
<jdoc:include type="component" />
</div>
</div>

Wordpress

Here's a great tutorial on creating a WP template from scratch http://themetation.com/2008/07/14/ho...cratch-part-1/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page (loads of useful information)

<html>
<head>
<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
</head>
<div id=wrapper>
<div id="navigation">
<ul
<li><?php wp_list_pages( $args ); ?> </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="maincontent">
Wordpress loop would go here
</div>
</div>

Hope this sheds some light on how to make custom templates for both systems. There's of course more to it than that, but you should get the basic idea. Just follow the posted links and you will be golden. Good luck!

SB65 · 07-23-2009, 03:47 PM

I went round this loop a month or so ago considering the possibility of using either Wordpress or Joomla as a content management system, to enable me potentially to build a website but for someone else to keep it updated. In my case, talking about a smallish site, maybe 20 pages max, mostly static content, nothing fancy…

I started with Joomla, easy to download, easy to install, didn’t find the user interface very intuitive (so neither would a less web-savvy user). The standard installation, however, came with about 3800 files….! Didn’t know which ones I didn’t need so had to FTP the whole lot onto a server to test, not ideal. Created a couple of pages very easily using the standard template, but I thought the resulting html was excessively long, and used tables throughout. It was also invalid (a <p> tag within a <span> tag, if you’re interested). And this was for two paras of lorem ipsum. Not a great first impression.

Then I tried Wordpress, much better, much smaller initial install (the logic being that you then add on the bits you want, as you point out), better user interface, valid code, no tables.

I should add that it was pretty straightforward adapting the standard WP theme to match an existing site. Didn't try this in Joomla so can't comment on that.

So Wordpress got my vote, but I guess for a more complex site Joomla may offer more options.

budgitek · 07-23-2009, 04:03 PM

I would also say the plugins for Wordpress are much more abundant. Joomla has a lot of plugins as well, but most of them are commercial.

timgolding · 07-23-2009, 08:28 PM

I like e107