Content Management

[randomness0]

Hi,

I have a directory site for remedial massage clinics where each listing clinic effectively ahs their own subdomain. To date I have been manually updating all pages. However I am at stage now where would like to provide listing clinics with a secure login for which they could manage some of their own content.

Have received some quotes from developers which are well out of my budget so am starting about thinking about doing it myself. Am comfortable with html/php but that is about about the limit of my current skills (but am willing to learn!)

I'm just after tips and/or any recommendations for any content management software that may be able to provide the end result I'm after (eg I've come across a content management system "Big Medium" which may be suitable???).

========

Separate question is that I'm also after a statistics package that along with providing clinics with information on weekly/monthly numbers of visitors to their subdomain, will provide them with a listing of the actual time of say the last X visitors to their subdomain (this is a fairly niche market, typically subdomains average less than 3-4 visitors per day - we're not talking huge traffic). As most listing clinics have their info on other webpages, I would like to be able to provide them with the facility to be able to relate leads to visits to their page on my site rather than other sites.

Most of the stuff I've looked at just gives standard stuff of daily/weekly/monthly stats which is of some value but what I'm after is the data on specific visitors - what specific time they were on the subdomain, number of pages visited within subdomain and maybe how long they were on the subdomain.

I could provide the clinics with a statcounter type login but would like to tie in subdomain stats to their own login.


Website in question is Remedial Massage Clinics

Thanks
Richard

[ran_dizolph]

If you've got a basic understanding of PHP, this tutorial by biorust can help get you started on the basics of a login-style system.

That tutorial gave me such a better understanding of login systems, and has been the basis of my own content management system that i have now applied to many websites, and the feedback has been great.

I've not yet found an open-source CMS that has been all that great. They're almost always a bit of a pain to actually customize. Building it yourself gives you complete control.

I'm by no means a PHP expert, but with a basic understanding of it you can accomplish quite a bit.

Check out Google Analytics for your stats stuff...it's pretty in-depth.

[a53mp]

Without going to crazy into the backend, especially if you want something secure and running any time soon, you will probably be best off looking into a free or paid script for free website hosting with subdomains. Kind of like a angelfire or geocities for your site. That should give them easy access to templates, content editing, etc..

[rizzoid]

My business does nothing but Joomla CMS. It's award winning, by far the most popular open source and I can teach my customers how to make their own changes. There are over 4100 addons from database manipulation to image galleries to business directories.

The techies prefer Drupal, but I can't teach that to customers.

John
sitecats.com

[Milo]

Commercial package thats quite affordable is www.phpmydirectory.com/ for US$100. I"m using it for one of my sites. Overall and for the price, I thought it was a good package.

I've also tried Joomla with the Sobi directory module. A bit more in-depth to figure out (for me anyway), but FREE.

Hope this helps.

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

Without a doubt, go with Joomla.

While their are many great CMS system out there, I don't think any of them have the community strength of Joomla. The Joomla developer community has made many great free and paid components. custom modules, and mambots to enhance your site.

Go to the Joomla.org site and check out the Extensions for more info. My guess is that you will have to write very little custom code (components, mambots, and modules) yourself. More often than not, someone else has already developed what you need.

[Orion]

The advantage with using wordpress, joomla, or dupral is that you don't have to re-invent the wheel AND the biggest reason is that you don't have to constantly recode your own custom CMS to keep up with security holes etc. Using an open source solution all you have to do is to customize your own look into it and update it when the updates come out!

[Big Juice]

Don't waste your time with Joomla just use WordPress as your CMS

[Orion]

Originally Posted by Big Juice

Don't waste your time with Joomla just use WordPress as your CMS

Wordpress is awesome! I use it almost exclusively.. however it's not a good idea if you have a very large site or if you want to dive into ecommerce beyond a few products.

[eshop600]

Without a doubt, Joomla is the worst cms system, every joomla site looks the same, its horrible to use, its slow and bloated. Its not search engine friendly and for web designers its just not intuitive and flexible to use, it made me want to tear my hair out, so fecking frustrating, I hate it with a passion.

Use wordpress or Modx. End of story.

[jmoran77]

Joomla is not the worst CMS, and if you are willing to spend small amounts of money at a time you could check out joomlancers.com and post a project and get bids for a specific module or component you need. As for every site looking the same, that's simply not true. Check out rockettheme.com for some great premium templates that you can easily edit to your own needs.

You can use the free component "Community Builder" to allow registered users to create their own profile pages, and tweek this program and you can get the site just the way you need. The problem you will have is programming in the automatic subdomain creation and this goes for any CMS or custom programming. You may find you yourself with a pretty fluid site that users can edit their own mini-site, but you may need to manually create subdomains especially if you use a shared host of some kind.

[trinimayl]

Originally Posted by eshop600

Without a doubt, Joomla is the worst cms system, every joomla site looks the same, its horrible to use, its slow and bloated. Its not search engine friendly and for web designers its just not intuitive and flexible to use, it made me want to tear my hair out, so fecking frustrating, I hate it with a passion.

Use wordpress or Modx. End of story.

Well I disagree with you. I use Joomla all the time, none of my sites look the same, and I've seen some amazing work from other developers. Check out the site showcase at the Joomla forums. It also works quite fast, and is quite SEO friendly. I don't understand how you could say it's not intuitive, as it's the easiest CMS to use that there is. Sorry to hear that you don't like it. Wordpress is great too, but if you want functionalty, Joomla is hands down the way to go.

[wige]

How much content will each clinic have on their subdomain? Are you looking at a few web pages each that they can customize, or are you looking to give them something more substantial such as their own blog or forum?

[a53mp]

Everyone suggestion Joomla should be ignored.

[trinimayl]

And why do you think so?

[a53mp]

You can use the free component "Community Builder" to allow registered users to create their own profile pages, and tweek this program and you can get the site just the way you need. The problem you will have is programming in the automatic subdomain creation and this goes for any CMS or custom programming. You may find you yourself with a pretty fluid site that users can edit their own mini-site, but you may need to manually create subdomains especially if you use a shared host of some kind.

Dynamic subdomains are fairly easy to do actually, you just need to modify your dns.. say http://person.site.com is really going to http://site.com/sub.php?this=person

And why do you think so?

because.. Joomla is not a practical solution to what the OP was asking for. It would cost too much money, time, and effort to hack Joomla enough to allow what he is wanting. Can it be done? Sure ANYTHING is possible... but there are a lot cheaper, faster, and more practical solutions to this.

Most REAL programmers do not rely on Joomla or Wordpress to create websites. They only use it because that is all they know. They would not know where to begin creating a full site from scrath, they do not know anything about PHP, functions, OOP, or anything real programmers have to deal with on a daily basis. They just modify pre-existing code and add ons/modules/extensions/etc that someone else provided.

If someone boasts about how all they know is Joomla, or Wordpress, or __________ then that's basically them telling you that they aren't a real programmer, and if you are asking for real custom work to be done, you better hope that it's part of the "4100 addons".. otherwise you are up shil creek

[chrison600]

I know this doesn't immediately respond to the original poster's need for adding user access and modification of site pages/content, but I have not found ANY open source CMS to be of my liking. I am not a developer or designer. I just wanted a clean, intuitive way to separate content from layout. Even if it meant I had to buy both pieces, I was NOT going to go through the pain of managing a website again coding raw HTML, CSS, and VBScript.

I've looked at Joomla, Drupal, TYPO3, TYPOlite, MODx, SilverStripe, Dreamscape, Concrete, CMS Made Simple, and Website Baker (and others in less detail). I've found them to be noble in concept, but far too proprietary and disconcerting in terminology, usability, and application. Cryptic menus, confusing interfaces, disjointed administration. Each one I tried required numerous visits to the Help pages, user forums, tutorials, etc. Just to get a simple brochure site up.

My ultimate conclusion was that open source systems are conceived and written from the perspective of a developer or designer, someone who needs a framework to work upon. I needed (wanted) a complete infrastructure that provided everything, without my having to learn and install plug ins, educate myself on some other language, to eventually only end up with something that still required much fine tuning when I finally got the basics put together.

I'm hoping someone has a recommendation for you from which to start implementing some kind of user access without undue work. If you do end up deciding to transfer all of the site infrastructure to a CMS, I strongly recommend Expression Engine, even though it does cost. If not EE, I'd probably place MODx as my number one open source choice, although you will probably have to modify it before being able to roll your entire site into it.

I finally decided that I'd pay the $250 for EE instead of burning hours of my own time and potentially (probably) paying as much or more for a developer to get things the way I wanted them with an open source option. There is a no-cost version of EE, but it is throttled.

This comes from someone who really wants to support the open source community, but who found open-source CMS solutions as though they were created by techno-geeks who design software for their needs, who are already prepared to put the other layers in on top that ultimately create a complete solution. That's fine, but wasn't what I was looking for.

Good luck,

Chris

[randomness0]

thanks for comments and suggestions. Plenty of food for thought .......

In answer to Wige, plan for the foreseeable future is that each clinic only has a few pages within their own subdomain. Not considering blogs, forums at this stage. Down the track I'd probably consider adding online booking system but only if the demand is their from the clinics.

Thanks again
Richard

[trinimayl]

The OP asked for suggestions on a CMS that he could use that would be easy to use and do the job he wants it to do. Everyone has their own opinion, whether it's better to write their own CMS, use Wordpress or Expression engine or like me, use Joomla. In my book, having tried most of the other CMS systems, Joomla is the most intuitive and easy to use and the community support is excellent. I don't pretend to be an expert "programmer" that can build an entire CMS from scratch just because I can. What I can tell you is I get the job done, it looks good, works perfectly and my clients are happy. And while you programmers are coding away at night, I can spend time with my family.

[rizzoid]

Originally Posted by a53mp

Dynamic subdomains are fairly easy to do actually, you just need to modify your dns.. say http://person.site.com is really going to http://site.com/sub.php?this=person


because.. Joomla is not a practical solution to what the OP was asking for. It would cost too much money, time, and effort to hack Joomla enough to allow what he is wanting. Can it be done? Sure ANYTHING is possible... but there are a lot cheaper, faster, and more practical solutions to this.

Most REAL programmers do not rely on Joomla or Wordpress to create websites. They only use it because that is all they know. They would not know where to begin creating a full site from scrath, they do not know anything about PHP, functions, OOP, or anything real programmers have to deal with on a daily basis. They just modify pre-existing code and add ons/modules/extensions/etc that someone else provided.

If someone boasts about how all they know is Joomla, or Wordpress, or __________ then that's basically them telling you that they aren't a real programmer, and if you are asking for real custom work to be done, you better hope that it's part of the "4100 addons".. otherwise you are up shil creek

I'm not a real programmer so I hire local guys here in my town. But I don't hire programmers that want to write code from scratch, rather they customize modules all day. Joomla saves so much time it's silly. Your 20k job we can do for 5k. Ooof. The power of CMS and at 25% cost!

John
sitecats.com

[rizzoid]

Extensions are available to run multiple sites from one Joomla configuration. Don't know if this will help you but I didn't even know this was possible until ten minutes ago.

Joomla! Extensions Directory - Multiple Sites

Good luck.

John

[Orion]

ah.. I missed the multi sites part of this sorry about that..

check out wordpress MU that might work.. lets you run the same deal that wordpress.com runs each login gets their own wordpress, they can theme it etc. all on their own, or you can select a few templates for them to use.

[danners02]

Joomla has a big developer community and lots of extensions so probably your best bet for the type of site you are proposing - the way it is put together is not the greatest, but unless you are a very experienced coder and get get to grips with the likes of Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management its the best you'll get. EE I find clunky and my clients do too.
Wordpress is the best CMS I have found once you have configured it away from being a blog - the formatting tools are easy to use and produce good code, but its probably not suitable for the site your proposing.

Modx looks interesting - would be interested to hear from experienced developers using this re: some work possibilities?

[dbramley]

I use Article Manager from Interactive Tools - interactivetools.com - Web Content Management Software Systems and i think its great!

Once you have your templates setup you can publish pages in seconds! You can publish pages with any extension .php .asp .htm and any name you like so you won't lose out if google / other sites already link to your pages.

Yes, like all cms packages there is a learning curve but once you've sussed it out you can do pretty much anything!

[spooky69]

I have used Drupal (probably far more than is needed for your requirement), Joomla (quite some time ago, so it has no doubt changed considerably) and ModX for a recent site. I found ModX to be extremely easy to work with, theme and customise. Based on my somewhat limited experience I would recemmend ModX as being worth looking at.

[Peopleunit]

opensourcecms.com - CMS Demos - Try Before You Install...

Only you can answer what CMS solution is a good fit for both you and your clients. You haven't given us much to go on in making a recommendation, no idea what special features are really important to you.

I've experimented with a few different open source CMS programs and looked at many others. I might suggest taking a look at the above link to get an idea as to some of the TYPES and FEATURES of the more popular open source options out there.

Even though your immediate needs may be fairly basic, the decision as to which CMS system you latch onto shouldn't be taken too lightly since switching to a different one later on will inevitably include some resistance - people like to hang on to what's familiar.

Make a list of features that you want/need, make another list of the various choices, cross out the ones that don't fit, then examine and test all the other factors for those that remain... ease of use, including setup and administration, performance, flexibility, size of the user/support structure.

I think most all of us could probably benefit by taking a look at that link, maybe learn a thing or two.

[zenfort]

I've used PostNuke (not recommended currently) (for some community sites), Joomla, pMachine (Expression Engine) and more recently modx to build sites for individual sites.
Joomla is nice for it's ease in setting up a site for someone, and in it's module/developer base, but I find the Admin area illogical for the most of the people I deal with. Joomla uses terms , that if you aren't in the admin area often, you can forget where things are. . ExpressionEngine is very good in it's flexibility in designing templates for.
I haven't explored modx for a multisite but I use it to build artist's sites and it has the most user friendly admin area that I've come across. All the basics are right there, no need to go digging through obscurely named menus or innocuous icons. It has an admin area that you don't have to visit twice a week to feel comfortable in. Letting an artist/non-techie be able to feel comfortable in updating their own site is a good thing.
modx's backend and design functions are beautifully separate. It is my favorite cms -so far.

I still use snippetmaster and the last version of pMachine to allow users to update pages within a few sites. The creating of the user areas are not automated but it's a simple thing for me to add a few pages (or subdomain using WHM or cPanel) to a site for a user. Of course I'm not doing that even twice a week.

[wige]

Originally Posted by randomness0

thanks for comments and suggestions. Plenty of food for thought .......

In answer to Wige, plan for the foreseeable future is that each clinic only has a few pages within their own subdomain. Not considering blogs, forums at this stage. Down the track I'd probably consider adding online booking system but only if the demand is their from the clinics.

Thanks again
Richard

Ok. If you are looking to give each client only a few pages, I think Joomla and Wordpress and really any CMS is going to give you more headaches than they are worth for your needs. I am a hacker at heart, and security is one of my prime considerations with any development projects. For example, recent vulnerabilities in Wordpress opened thousands of sites to attack, and there are still vulnerable installs out there. Similar problems may lay in Joomla waiting to be discovered. You have to constantly monitor these applications both for suspicious activity, as well as for new updates and patches.

IMHO, a simple custom app is probably what you need. What type of content do you envision for each clinic's pages, and how much control do you want the clinic to have over the layout of the pages? If you are looking at every clinic having say the same three pages, one for contact information, one for a description of services, and one for an "about us", for example, with all pages from all clinics sharing a single design template, you should be able to create an application like that from scratch, probably for under $500.

[Vaijero_Maya]

CMS. About CMS, Wordpress and Joomla do a good job. Beware of the database cms's as when you have to move to other host you will have to reconfigure it and tweak the database thing. I ended up building my own CMS to avoid this problem, I got sick of mysql driven sites (but thats me). Wordpress has now great features to move your site to another host.

Handling the problems of moving out your cms. Yet, moving your hosting account to another hosting company might be piece of cake if you have cpanel, using cpanel backups.

Statistics for your subdomain. As for the statistics sofware, your own hosting company should provide this reports. Per example, if your hosting accoung has cpanel, you already have at least webalizer and awstats for reports. You mentioned subdomains... if you creat a subdomain, you will have a separate url for statistics reports using cpanel as well.

Statistics scripts for your subdomains. BUT if you are talking subdomains in the way of "subdirectories" you will need a script for tracking your visitors. Extreme Tracker does a good job on this, you just have to create a new account for every new subdomain and put the code into the html pages.

Good luck.

[flhu]

I'll tell you my story...
Last year around this time I shopped for CMS solutions. I investigated about 15 programs and weighed all the options.
I had 5 or 6 "must-have" requirements for the website, most had maybe 1 or 3 of these "must-haves" and none offered 2 of these desired requirements without serious hacking. Also, I believe around this time, Wordpress was having some security issue as well as a surge of generic MySQL injection warnings were all over the place. It made me wary.

After considering this, as well as determining that it would probably take at least three months to learn and develop a basic, unique site with any of these packages, I decided to just write one from scratch. It took about six months (while I was also doing other IT work about half the time) to write the CMS AND design the website. Sure, it probably took a bit longer to get the site up, but it's exactly what I want, and if I want it to have a feature, I don't have to rely on someone in a community to come up with it; I just do it and sometimes get it done faster than going to a website and searching through a bunch of plug-ins - let alone then installing them.

All non-admin user input is scrubbed of questionable characters with extreme prejudice when I want to, allowed when I know it can't have adverse affects, and, as an added bonus, programming it myself gives an extra layer of "Security by Obscurity." Security flaws are mine and no one else's. When I look at the logs, I can see what hackers and script kiddies are trying to do with my site, trying to exploit security holes that exist in other CMS's, and I chuckle.

Of course, it was not without problems. The main issue was that I found was that the reason no one was doing a particular feature was because it was, on occasion, a CPU hog and couldn't be hosted on anything other than dedicated server, which I ended up getting.

[Nick Spence]

Based on what I understood your question and needs to be, you may wish to investigate a content editor as opposed to a full-blown content management system. I am in the process of wrapping up a site using a little editor called Content Seed. Without any experience, I had it set up in less than an hour. Then you just drop some code into the pages you have already built which defines the editable area. The user simply logs into the page(s) and edits to his heart's content. Furthermore, it is designed to utilize subdomains and multiple users with individual log-ins and page access.

ContentSeed, an easy to use Content Management System (CMS).

~Nick

[bigaussie]

Interesting you mention "Big Medium" without making any comment on it. Not Open Source, but certainly an easy install and even easier to show end users. Only needs PERL and uses flat file text to store all information. No DB overload, as each page is created as a static html until it is edited again. It is also multi-Domain aware right out of the box, so long as all domains/sub-domains are on the one physical server.

I also agree with many others who have said there are many CMS out there which are all lacking in some way - - usually the admin area. I am Techie enuf to install and set these things up, but not a programmer. It is all about the end user. If they can't easily understand how to drive the system, it is out.

I use a program from Accrisoft with many of our clients who have heavier demands. It comes with all the bells and whistles for a monthly license charge. Upgrades are frequent, and rolled out transparently. Not cheap, but VERY set and forget.

Good luck with the hunt.
Many of us have been there b4.

[gawdproductions]

I'm pretty partial to Joomla as well. It's not over the top difficult to understand and you can't beat the price

[MrGamm]

It's highly debatable... Yesterdays Joomla was Mambo ( same codebase ) and before that it was phpNuke ( same widespread popularity )...

If your looking to become a coder. Stay away from Joomla. In fact... I would recommend that if you want to do anything besides install it and modify the template that you pick something different and simpler.

Joomla is still having security issues and they seem to have alot of third party developers jumping into the project looking to make money. It's questionable that if you fell out of date with security patches or modified the codebase improperly that you could brake compatibility with future upgrades and you could be creating substantially more trouble for yourself than it's worth.

Same goes for any downloadable content management system really...

If you go with joomla... stick to the third party plug-ins which are supported by company professionals and those who actually maintain security. Remember that anyone can seed a program with malicious intent and bring your site and a few hundred thousand others down in the process.

In fact... I'm still watching the malicious bot crawlers looking for exploits in old php-nuke installs...

[MalcolmAllister]

well......you have been given lots of suggestion. If you want to try something very easy to use CMS then you can go for split5's CMS. I hope you would like it.

[Spurkle IT]

I like Joomla for open source, but Drupal (also open source) is hands-down the most powerful CMS in my opinion. There is so much that you can do. If you know PHP, it is easy to write your own modules, too. Joomla is easier to use, however.

[jbladeus]

Always felt that joomla was quite bloated, however must say that it is a good option for people with limited programming skills.

I would also disagree with the poster who said that wordpress is only good for smaller sites. There are plenty of examples out there which pointing to the contrary.

[ohiowebpro]

Any CMS solution will be bloated compared to the alternative of developing a completely custom site. I agree with flhu. I went through the same thing. The problem I had was finding a CMS that allowed me to build a site, then fit it in, rather than start with a structure and try to fit my design. On top of that, find one with the functionality that you need, it's harder than you think. If you design many sites, and have the capability, you can’t beat building your own CMS. I can go from a concept design to a working site in less than an hour. No hacking and no templates for me thank you.

[jvm2ckms]

There is always more than one way to achieve what you need. The point is: it will all be up to you which route you want to take.

Yes, you can also buy a software then buy it's updates. And stay within the software's functionality.

Of course, if you know how to code just go ahead and code it. It is just a matter of starting with a good plan in mind.

If you cannot code, then go hire a pro at odesk or somewhere else to code what you need at the rate you find just enough for your to pay. Someone somewhere will have the capability to do whatever you have thought about. Just make sure you have detailed instructions and wish list to start with before you post a work.

And, you can also use an open-source software and tweak it for your need or hire somebody to tweak it at a much cheaper cost. Hey, you can hire someone to have a customized theme for you. I saw some wordpress sites that does not look anything wordpress or a joomla that does not really look like joomla.

In all these, there will always be a learning curve. So, decide which route you want to take and start from there.