Content Management

[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]

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]

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
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