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vangogh
08-07-2008, 12:51 AM
I'm curious if you use a content management system and if so which one?

I use WordPress a lot for both myself and clients. In the right hands it's a lot more flexible than just a blogging system and I've helped several clients save money over full custom design and development.

Does anyone here use WordPress? How about other CMSs like Drupal or Joomla? I expect some of you are using shopping cart software like ZenCart or osCommerce too.

SteveC
08-07-2008, 01:22 AM
We are old school I guess in that we customise a content managerment system to suit the website we build... thus every CMS is different... each uses the same WYSIWYG editor however we add in different toolbars, spell checkers, etc... as needed and allow customers to add in pages, etc... as the design allows.

We have developed one Oscommerce store I believe... and once again almost all of the ecommerce we develop is custom designed to suit...

orion_joel
08-07-2008, 02:02 AM
I have used three different systems between the 4 websites that i have.

Wordpress - I have used for both of my blogs, it does exactly what i need for blogging which is why i choose it for these sites. I am still coming to grips with getting the look just how i want it but i am sure that it is something that i should be able to figure out in due course.

Php-fusion - I have used this for my main business website Orion Networks, again purely becuase it did excactly what i wanted for this site. I wanted something that had content management built in, could look like a static website and maintain the look throughout the site no matter how many pages i created. While there is still a lot of features that i dont use in it which could be done without, what it does for me is good.

Joomla - I have used this over php-fusion on my Business Articles site, mostly due to the better publishing functions, i wanted the ability to post articles for publishing ahead of time, so i could take a break from having a set schedule to have articles ready by. In addition to some other features i liked.

While i think that most CMS can be made to fit the needs of a particular site, i also think that making use of different CMS's that already do a majority of what you need is possibly an even better idea.

vangogh
08-07-2008, 11:17 AM
@SteveC - yep old school. Not necessarily bad school though. I still think the best option is having everything custom built, but most of my clients would rather not pay the costs of that kind of custom development so I ended up finding open source solutions to cut their costs.

@Joel - I've never used Php-fusion before, but it sounds like you're happy with it. Same for Joomla. I've heard good things, but no chance to use it yet.

I have been finding WordPress capable of doing a lot more than it first seems, though you do need to spend some time learning the system to bend it to your will at times.

degadar
08-07-2008, 12:16 PM
I like Wordpress too VG.

Here's one I did a week or so ago for a customer who designs and installs adapted kitchens : Regency Kitchens - Disabled Kitchens (http://www.regencyhomeimprovements.com/) I used the standard Wordpress theme and applied that to the rest of the site so the blog section would slot in ok without feeling out of place.

vangogh
08-07-2008, 03:59 PM
Oh yeah. I wouldn't have known it was WordPress if you didn't tell me. I can possibly tell from the code, but not from looking at the site.

I generally customize the default theme, but I'll also have clients find a theme they like and then customize that for them. It's also a good way to get clients to give you ideas about what they want in a site since they have to send you some examples.

billbenson
08-09-2008, 01:14 PM
I built a cms a number of years ago and am currently redoing it. I played around with Joomla and would recommend it to people in certain applications. The reason I am making my own cms is I can build in SEO. For example I have a table that contains title tags, meta tags (ya, I know they may be ignored), other tags that should be present on a page. It forces me to use the correct tags and also allows me to easily edit them on a per page basis. I make a custom template as I need it.

I am also cutting over to xhtml strict as I think it may improve seo in the future. I don't think it really matters for seo today.

As this is just for my use, I can generally have multiple sites with a similar look and feel although the cms allows for multiple templates.

The idea is to quickly be able to put up a web site and easily be able to change the seo or style on a per page basis. Also, I want to automatically add navigation. That way, there are no abandoned pages with no links to them. So far, I have been able to add page links without the need for GET date in the url. This allows me to just have keywords in the url if I choose. My new version will probably be done in a couple of months as web design time is pretty tight right now.

Its not truly a cms, but I like zen cart. I have some oscommerce sites, but they are pretty buggy and zen cart is a lot cleaner. The oscommerce sites are pretty hacked to add in SEO.

vangogh
08-09-2008, 02:51 PM
One of these days I may build my own CMS just for fun and maybe to have a customized solution for myself. At the moment I'm happy working with WordPress for most things and I'm getting better and better at working with its system. I guess in some ways I'm building my own custom library for WP that I reuse.

One of my clients uses osCommerce and it can be hard to work with. The more I'm in there the more I understand how it's all put together, but it's hardly the friendliest code I work with.

billbenson
08-09-2008, 04:16 PM
Depending on what you are trying to do, its really not to bad VG. The hardest part is getting navigation to work. In my case its for me, so I can have an ugly admin section that only I understand. If you are doing it for clients, then it has to be more elegant.

A basic cms really only needs about 10 tables. You can add from there.

One way to approach it is to use the table structure of a cms such as Joomla.

I'm starting out with a table with pagename, bodytext, header, footer, catagories (I use that for nav), page template and some other stuff.

The nice thing is, you understand it. If you decide to add some feature you can ad a template or table. Always an ongoing project, but it gives you the ability to do exactly what you want.

vangogh
08-09-2008, 06:10 PM
Yeah, I've worked enough with MySQL and PHP to be able to put it together and there's enough open source stuff available if I needed some help with certain functionality.

It would make for an interesting project and if I developed my own for clients I could better tailor it to their needs and make it be very easy for me to fix if anything should happen.

So you start by thinking if the general concepts and then setting up the tables you'll need and then build the pages around reading and writing to the DB?

billbenson
08-09-2008, 08:32 PM
In your situation, I would start by developing it for my own site(s)

I ultimately want a template type of site that from a control panel I can add pages that are optimized. I furthermore want visitors to be able to post pages like a blog, but not in the blog format. I want the new "blog" post to appear as a new page within the normal page structure. I can then go in and edit the new pages "blog posts" for SEO. Rather than building a large linear blog, I am building a large, normally structured site. And I can go in and optimize the posters pages.

Underneath the above structure, I could place wordpress, zen cart, or any other type of commercially available software. Or not?

I have a marketing strategy to all this. More than happy to PM it to you, but not one I want to make public.

But if you boil down a typical cms, its a way to build sites from a form page in the admin section. I am taking out the overhead I don't want or need such as tell a friend, popular searches, etc. I also want SEO added to the tables.

You need a cms that has a tables that contains pages, boxes, templates, ads, etc. Not that many tables when it comes down to it. You don't need all the languages and other stuff that open source cms's have.

So you write one for yourself. Then, as you have clients add a table or software as needed and it becomes more robust. You add multiple templates so pages can be one, two, three columns or whatever and select different css's per page.

Since I already wrote one, I have a lot of reusable code. My skills are a lot better now and I can do it a lot better. I could probably have it pretty solid in 80 hours of work, but I have trouble finding 80 hours, so it will probably be a couple of months.

vangogh
08-09-2008, 09:04 PM
All makes sense. Feel free to send me your marketing strategy if you want. If I can think of anything to help I'll happily reply.

You can actually do a normal folder structure with WordPress. You need to create pages instead of posts and you need to set it up in a way to have the appearance of a folder structure. Look in the codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/) and search for pages or see if you can find it through browsing.

It might need a plugin to completely mimic a folder structure, but it can be done.

billbenson
08-10-2008, 01:39 AM
I've heard that wordpress can do that. It can't do all the seo stuff I want though. As well, every time I get involved in one of these projects, my programming skills get better. Not to mention its 80% done. Additionally, I want to have a boilerplate that I can use for multiple sites. I have yet to use an open source php program that I haven't mutilated for my own purposes.

I'll give you an example or two:

In oscommerce the title at the top was not in h1 tags. When I entered in the short description I will do something like hp model xxx printer [three spaces] the rest of the description.

Server side, I look for the first three spaces and enclose them in h1 tags and use them for a heading. Since html ignores more than one white space, the description looks normal although it starts with the same text as the h1.

Another trick for oscommerce (and probably most ecommerce packages) when used with adwords. I changed the search page to change the page title from "search" to the search terms and enclose the term in h1 tags. I then put a referral link in htaccess to that page. Then I can then write an ad in adwords, use a link with the keywords in it like domain/kewords and the landing page has keywords in the url. Works great with adwords as the landing page has the keywords in the url and h1 and that drops my cpc dramatically.

Gotta be careful with what I just said above as it puts the same key phrase in the url, h1 and title. I've done some things to get around that.

Just some tips. Back to the original topic VG.

I'll shoot you a PM and see what you think of it. Today I only sell products on the internet, but I want to make some affiliate sites.

vangogh
08-10-2008, 05:23 PM
What kind of seo things do you want to do with WordPress? It's probably possible. Not that I want to stop you from making your own CMS, but figure you'd be happy to have the extra knowledge.

Check out this article on WordPress SEO (http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/) too.

Thanks for the osCommerce tips. I'll have to try them out and see what results I get. I have noticed that osCommerce uses classes to style some things when they should be using hx tags structurally. It's about as anti-seo out of the box as any application I've seen.

I'll be looking forward to the PM. No rush. Whenever you have some time. Hopefully I can come up with a suggestion or two you haven't thought of.

billbenson
08-10-2008, 06:24 PM
I don't like oscommerce, but its a pain to cut over. Particularly if I miss some landing pages that are redirected in htaccess for adwords. Christmas might be a good time to cut over as I can catch my errors and no customers. Going from oscommerce to zen doesn't appear to be that difficult. Customer might end up on a default 404 page. I don't think they have a css layout design either.

So far, what I have is a cms thatworks something like this. If I want to write a page I fill in a form. Some of these are drop downs with the option to add a new item for example css sheet. Some mandate unique info such as a title, pageName, or meta description.

pageName
title
several metas
H1 for the page
template to use for the page
document body
page category 1
page category 2
other stuff I can't remember off the top of my head.

Hit submit and a page is written and cached to a local file. The cached file is updated at a time specified in a config file. A link is added to the nav based on the category. Subheadings I'm leaving to the page content for now. If I had a site that I wanted every page to be identical, I could add a H1 for the page, h2, section content, h3 section content etc. Maybe I should do that up front. at this point its not much more work.

The real difference in this from a standard cms is I have the ability to add different titles, h1's etc.

Also, per page ad insertion.

______________________________________

I can make a truncated version of the above form for the above that is designed for public page entry. Say pagename, post, nothing more. Basically a blog post that becomes a page.

I can then come in the next morning and pull up the new user entered pages and edit them for SEO and categories (or delete if they are spam).

I've already written the above, I am just changing the tables a bit, rearranging stuff, deleting capabilities like recip linking which was popular when I originally wrote it etc.

I'll check out your wordpress link. In the redo, I'm copying some of the styles and tables that are there as these things have been designed by professional programmers.

vangogh
08-10-2008, 06:55 PM
Seems like you're covering things. I didn't detect mention of a database in the above. Why no database or is that something coming later?

With WordPress there's a plugin called All in One SEO. I think that's the name, though it should be listed in the article I linked to. It allows you to rewrite your page title and meta instead of the default that WP will use. There are other seo related plugins too.

I just recode the them so the main heading is an h1 and then inside each post I can add any other hx tag I want.

Mostly I customize the theme (I'm usually designing a new one anyway) to make the code as search friendly as I can. I'm not always thinking seo first when I write a post as I'm more concerned with getting readers to click through from their rss reader, but depending on the post I do consider keywords as I write.

I also change the url from the default that will make it the same as the page heading. Usually that just means removing all the stop words or words that really aren't related to the main phrase I'm thinking for the page.

One thing you can do with blog posts is write a page title and headline geared more toward the sensational side to get people to click and read and then at a later date rewrite both to make them more keyword rich.

billbenson
08-10-2008, 11:11 PM
I guess I wasn't clear on the db. Everything is databased. I have about twelve tables, I'd have to look.

One thing I did on version 1 of this(I wrote it at least 4 years ago now) is I had a site rewrite function. I had 100 sites on a shared server as part of a test I was doing. That server got hacked and the index page on every site was rewritten with some Saddam Hussein stuff.

The way I had written the program, with a couple of clicks every single site (100) was rewritten from the database. It worked great. Otherwise I would have had to ftp the index pages manually on all 100 sites.

vangogh
08-10-2008, 11:44 PM
I know you mentioned tables, but when you talked about the cached page I wasn't sure.

Nice, not about being hacked of course, but about recovering.

Adam Singer
08-22-2008, 11:46 AM
Expression Engine or PlayInTraffik are neat:

http://ExpressionEngine.com
http://PlayInTraffik.com

vangogh
08-22-2008, 02:55 PM
I've heard some good things about Expression Engine, but haven't used it. PlayInTraffik is new to me.

I always come back to WordPress, maybe because of my familiarity with it, but it's so easy to work with and every day it seems like it can do more.

Adam have you used either Drupal or Joomla? I thought I might try my hand with one or the other. I'm leaning toward Drupal, but guess I could experiment with both.

orion_joel
08-23-2008, 06:32 AM
I did give both a try a while back and actually stuck with joomla, as i think i already mentioned. The primary reason was i had more success getting familiar with joomla. While i think Drupal could be quite a good system, i found joomla more suited what i wanted. At this point i have one website running on joomla, and a second for a friend. For my friend it was good because even though he is not very familiar with things such as this i was able to get him going with it in minimal time and he now does all his own updates with me just doing an odd little bit here and there when he needs it done.

vangogh
08-23-2008, 01:38 PM
I've heard Drupal has a higher learning curve, but I've also heard it's worth getting through that curve. I still haven't worked with either and need to explore them both.

orion_joel
08-30-2008, 09:02 AM
I have been having a play with the newest stable version of Joomla (which is 1.5) and find that it is a very powerful and easy to follow system, while there is something's you need to get your head around a little, it was not to difficult for me to setup a site and with little direction show the guy how to do all his own content creation on the site. 1.5 though is a little bit more tricky for the template engine. Where the first version pretty much worked with 1 HTML file and 1 CSS file the new version works with multiple files in each section, and i have trouble working out which file is going to achieve what i want to do. Even more so that one template can have a few options and different CSS and HTML files are used for each option.

vangogh
08-30-2008, 12:20 PM
All third party apps take a little while to get used to for the developer. The more I work with them, the more I see the similarities in each and it's getting easier for me to quickly find my way around in a new one. Still there's always some learning curve. Ideally the curve is only for developers and not end users of the system.

billbenson
08-30-2008, 04:43 PM
I keep seeing wordpress come up as number one in forums followed by Joomla and Dupral. A lot of people really like wordpress. I havent' used it. I've played around with Joomla and would recommend it, but that's certainly not to say its the best.

As a designer, VG, I would think a two pronged approach would make sense. Be an expert in one such as wordpress and have a custom one. Obviously the custom one traps your clients to you more. That's why I don't recommend that approach to a lot of people looking for web designers. On the other hand, if someone really wants a custom design, it makes your design job much easier.

I slotted today to work on redoing my custom cms. Right now I'm fighting with htaccess. Back to work.

Harold Mansfield
08-30-2008, 11:03 PM
I've heard that wordpress can do that. It can't do all the seo stuff I want though. As well, every time I get involved in one of these projects, my programming skills get better. Not to mention its 80% done. Additionally, I want to have a boilerplate that I can use for multiple sites. I have yet to use an open source php program that I haven't mutilated for my own purposes.



There are a few SEO plug ins for Word Press that are plug and play. They are very easy to configure.
All In One SEO (http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/) is the one most Word Press Users swear by.

If there were more that you needed, I'll be a few code changes would get you there without having to write your own..of course that would take the fun out of it.:)
For those of us that cannot write our own...it is a godsend.

vangogh
08-30-2008, 11:22 PM
Bill the thing with a custom CMS is that I have to charge people more for the development time and truthfully WordPress can do everything most people need.

What can't WordPress do for you SEO wise. I bet you'd be surprised that it can do it. The All in One SEO plugin eborg just linked to is great. It allows you to write your own title and meta for each post and there are a variety of other plugins for SEO. The SEO community are big WordPress users and develop quite a few plugins.

orion_joel
09-01-2008, 03:12 AM
I think that it really depends on how much time you are able to put into the work, if you have the time and knowledge to create your own CMS then it will probably be a good thing, you are going to be very familiar with it and maybe to an extent better able to add to and modify as a client needs, and may be also easier to make a template fit to it.

In saying this though I would say between the top few CMS scripts and Wordpress, you would find that there would be one that would very much so meet your needs in a CMS. From other threads we have seen what can be done with the appearance, there volume of add-ons or plug-ins for most of the CMS scripts is great, and the new generation of most of them is making it easier then ever to add plugin's without having to touch any code.

Just one example, i have started playing with Joomla 1.5, while i am struggling with the template's i was able to install a calender, and upcoming events plug-in, plus a photo gallery plug-in without touching one bit of code. While if i had to i could have added the code into pages where it was required if at all, it is just to a large extent easier not to have to. While i also suspect this has been a good portion of my reasoning not to learn much programming.

BillR
09-09-2008, 10:33 PM
Any of you guys run into SOX compliance issues with CMS?

vangogh
09-10-2008, 12:24 AM
I'm not really familiar with SOX, but I just looked it up and I'm not sure how it would really apply to a CMS. Seems like it's a public company only thing and deals more with financial reporting than anything else.

Am I missing something? It's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again.

BillR
09-10-2008, 09:15 AM
SOX applies to everything.

Take for example a website used by a Corporation to administer HR benefits like retirement plans, etc. SOX will soon require copies of that site be maintained into perpetuity so that people can go back and audit what the site stated previously.

You're going to hear a LOT more about SOX in the coming years.

vangogh
09-10-2008, 11:04 AM
I understand the application to a CMS now. At least I think I do. It would be about saving older versions of your content. I haven't used the feature yet, but the latest version of WordPress has a versioning control sort of thing built in. It stores different versions of your posts so you can revert to a previous one.

With all CMS apps though you could preriodically backup your files and database, which is more how I think people would comply. If you scheduled a monthly backup of everything you'd have that record through time.

From what I saw of SOX it's a public company thing so that majority of us are still not going to be affected by it as business owners.

BillR
09-10-2008, 11:27 AM
From what I saw of SOX it's a public company thing so that majority of us are still not going to be affected by it as business owners.

It kind of depends I guess - there's a lot of talk of expanding SOX compliance.

Right now a lot of the work I do is for large organizations so it's always an issue for them.

vangogh
09-10-2008, 11:42 AM
Makes sense. I can't say I've read much about it other than the simple page on Wikipedia, which I assume isn't the best source of info. Looks like SOX is somewhat controversial with some thinking it doesn't really do what it aims to and others thinking it will save us from corporate America.

I guess that's true for most every law on the books.