LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:14 pm Post subject: LittleWhiteDog CMS issues

After lots of thought and lots of testing, EdisonRex and I have decided NOT to use Joomla as our new front end.

The issue is basically simple.

Joomla is entirely too much for what we need.

It's like Building a nuclear power plant because you want to recharge your electric toothbrush, and for no other use.

So we are once again looking for suggestions.

We are going to look at a lot of different programs but our needs are relatively simple.

We want the ability to add several different types of content; news, articles, reviews, and hopefully polls.

What we don't need is all the bloatware that comes with Joomla or phpNuke, and basically just confuses the issue and makes management a veritable nightmare.

We want the ability to turn off (or simply not have) comments, download links, referral links, point systems, recommend us to friend buttons, etc...

We just want something simple.

of course. it would have to look good, and we'd love to be able to use multiple columns for our news. But something that is easy to administer and provides the basic functionality that we require.

Let us know if you have experience with anything along those lines.

Butt Sniffer Joined: 09 Nov 2000 Posts: 1883

Have you looked at, I think it's called, Word Press?

I used to be on another site and I am pretty sure they used Word Press. During my time there it all seemed to work pretty well.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 1:16 pm Post subject:

Do you know what would be really cool?

If you still think it's really necessary to have users log in on LWD when you finally do revamp it, have it authenticate against the LBD user database.

<Tangent>
Currently though, the only real reason to log in to LWD is to post comments, but isn't that what the, erm, forums... are for? Confused

Personally I'd rather see each article link to an automatically generated thread in Article Discussions or something a little more seamless...
</Tangent>

However, a unifed log in system for both sites would be an excellent first step in the right direction.

Edit:
If I ever get some free tyme, I might even be prepared to try and hack the chosen CMS to try and accomplish this because it's been on my wishlist for a long, long tyme...

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 1:20 pm Post subject:

CheeseMonger The Great wrote:

<Tangent>
Currently though, the only real reason to log in to LWD is to post comments, but isn't that what the, erm, forums... are for? Personally I'd rather see each article link to an automatically generated thread in Article Discussions or something a little more seamless...
</Tangent>

I thought about this too. And I honestly think that the comments on LWD are redundant. sure, I still comment... But it would be cool if a thread was autostarted when publishing it. It would draw more visitors to LBD too, probably.

/Akely

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:46 pm Post subject:

Currently, LWD and LBD are on different servers.

I believe we are going to leave things this way for the moment

To share the user database would require both sites to be on the same server sharing the same database.

We are also leaning towards using the forum for comments instead of allowing comments on the CMS. This will allow us to keep a better eye on what visitors are doing when hanging around the site.. Smile

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:40 pm Post subject:

fathertyme wrote:
Currently, LWD and LBD are on different servers.

I believe we are going to leave things this way for the moment

To share the user database would require both sites to be on the same server sharing the same database.

We are also leaning towards using the forum for comments instead of allowing comments on the CMS. This will allow us to keep a better eye on what visitors are doing when hanging around the site..

Just curious, does the PHP-BB server (LBD) have the MySQL database port open publicly?

If so it would be possible to connect to the database from another host.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject:

So the servers are running PHP/mySQL and so far Joomla and phpNuke are bloated.

Why not make our own CMS?

Say for instance, we use a framework such as CakePHP. This framework does for PHP what Rails does for Ruby (Ruby on Rails). I've been using CakePHP on all new projects at work and I think it's a big time saver for PHP coders when starting a website from scratch.

If anyone wants to entertain the idea of coding LWD CMS from scratch I can probably help answers some questions as far as time/effort and technical issues.

There does exist mods that link BB forums to a CMS system that automatically creates news posts out of thread posts. I think Simple Machines has this feature. Doesn't really solve the issue of our 2 separate servers though Confused

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 12:17 am Post subject:

The pros of writing a website from scratch:

- script kiddies won't be able to hack it
- we can define our own needs
- should be simpler

The cons of writing a website from scratch:

- need people to code it
- need people to maintain it (and test and debug)
- potential for BIG bugs (see testing)

I'm very much interested in slimming down the LWD side of things. Comments on LWD are redundant. Logins on LWD for non-admin types are redundant. No need for journals, etc. Concept of points is not useful. Concept of user submitted articles, links, etc is worse than useless (I get 30 submissions a day from some viagra bot).

It almost makes sense to bring the two sites together on the same server again, except that we'd need a better server. That's not going to happen realistically for a month or two. However I'd be interested in seeing what using a framework, as opposed to writing from scratch, a good news site would do. The forums are the interactive part of the experience. Most of this blog software is just too complex to want to apply to our limited requirements.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 12:36 am Post subject:

EdisonRex wrote:
The pros of writing a website from scratch:

- script kiddies won't be able to hack it
- we can define our own needs
- should be simpler

The cons of writing a website from scratch:

- need people to code it
- need people to maintain it (and test and debug)
- potential for BIG bugs (see testing)

I'm very much interested in slimming down the LWD side of things. Comments on LWD are redundant. Logins on LWD for non-admin types are redundant. No need for journals, etc. Concept of points is not useful. Concept of user submitted articles, links, etc is worse than useless (I get 30 submissions a day from some viagra bot).

It almost makes sense to bring the two sites together on the same server again, except that we'd need a better server. That's not going to happen realistically for a month or two. However I'd be interested in seeing what using a framework, as opposed to writing from scratch, a good news site would do. The forums are the interactive part of the experience. Most of this blog software is just too complex to want to apply to our limited requirements.

If slimming down LWD to such an extent is the future it actually makes the option of stating from scratch a lot more interesting. The database and the web-site made in-house (or is that in-pound?)... Groovy.

/Akely

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 5:44 am Post subject:

I would be glad to help start building a new LWD. I have never heard of the cake framework that Lycander suggested, but I will start playing around with it...hopefully this week.

Also I am a good tester, everything I touch I break Twisted Evil

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 7:05 am Post subject:

My suggestion is not to sell yourself short. Sure, you may not need the power now, but in a few years you may wish you had gone with a powerful CMS like Joomla.

I've integrated Joomla into both small and large sites without problems. The user has no idea that only 10% of the CMS features are being used. All they see is the frontend.

Joomla integrates SMF (simple machines forum) very well. It would be a big task to port phpBB over to it, but it would be worth it as everything could be placed into one interface. This would provide more of a "portal" type approach for LWD, incorporating LBD into it's framework. This will also make LWD articles (and ads) more visible throughout the site. Users with enough posts would have the option of disabling the ads.

I'm currently integrating a shopping cart into one of my sites. Third party components in Joomla has made that very easy for me. It would be cool if LWD could sell some products, particularly the ones it reviews.

Finally, Joomla makes it easy for LWD staff to write articles and provides an administrative approval process for the content flow: writer -> editor -> admin. The new beta version of Joomla is looking very promising and should enhance this capability further.

Just my $.03

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 7:22 am Post subject:

Most of the more mainstream management systems either already integrate phpBB, or have a bridge to allow seemless integration between the two.

If someone wants to start writing a custom CMS I recommend PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites by Larry Ullman. I picked up a copy some time ago when I was considering the same thing and it's quite the resource for someone starting out. It covers some of the more obvious mistakes one can make when writing a CMS, plus tons more.

How about Blogsmith? Hackaday uses it for their CMS and seems fairly basic on the outside.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:22 am Post subject:

Meh. All this talk and I haven't really been playing enough.

I tried some other templates. The one I have up now has a loud masthead but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

Let's put this discussion aside while I play with templates and get more used to this stuff.

Oh yeah, new template to look at over on codecoma.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 1:36 pm Post subject:

There is really no huge rush to change this. I just wanted to let everyone know. We'll change it sometime soon, but it's going to take awhile to get something we like. I'll be talking with Tyme and co. We'll be setting up some things to look at. Stay tuned.

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:20 am Post subject:

EdisonRex wrote:
There is really no huge rush to change this. I just wanted to let everyone know. We'll change it sometime soon, but it's going to take awhile to get something we like. I'll be talking with Tyme and co. We'll be setting up some things to look at. Stay tuned.

As it stands right now my big project is basically done. So far I have completed a fully functional PHP CMS with an integrated MySQL DB.

If you are still wanting a custom CMS I would be more than willing to help, but I have to warn you like I warn everyone else. Any website I build is invariably butt-ugly. I can build and configure the backend, but the user interfaces are something I suck at.

CheeseMonger The Great wrote:

fathertyme wrote:

EdisonRex wrote:

DSTG_II wrote:

EdisonRex wrote: