I've spent a very long time looking for a good CMS to use as a base for projects, I'm still waiting for the day that someone gets it all right. I actually liked QSF for a while, but there were a lot of features missing that I may need in the future™
The major contestants were DotNetNuke, Wordpress, and Drupal - with Drupal edging the others out solely because of the availability of modules. I really like Wordpress, but having it do anything besides 'static' content publishing is still too unnatural. DotNetNuke would have been great for me since it's ASP.NET but I still have major gripes with .NET as a web language, it just doesn't feel right and every single ASP.NET app is extremely clunky to install and configure (Read: I don't have the time)
Drupal is easy to install, and easy to get started with on basic content like blogs and articles, but there are SO MANY modules it's kind of intimidating. Still, it seems alright. More importantly it has a lot of hooks and bridges to external forums (I have a 3 year old forum I don't want to dump and don't want to spend days converting).
I'm curious about any experiences some of you have had with similar software, and what your choices were? I know some of you wrote your own, etc.
For PHP, I'd suggest a framework like the Zend Framework, CakePHP, etc. Both of those are pretty light weight, but there is also Kohana, CodeIgniter, and Symfony too.
There are also blog engines out there like Movable Type, which I've never used.
How was Joomla/Mambo not a main major contestant? :P
Because my funny-name quota was filled by Drupal. =\
But seriously, because Drupal has better documented support for IIS - and I can't ditch IIS because I host some ASP.NET services and projects for people. To be honest though, I hadn't really looked at Joomla, so maybe I'll play with that as well.
I've tried to get with the times and use GUI html editors, blogs, various hybrid board systems like phpbb2, and I eventually end up getting disgusted and going back to my boring ugly hand-crafted HTML that I either edit in vim or generate from php/perl.
I've tried to get with the times and use GUI html editors, blogs, various hybrid board systems like phpbb2, and I eventually end up getting disgusted and going back to my boring ugly hand-crafted HTML that I either edit in vim or generate from php/perl.
You must be old =( -ducks-
Nothing wrong with hand-crafting, except for that takes too much time. I would never, ever, write forum software (on purpose).
Yeah, well, just for that I'm gonna change my signature so you young punks will GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!! :ghostface:
Hmmm, I should probably drag out photoshop again and update my signature. That armor looks really old… :)
For plain web pages, I find it takes me longer trying to use the GUI tools, since I'm constantly having to look up which clicky thing I need to poke to get X on Y, but then I try to avoid javascript, frames, pretty much everything people use on web pages nowadays. If I were really going to setup a site for public consuption, I'd probably use phpbb2 and write some portal stuff to make the rest of the site look like that. As you say, writing a forum is not a quick task.
Yeah, well, just for that I'm gonna change my signature so you young punks will GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!! :ghostface:
Hmmm, I should probably drag out photoshop again and update my signature. That armor looks really old… :)
For plain web pages, I find it takes me longer trying to use the GUI tools, since I'm constantly having to look up which clicky thing I need to poke to get X on Y, but then I try to avoid javascript, frames, pretty much everything people use on web pages nowadays. If I were really going to setup a site for public consuption, I'd probably use phpbb2 and write some portal stuff to make the rest of the site look like that. As you say, writing a forum is not a quick task.
Actually, I find most of my "GUI" time is spent in photoshop nowadays making the 'look'. After that it gets sliced and then I pretty much do the rest by hand via CSS, I still open Dreamweaver for its CSS editor, but more and more I find myself using notepad++ for quick edits and PHPEdit(editor? I can't even remember the name right now)
For really productive sessions I'm definitely spoiled by the need for a decent IDE though, if I don't have syntax highlighting it takes me a little longer to do complex tasks. Auto-indent and brace matching are also big pluses, but things I can do without. I enjoy Dreamweaver's bracket closer for HTML and their CSS editing is pretty good, as well. The 'clicky bits' I can do without.
I never really noticed that until you pointed it out though, I used to be all about the Dreamweaver clicky bits, even to setup PHP connections and databases :redface:
17 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I do basically everything in vim if I can. I use Nucleus for my blog, because when I write just text I don't need formatting and so forth. If I'm writing an entry that has formatting needs I write it in vim and then copy-paste. When I make templates etc., I do it in vim and then stick it into Nucleus. I write all of my code in vim, except for Java, for which I use Eclipse because of the incredible tools it provides. When I did assignments, I would write them in Latex using vim. So yeah, I use vim for pretty much everything. :smile:
The major contestants were DotNetNuke, Wordpress, and Drupal - with Drupal edging the others out solely because of the availability of modules. I really like Wordpress, but having it do anything besides 'static' content publishing is still too unnatural. DotNetNuke would have been great for me since it's ASP.NET but I still have major gripes with .NET as a web language, it just doesn't feel right and every single ASP.NET app is extremely clunky to install and configure (Read: I don't have the time)
Drupal is easy to install, and easy to get started with on basic content like blogs and articles, but there are SO MANY modules it's kind of intimidating. Still, it seems alright. More importantly it has a lot of hooks and bridges to external forums (I have a 3 year old forum I don't want to dump and don't want to spend days converting).
I'm curious about any experiences some of you have had with similar software, and what your choices were? I know some of you wrote your own, etc.