[CALUG] Open-source CMS

[Josiah Ritchie]

I have working experience with Xoops, Drupal and WordPress. I've
messed around with a few others. Each have their strengths and
weaknesses related to how able/interested you are to tweak them
yourself or how you intend to use them.

There are two tweak skills, php or HTML/CSS. You'll need HTML/CSS to
create a custom theme for any of these CMS tools. If you need a module
that doesn't exist or want an advanced custom theme, you'll need PHP
skills.

I have found Xoops to be great for building an open community and
mostly intuitive administrative interface. Drupal seems to be good at
building a somewhat static site, but is weaker at community It is very
flexible if you are able to handle working with PHP (or so I'm told).
WordPress is a great blog tool and can handle static pages, but unless
all you want a blog plus some pages, it is very weak.

I hear Joomla and Xoops are similar. My limited experience with
Joomla, I didn't like it, but others were really happy with it.

Then there is PHPNuke and PostNuke. They are generally considered
inferior to the ones I mentioned these days because they have suffered
some problems with security. They used to be "the" CMS.

Moodle is specifically intended for use as a classroom environment. It
can handle other things, but you'd have to fight that structure.

I think you may be happiest with drupal if you are interested in hacking PHP.

JSR/

On 12/11/05, carlos astrada <castrada at comcast.net> wrote:
> Do any of you have much familiarity with open-source content management
> systems, such as moodle? Primarily, I want something that is very easy to
> customize.
>
> carlos