CMS or Blog ??

Hi All,

I need some of your valued input. I want to start working on a new website I've been planning for a while and I'm not sure what type of CMS I should be using.

I have used Mambo in the past and WordPress(blog) which I use for some of my smaller sites instead of a full blown CMS. I find the Blog software to be a little more straight forward at times but not quite as feature full at others.

I plan on building a VERY large site (over several months) and I really want to have control over the menus and site search functions, I am guessing that a CMS like Mambo or Joomla would give me much more control over my content and display.

On the other hand I've seen Blogs that do it all (like weblogs inc. websites).

I would greatly appreciate any advice or ideas that you can share, thanks again.

Pete

 

The answer is: it depends.

What do you want your CMS to accomplish? Why do you think you need one? Do you need add-ons like a forum, multi-level user administration, project tracking?

But for the 2 functions you mentioned, site search and menus, Wordpress is actually better than Mambojoomla IMHO. Mambo only lets you have a 3-level menu. Wordpress can go as many levels as you want.

Personally, for large content sites, I like Drupal.

 

I tried postnuke on a few sites and it seemed user friendly with a few quirks. It's seo hacks really aren't up to par. The keywords module produces long strings of useless and small words.

Drupal seems more stable and flexible. Drupals seo modules are excellent. you can specify keywords for all added content along with title. you can specify a clean url when you create content. Existing urls can be rewritten in another module.

But Drupals nomenclature is dense feeling and out of the box it must leave visitors wondering where to go and what does what. Though their "taxonomy" of "vocabularies" and "terms" is logical, the words are strange and no logical explanations are given! They could at least compare it to a "system" of "categories" and "subcategories". But with their great emphasis on being open source no such criticism is warranted...you are expected to simply report the documentation "bug" and propose the solution. To someone used to the complaint and service model, drupals forums may seem odd. Granted there are a couple with 3 trillion posts who try to answer everything, but many simple questions are left in the dust. This is likely more a factor of the relatively small number of drupal users. Bottom line if you need someplace to run to for help, often drupals site is a little slow to respond.

Now if I can just figure out why on 2 of my drupal installs the coop ads won't show while identical installs elsewhere work fine!

 

Thanks for the input.

I have been checking out Drupal for the last couple of days, I've heard good things about that CMS and I guess your comments confirm that.

I guess I left out a bit of info that might be usefull... my long term goal is to build a website that could be viewed as an authority, or an encyclopedia if you will. In the begining ease of administration would be nice but I think that as the site grows, I will have to seriously consider adding things like forums, banner rotation and all kinds of bells and whistles.

Has anyone used TikiWiki ? I've heard it can do wonderful things...

Thanks again for the input.

 

Thanks all, the help is appreciated.

P.