Choosing an Open Source Content Management System
I’ve hit crunch time on trying to figure out which Open Source Content Management System to use on the Mythopoea Games website. And it’s the usual problem- I want to create the site to be xhtml/css compliant with all design decisions and xhtml creation in the templating and css code itself. I also want the CMS to be open source, since Mythopoea is a start-up company and most money goes into games development, where it should. They need an affordable web site design suited to their company. The CMS script needs to be a robust and idiot proof system since it’s to be designed as a portal/community site. I also don’t want to need a doctorate in Jargon to set the thing up. And I want whatever CMS I choose to have a friendly, helpful and technically savvy Open Source community ready to answer questions and help out while I’m setting up the site, and to offer suggestions on which module or plug-in might offer functionality I need to enhance the Mythopoea website.
What I’ve found is that no one script meets all these criteria.
The two that are best for the job, Drupal and Xaraya, meet all the criteria EXCEPT that the docs and communities, though VERY friendly, are so incredibly geeky and jargon laden (yeah, even maybe too geeky for me, now there’s a miracle!) that it makes my head hurt. Neither are easy to set up. What’s good about them is they leave design control totally in the hands of the designer, where it belongs, and the code generated by both is generally clean, good code, depending on 3rd party plugins the user has installed. Drupal’s community is a good one, but answers seem to be obtuse to me- maybe it’s because I haven’t yet installed and don’t know the terminology, but the point here is that I shouldn’t have to spend days or weeks doing that to set up and customize a script. Xaraya is much the same- a very friendly, though small, community, but between the technojargon and the fact that much of the community interacts on listserv mailgroups and through chat makes it a very undesirable option for me. Forums are so much more friendly for this type of thing- drop your question, then when there’s an answer you get an email telling you so. I’m going to test drive these two, but I’m NOT looking forward to it.
Then there’s Joomla!, which is a very recent fork off the Mambo OS CMS. Joomla has the open source community I have dreamed about- helpful, friendly, technically savvy but not in love with Jargon, and totally willing to go the extra mile to make your experience with their script a good one. The problem is that both the core and many of the 3rd party plugins generate undesirable html code that take much of the design control out of the hands of the designer. Also, many of the third party add-ons for this system generate tag soup with a main ingredient more suitable to fertilizing organic gardens than running websites. Now, core can be hacked successfully to remedy this, but at the next inevitable security update it makes it very tough to upgrade. The good news, though possibly not in time for this project, is that the next Joomla! version is supposed to remedy this through the use of patTemplate and get rid of all xhtml generated by core. If they do this they will gain my undying gratitude and loyalty, guaranteed, since then their CMS WILL meet all my criteria! I just hope this update comes really really soon. I’m actually very tempted to hack this one, since the quality of the community is such that it makes using it very attractive, but I might be borrowing trouble when it comes time to upgrade. It’s definitely rating a test drive.
There are a couple other options I looked at. PHPWebsite is under consideration, though the community isn’t very big and seems to shrink during school breaks. Plus side is that the code generated is clean and nice. Minus side is the small number of plugins/modules that add functionality. They’re still in the running and at least rate a test install to see how they shape up in set-up and use.
Etomite I won’t even grace with a link, since they don’t deserve any google benefit from me in the form of one. Despite the fact that they have what looks to be a decent CMS script, the developers are very rude, insulting, and unhelpful when asked questions on their forum, which takes them totally out of the running for this and all future projects.
There are other Open Source Content Management Systems out there, but for the most part they generate awful code riddled with tables and tag soup.
Stay tuned for the outcome . . .
