Converting a site to CMSMS

[MrMike]

I apologize in advance if this isn't posted in the correct area, this section seemed like the most appropriate. I've looked through the plugins and done a few searches looking for answers, but I may have missed some of the info I'm looking for.

We're interested in converting an existing site to CMSMS and have a few questions to see if this will work for us. The site we're looking to convert is http://deltabravo.net/
Not all of the site will need to be converted, but we'd like to convert the article pages, FAQ section, professionals listings, etc.

After looking at about a bazillion different CMS packages, we think CMSMS is probably the best candidate for a number of reasons including an active user community and a wide range of of plugins and themes.

So, here are some of the questions we'd like to ask....

1) Can CMSMS run arbitrary PHP code in the templates or can PHP code be placed in basic pages we make? If not, can CMSMS include a file with PHP code in it and output the results of the code? We know that some areas of the site won't be able to be easily converted and we're more than willing to write custom pages within CMSMS to replace these areas (like the Resources by State, Links & Resources, etc).

2) Is there any way to integrate the Simple Machines forum with CMSMS? If not, that's not a problem. The forum is the only part of the site that we'd really be interested in keeping as is, but it would be nice to integrate it if possible.

3) Is there someone here that might be able to help us do the initial setup, such as creating the various areas/categories and that sort of thing?

My partner and I are fairly experienced PHP coders; we think once the basic structure is in place we can write some scripts to transfer the content into the correct places (like the FAQs and articles sections). If not we'll transfer it all by hand, but the initial config looks a bit daunting to us. Would it be possible to get a little assistance with getting the basic stuff set up once we've installed it?

Thanks for any answers or help anyone here may be able to provide!

[mcDavid]

1) you can write your own PHP-snipplets as User Defined Tags, or create a module for more advanced scripts. But before you do so I'd advice you to see if there are any modules that might be able to do the job you want to do. Most CMS MS modules are very flexible and can be used to suit multiple purposes!

2) http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/manix this might help you, but what exactly would you want to "integrate"? User logins or something?
There's also a (pretty basic) forum module for CMS Made Simple

3) Don't be afraid to install and try, you'll find it very easy. Installing is just clicking through some easy steps and making a template won't be any problem for anyone who knows how to use HTML/CSS. If you really need support you can allways open a topic in the "help wanted" forum.

[MrMike]

Thank you for your comments, mcDavid. To answer your question, yes, primarily we just want to keep the user logins for the forum. We really want to keep the forum for a variety of reasons.

It's also good to know that we can write our own PHP-snippets or more complex code blocks, that will be a big plus for us.

We've done a test install of CMSMS and are finding our way around in it. We've had mixed results so far...for example, one of the first things we tried to do is to change the theme, we figured that would be an easy thing to do. Heh.

We uploaded a theme called "Glacier Version 2" and followed the instructions on this page:

http://themes.cmsmadesimple.org/Download_Themes.html

After a bit of fussing around we got it installed, only to have the site crash with a Smarty template error. We managed to uninstall it, but my partner and I were both kinda disappointed by that. Our first trip out of the gate and we couldn't even change the theme.

We then started looking at some of the plugins, figuring we'd get back to the theme issue later. One of the things we need is a decent FAQ system, as we have several hundred FAQ pages that we'll be using. We couldn't find a demo for any of the FAQ plugins (are there any?), but the descriptions make them sound pretty basic. Maybe we can simple create a large number of pages to stand in for a FAQ system, but we were hoping to find a good FAQ plugin to avoid doing just that.

So that's where we're at...kind of an inauspicious beginning.

We'll make a post in the "help wanted" forum, maybe there is someone there who would be willing to help us do an initial setup on our test domain. Would you or someone else here be willing to do that, perhaps?

1) you can write your own PHP-snipplets as User Defined Tags, or create a module for more advanced scripts. But before you do so I'd advice you to see if there are any modules that might be able to do the job you want to do. Most CMS MS modules are very flexible and can be used to suit multiple purposes!

2) http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/manix this might help you, but what exactly would you want to "integrate"? User logins or something?
There's also a (pretty basic) forum module for CMS Made Simple

3) Don't be afraid to install and try, you'll find it very easy. Installing is just clicking through some easy steps and making a template won't be any problem for anyone who knows how to use HTML/CSS. If you really need support you can allways open a topic in the "help wanted" forum.

[Dr.CSS]

Most likely the smarty error had to do with the {stylesheet} called in the <head> if you had changed it to {cms_stylesheet} it wouldn't error but you would have to put [[root_url]]/ in the image calls...

[mcDavid]

If you tell us the error you got, maybe we can help you with it.

It's also really easy to create your own template, you can use the HTML of your current website if you want to.

As for the FAQ system, I don't know what it would look like exactly but I think the News module (it's installed by default) will probably be suitable. News items can be categorized, they can be searched and you can make templates to display them in all kinds of ways.

[MrMike]

Well, this is the kind of thing we'd have no idea about. All we did was download the theme and follow the instructions on how to install it.

Without any familiarity with CMSMS, how would we know that the tag should be {cms_stylesheet} versus {stylesheet}? We were just doing exactly what the instructions told us to. We'll try installing another theme or two and see what happens.

Most likely the smarty error had to do with the {stylesheet} called in the <head> if you had changed it to {cms_stylesheet} it wouldn't error but you would have to put [[root_url]]/ in the image calls...

[MrMike]

We'll try installing it again and paste the full error message in here.

We'll also have a look at the New module and see if we can figure out how to make it function as a FAQ system. Any tips for doing this that we should know about in advance? Would you be interested in doing some of the initial setup we need for some modest (very modest, lol) amount of money? Maybe set up a few categories with a couple of sample/dummy FAQs?

If you tell us the error you got, maybe we can help you with it.

It's also really easy to create your own template, you can use the HTML of your current website if you want to.

As for the FAQ system, I don't know what it would look like exactly but I think the News module (it's installed by default) will probably be suitable. News items can be categorized, they can be searched and you can make templates to display them in all kinds of ways.

[MrMike]

If you tell us the error you got, maybe we can help you with it.

This is the error:

string(108) "Smarty error: [in tpl_head:23 line 7]: [plugin] unknown tag - 'stylesheet' (core.load_plugins.php, line 198)" string(120) "Smarty error: [in tpl_head:23 line 7]: syntax error: unrecognized tag 'stylesheet' (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 590)"

[uniqu3]

As DrCss mentioned above change {stylesheet} to {cms_stylesheet} in Template.

Without any familiarity with CMSMS, how would we know that the tag should be {cms_stylesheet} versus {stylesheet}?

By reading message on the right?

For FAQ look at Glossary module.
http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/glossary

[MrMike]

After a fair bit of experimentation, I think we're going to have to try another route. CMSMS is very nice, extremely full-featured, and can probably do everything what we want, but getting there looks like it's going to be an uphill climb for us.

At this point we're going to work this from the other end, so to speak. One of the main things we wanted to keep was the SMF Forum, so we're going to use an add-on for SMF called "TinyPortal".

It's a CMS package that does ~99% of what we need, and it allows for the easy creation of ad hoc pages with PHP/HTML, etc. As an SMF add-on it integrates with the forum 100% and it also inherits all of the existing permissions, user groups, etc that the forum uses. It can also make use of the existing mod/plugin packages for SMF (many of which we're already using).

In short, I appreciate the assistance you all provided. I have nothing bad to say about CMSMS at all, it's an excellent CMS and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who's looking for a solid CMS package.

Thanks again for all your help!

Cheers

Mike