CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello all.  Its been quite some time since I have been here.  I last tried CMS MS when I was first in the hunt for a replacement for Joomla that I was using at the time.  I was then looking for something with a tad bit less of a learning curve.  However, after a lot of reading and such I kinda got my head around Joomla and decided to stick with it though I still had CMS MS on my test server.  Long story short, I stuck with Joomla simply because of the time I invested in it and I hoped that they would advance more than they have.

Recently, after kinda getting tired of Joomla's direction, I went in search of a replacement CMS.  I tried Etomite, which was okay.  I tried MODx which is a fork of Etomite and a tad more advanced and flexible but it just didnt seem to fill all that I wanted to do.  I then remembered this application I had once tried and was impressed with, CMS Made Simple.

So I downloaded it last night and got it set up and all I can say is WOW!  You guys have come a LONG way.  I think the version I tried last was 0.12, 0.13 or something like that.  Good Lord, this thing has just gone wild with improvements over what I remember of it last.  So hats off to all of you involve with developing, testing and so on.  I set up CMS Made Simple simply because I just wanted a simple management system sine I have refined approach to a CMS since first trying Joomla and CMS MS and have come to realize that you it may be cool to have a CMS with tons of modules that do all sorts of things (most of which are pointless to me just a website and not some multi-lingual portal or something like that), but in the end there is a great deal to be said about simplicity, and and from an end user perspective CMS MS has got that down.  However, I see you guys have added tons of functionality in modules and such (many that I saw are very practical and useable to me).

Well, now that I have rambled forever, allow me to ask a question.

Is there any portable documentation for CMS MS?  I seem to remember having a manual printed out at one point, but I have been unable to find it thus far, but will continue to look after Im done here.  I just prefer to have something printed out I can refer to while working with an application.


I'll leave it at that for now, I have to print out documentation for the Smarty Template Engine as well, I never got my head around that one.

Again, hats off to you all for advancing CMS MS so much since I last used it, and it seems you have done that while still maintaining the easy operation of the whole thing.

SyntheticShield wrote: Is there any portable documentation for CMS MS?

No official one - currently exists only wiki.

But you were right. Some times ago a user have create a pdf with instructions but cant found it too  ...

Okay, well perhaps I will get motivated enough to make a pdf.  I think I can fuddle my way around.  The templates will be the hard part.  I have found, since first discovering CMS's and having spent the time to learn Joomla well enough build a site, that I can navigate just about any CMS and use it in a basic sense with the exception of Typo3, but the templates seem to pose the biggest challenge.  They all seem to use a myriad of approaches to templates and it would be nice to have some documentation in had.  I got the smarty stuff printed out, maybe that will be enough for now.

SyntheticShield wrote: The templates will be the hard part.
...
but the templates seem to pose the biggest challenge.

Hmm, normally a CMSms template is only a simple xhtml file with some attached stylesheets.

Where the content should placed you have to insert {content}, {menu} for a menu and so on - think, it's very simple too.

Have you seen video tutorial about transforming templates for CMSms?

http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php ... _Tutorials

SyntheticShield wrote: Is there any portable documentation for CMS MS?  I seem to remember having a manual printed out at one point, but I have been unable to find it thus far, but will continue to look after Im done here.  I just prefer to have something printed out I can refer to while working with an application.

There is a guide here

Alby

I meant another (older - last year?) thread but - thanks alby .

Thanks for the links to the docs, I have printed them out.

I realize that the template is just a xhtml file, but its how the content is generated.  For instance CMSMS uses smarty.  Joomla uses a different method, and Etomite uses yet a different method to call and generate the content.  So while yes it is a simple xhtml file, but the content is generated very differently and that is what can make it a challenge.

I tried departing from a CMS application all together once by simply using smarty by itself and I just had a hard time getting used to it.  A lot of it was time constraints and being able to just study how things were to be done.