Should I move from Mambo/Joomla to CMS Made Simple?!?

[westis]

Ok, I've been using Mambo/Joomla before I found out about CMS Made Simple. But I'm not too keen of learning a new system if I'm not really sure it does what I need. But as the backend administration looks very simple and to-the-point for easiness of use I thought maybe this is something for me. Please convince me!

I'm mainly working with fairly small sites for associations and small organisations.


These are things I need to be able to do. Some things I know CMS Made Semple can do, others I'm not yet sure of.

1. Easily add news and format the way it is displayed easily, to be shown on the frontpage, with links to "Read more". And ability to add images to the news. Possibly being able to select with or without a WYSIWYG editor, as some users may be confused by it and need simplicity, while others need to be able to add tables and images for example.

2. A calendar that shows the latest events on the front page with links to details.

3. Easily add images to any content page, including news.

4. Photo gallery that is easily editable, with categories and clean style.

5. Contact page with different categories and with e-mail, full address, phone numbers and photo for each person. Possibly to be display either as a list or as a blog style.

6. Forum (which ones can be easily integrated with CMS Made Simple? phpBB?)

7. Web shop, a fairly simple one, similar to Mambo-phpShop.

8. CSS styles that validate and pages that loads quickly on slow connections. Also easily edit templates so that I can have a layout of the page more or less as I want it. Are there modules and components that might need editing when changing the design, like in Mambo?

9. Document section, where admins easily can upload new documents for anyone to download. Like meeting minutes, sorted by meeting date. Or pdf newsletters.

10. Frontend administration, especially for adding news and editing content pages "on-the-fly", that is without having to leave the site to edit content backend.

11. Possibility to automatically page break a content page, like with the mospaging mambot in Mambo (where you just put a tag where you want the page break to occur and a TOC is automatically created to make it easy to navigate).

12. Possibility to publish and unpublish pages, that is if some pages are incomplete they can still "be there", but not visible on the actual site.

13. Possibility for admins to easily add menu items and unpublish a menu item that later can be published again.



Can CMS Made Simple do this? Are any of these features limited by CMS MAde Simple and more easily done in for example MAmbo/Joomla? As the Mambo/Joomla community is so large lots of third-part addons are created. Is this extensive also for CMS Made Simple?

Sorry for all these questions. But as I've got to learn Mambo/Joomla fairly well now I need to be convinced before seriously trying out CMS Made Simple...

The main reason I'm considering this move is the ability for customers to be mode independent in managing the web site, even with no or very little HTML knowledge.

Thanks!

[Matt Jason H]

Ok, I've been using Mambo/Joomla before I found out about CMS Made Simple. But I'm not too keen of learning a new system if I'm not really sure it does what I need. But as the backend administration looks very simple and to-the-point for easiness of use I thought maybe this is something for me. Please convince me!

I'm mainly working with fairly small sites for associations and small organisations.

CMS Made Simple is good for this.

These are things I need to be able to do. Some things I know CMS Made Semple can do, others I'm not yet sure of.

1. Easily add news and format the way it is displayed easily, to be shown on the frontpage, with links to "Read more". And ability to add images to the news. Possibly being able to select with or without a WYSIWYG editor, as some users may be confused by it and need simplicity, while others need to be able to add tables and images for example.

CMS Made Simple can do all that

2. A calendar that shows the latest events on the front page with links to details.

User developed free module:

http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 550.0.html

In action:
http://www.akrabat.com/testbed/index.php?page=Calendar

3. Easily add images to any content page, including news.

Very easy, upload using the image manager, edit the size and compression with the editor if you like, then use the add picture button in the WYSIWYG editor and select the image from the list.

4. Photo gallery that is easily editable, with categories and clean style.

Free user made modules (there are probably more):

http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 037.0.html
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 497.0.html
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 540.0.html

In action:
http://www.photosbycarroll.com/gallery/main.php
http://www.photosbycarroll.com/index.php?page=Gallery

5. Contact page with different categories and with e-mail, full address, phone numbers and photo for each person. Possibly to be display either as a list or as a blog style.

Probably be best doing this by hand, just typing the list out.

6. Forum (which ones can be easily integrated with CMS Made Simple? phpBB?)

No seamless integration as far as i know. Look here: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/tiki-inde ... ed+Modules

7. Web shop, a fairly simple one, similar to Mambo-phpShop.

http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/tiki-inde ... ed+Modules

8. CSS styles that validate and pages that loads quickly on slow connections. Also easily edit templates so that I can have a layout of the page more or less as I want it. Are there modules and components that might need editing when changing the design, like in Mambo?

Component/Module editing is very rare, since everythign is CSS overridable.

9. Document section, where admins easily can upload new documents for anyone to download. Like meeting minutes, sorted by meeting date. Or pdf newsletters.

Not sure, look here: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/tiki-inde ... ed+Modules

10. Frontend administration, especially for adding news and editing content pages "on-the-fly", that is without having to leave the site to edit content backend.

Not available.

11. Possibility to automatically page break a content page, like with the mospaging mambot in Mambo (where you just put a tag where you want the page break to occur and a TOC is automatically created to make it easy to navigate).

Not sure

12. Possibility to publish and unpublish pages, that is if some pages are incomplete they can still "be there", but not visible on the actual site.

1 click operation on content list in admin section.

13. Possibility for admins to easily add menu items and unpublish a menu item that later can be published again.

Again, 1 click.

Can CMS Made Simple do this? Are any of these features limited by CMS MAde Simple and more easily done in for example MAmbo/Joomla? As the Mambo/Joomla community is so large lots of third-part addons are created. Is this extensive also for CMS Made Simple?

Sorry for all these questions. But as I've got to learn Mambo/Joomla fairly well now I need to be convinced before seriously trying out CMS Made Simple...

The main reason I'm considering this move is the ability for customers to be mode independent in managing the web site, even with no or very little HTML knowledge.

Thanks!

Good Luck

I made the switch from Mambo and it's saved me alot of stress.

[Woudloper]

5. Contact page with different categories and with e-mail, full address, phone numbers and photo for each person. Possibly to be display either as a list or as a blog style.

Probably be best doing this by hand, just typing the list out.

This is the same way I should do this, but maybe the following module proposal can also be used for this... See the thread for more information.

[westis]

Thanks for your responses, Matt & Woudloper!

2. A calendar that shows the latest events on the front page with links to details.

User developed free module:

http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 550.0.html

In action:
http://www.akrabat.com/testbed/index.php?page=Calendar

Looks good. Can this also be displayed as a list? As there won't be so many events in my case it's easier to get an overview if for example the first three of the upcoming events are shown as a list, regardless of which month they will happen.

5. Contact page with different categories and with e-mail, full address, phone numbers and photo for each person. Possibly to be display either as a list or as a blog style.

Probably be best doing this by hand, just typing the list out.

I'll look into the solution presented in the thread that Woudloper is referring to. I'd like to have fixed fields for this, to make it as easy as possible for those filling in the contact details & possibly also make it so that each user can update the info about himself/herself. This is so that somebody shouldn't have to e-mail the administrator with changed contact details, but can update this oneself.

10. Frontend administration, especially for adding news and editing content pages "on-the-fly", that is without having to leave the site to edit content backend.

Not available.

Ok, I understand that the point with CMS Made Simple is to have all admin backend. However, personally I prefer editing pages (even static pages) frontend, to be able to see the result right away. It's easier then to get a feeling of where you are at the site and how it actually will look for the visitor. But that's a minor thing since the backend of CMS Made Simple is just that, simple.

Good Luck

I made the switch from Mambo and it's saved me alot of stress.

Thanks! It would be interesting to here you elaborate on why you left Mambo and what you see as the advantages/disadvantages with CMS Made Simple. What is it for example that you are NOT able to do with CMSMS that was possible with Mambo/Joomla? For example, for those only adding news to a site I'd like a specific page with just a form for adding news and no other menus. There are also way more third-party addons to Mambo/Joomla that do things that CMSMS is not yet able to do. But I suppose it's mainly about what the site is about and who will use it.

Thanks for your responses!!

[Woudloper]

Calandar

Looks good. Can this also be displayed as a list? As there won't be so many events in my case it's easier to get an overview if for example the first three of the upcoming events are shown as a list, regardless of which month they will happen.

Look for example on the page in action, there you can see the following code:

Code: Select all

{cms_module module="Calendar" summaries=true display="list" table_id="cal-list"}

This will display a list for the current month. I don't know if it is possible to get it working for multiple months, but then I would advice  you to post a question on the specific forum thread.

Contact details

I'll look into the solution presented in the thread that Woudloper is referring to. I'd like to have fixed fields for this, to make it as easy as possible for those filling in the contact details & possibly also make it so that each user can update the info about himself/herself. This is so that somebody shouldn't have to e-mail the administrator with changed contact details, but can update this oneself.

What you can also do is post a question in the thread or open an post in the modules/add-ons forum. Furthermore you can fill in the modules wishlist on the wiki.

Thanks! It would be interesting to here you elaborate on why you left Mambo and what you see as the advantages/disadvantages with CMS Made Simple. What is it for example that you are NOT able to do with CMSMS that was possible with Mambo/Joomla? For example, for those only adding news to a site I'd like a specific page with just a form for adding news and no other menus. There are also way more third-party addons to Mambo/Joomla that do things that CMSMS is not yet able to do. But I suppose it's mainly about what the site is about and who will use it.

I did not left Mambo/Joomla, but I have tested it with some of the actual end-users. This wasn't satisfying as they found Mambo/Joomla to hard to learn and the learning curve for 'CMS Made Simple' is mutch easier.

[Woudloper]

Regarding the 'Frontend Adminstration'. As explained before that is not possible, but if you would like to create a frontpage login and show specific content for those persons who are logged on to the frontend you must view the wiki and take a look at the userid/protectedpages/customcontent modules.

[Matt Jason H]

I switched from mambo because it was inflexible, required numerous hard edits of the files to customise properly, was needlessly complex, very difficult to customise, my clients needed hours and hours of training to get the hang of it, it frequently did things i didn't understand (like time out an authors session causing them to loose work), everything you did with it felt like a hack and, biggest of all, it dictated the design. Every site i made in mambo had at least 1 or two similar features, I had to install mambo and work around it - with CMS made simple i have none of the above problems, and i can make my design and fit CMS made simple into it.

I don't even have to think about the cms when i'm designing, because i know i can do pretty much anything. It's very liberating compared to mambo.

[westis]

Thanks a lot for your responses!

The {edit} tag is indeed great, Patricia. Apparently I hadn't looked too carefully at the plugins.

The next step is to make the editing "inline", that is seeing the page exactly as it is, including menu and all. Then those people who won't need access to anything else never need to leave the frontend. I have the same intention with adding news. For those who will do nothing but adding news it would be nice with a form for only that, without the admin menu and everything else that shows backend (even if I set permissions for that group only to add news there are quite a few things showing that might confuse).

And Matt, now that I've started look seriously into CMSMS I agree with you. Most of the things I need to do are possible in CMSMS and it's WAY simpler.

Woudloper, I've created an Administration link on the frontend that takes the user to the log in form or directly to the admin if he/she is already logged in.

The more I work with CMSMS the more I love it!