CMS Made Simple Forums

Hi,

I'm looking around for a new CMS for my company that can handle a lot of content, and is highly customizable, and has the ability to write plug-ins/modules. CMS MS seams like a good fit. A few specific questions I have, some I saw answers to on the forum but not all:

1) Accessibility or Web Standards: is CMS MS WCAG1/2 and ATAG compliant?

2) Development Tools: what development tools are available? How difficult is it to write a module? For example I'd like to write a module that will give an option for each article post to allow a start and end date to display - would this be a big challenge?

3) Customization: I looked at a few skins/themes and they look pretty easy to design (CSS etc.). Though, suppose you wanted butcher the current CMS MS layout framework and put the nav bar in the footer, footer where the nav bar was, etc. how hard would be to customize the layout - probably involving core code modifications or writing a module I'm guessing?

4) Web 2.0 add ons: I plan to add a lot of Ajax to our web site, an example would be adding an ajax call back to log how many times a user clicks a link. How hard would it be to add this sort of thing?

5) What separates  CMS MS from say Joomla!, Plone, and Drupal, other than a simple authoring interface?

I'm sure I'll have other questions but this is a start.
Thanks,
-peter

thiessenp wrote: Hi,

I'm looking around for a new CMS for my company that can handle a lot of content, and is highly customizable, and has the ability to write plug-ins/modules. CMS MS seams like a good fit. A few specific questions I have, some I saw answers to on the forum but not all:

1) Accessibility or Web Standards: is CMS MS WCAG1/2 and ATAG compliant?

2) Development Tools: what development tools are available? How difficult is it to write a module? For example I'd like to write a module that will give an option for each article post to allow a start and end date to display - would this be a big challenge?

Module development isn't tough, it's like any coding, and learning any new system... it takes time and there is a learning curve.  I've written and/or modified over 50 modules, and can say that the API and smarty make CMS development relatively simple, and ultra powerful.

But the news module already does what you want.

3) Customization: I looked at a few skins/themes and they look pretty easy to design (CSS etc.). Though, suppose you wanted butcher the current CMS MS layout framework and put the nav bar in the footer, footer where the nav bar was, etc. how hard would be to customize the layout - probably involving core code modifications or writing a module I'm guessing?

CMS Made simple uses smarty.  Almost everything is done in templates.  If you wanted to move the menu or add another one it's as simple as editing the appropriate page template, and copying/moving the {menu} tag into the new location of the template.

4) Web 2.0 add ons: I plan to add a lot of Ajax to our web site, an example would be adding an ajax call back to log how many times a user clicks a link. How hard would it be to add this sort of thing?

It's not that hard, I've done some ajaxy stuff with CMS before.... the hard part is getting the destination URL down for the ajax request.  but once you know that little bit, it's straight forward.

5) What separates  CMS MS from say Joomla!, Plone, and Drupal, other than a simple authoring interface?

I'm sure I'll have other questions but this is a start.
Thanks,
-peter

Hello Peter

I haven't read the previous answer. Here are mines :

thiessenp wrote: 1) Accessibility or Web Standards: is CMS MS WCAG1/2 and ATAG compliant?

The sample templates are good. But your CMSms web site is as YOU make it. You can make it compliant or not. You decide. There is nothing that prevents you to keep a compliant site.

thiessenp wrote: 2) Development Tools: what development tools are available? How difficult is it to write a module? For example I'd like to write a module that will give an option for each article post to allow a start and end date to display - would this be a big challenge?

You don't need to write a module for this example : just use plain News module.

thiessenp wrote: 3) Customization: I looked at a few skins/themes and they look pretty easy to design (CSS etc.). Though, suppose you wanted butcher the current CMS MS layout framework and put the nav bar in the footer, footer where the nav bar was, etc. how hard would be to customize the layout - probably involving core code modifications or writing a module I'm guessing?

This is the power of layout and content separation : put the footer on top (of the template) if you want.

thiessenp wrote: 4) Web 2.0 add ons: I plan to add a lot of Ajax to our web site, an example would be adding an ajax call back to log how many times a user clicks a link. How hard would it be to add this sort of thing?

I can't answer this one. I don't rely on client side processing. I'd rather analyse http logs to know the audience.

thiessenp wrote: 5) What separates  CMS MS from say Joomla!, Plone, and Drupal, other than a simple authoring interface?

I don't know this other products. Pleaqe search (with google) the posts/comparisons about them here.

I'd like to add this : if you know PHP-SQL website running software, installing CMSms (with sample content) can take you only 4 minutes. Hence try it and see by yourself if it is the right product for your project.

Pierre M.

thiessenp wrote: 5) What separates  CMS MS from say Joomla!, Plone, and Drupal, other than a simple authoring interface?

Look at user's comments at [url=http://[http://www.opensourcecms.com][http://www.opensourcecms.com[/url].
One thing I can say for sure is that Plone runs on Python, unlike other cmss you named (they run on PHP, including cmsms).
Also, there are some opinions in this forum - just search.

Well, I have to jump on this bandwagon, too. I am a web designer and an enthusiastic supporter and user of CMSMS. I just recently found it, less than four months ago.  Since then, I've developed one live site, a sandbox that I currently test and blow up various modules and designs in, and we are in production on three CMSMS sites, a law firm web site (it's done, just waiting for approval from the State Bar of Texas), a financial advisor's web site, and a Serbian translator's web site. 

I've been able to design for CMSMS without any problems, it's standards-compliant, accessibility-compliant, really easy to learn, the backend is so well done that my clients (some of whom admittedly are technologically challenged) can go in and add content on their own.

For me two of CMSMS's most powerful features are its forms module ... you can create the most complex of forms with just a few mouse clicks and style them with ease, there are styling hooks built into the forms module just as there are with generally all of the modules. 

The other thing I love about CMSMS is the Front End User (FEU) Module.  If your client requires login and separate "members only" content, forget using Joomla or Drupal for that.  CMSMS does it very well with this module.  And it's one thing that I have not seen done with WP. 

I have derived a great deal of satisfaction being able to jump right into CMSMS.  The Smarty Tags are great; the User Defined Tags are simply awesome! 

Now to address your specific questions:

1) Accessibility or Web Standards: is CMS MS WCAG1/2 and ATAG compliant?
As far as I know, yes.  There is a small issue with the out of the box CSS that uses "whitespace" which causes the CSS to not validate. I've been stripping it out without any problems so far.  Here's the specific code:
And here's another CMSMS nugget:  The stylesheets? They are works of art. They are highly commented; I learned some new things just reading the CSS comments! 

2) Development Tools: what development tools are available? How difficult is it to write a module? For example I'd like to write a module that will give an option for each article post to allow a start and end date to display - would this be a big challenge?
First of all, don't worry about creating a module for that, CMSMS already gives you that option natively.  I'm not a module developer, I know just enough code to be dangerous.  But it seems like with the Smarty templating system and PHP, it would be easy to write a module for just about anything your mind can cook up. 

3) Customization: I looked at a few skins/themes and they look pretty easy to design (CSS etc.). Though, suppose you wanted butcher the current CMS MS layout framework and put the nav bar in the footer, footer where the nav bar was, etc. how hard would be to customize the layout - probably involving core code modifications or writing a module I'm guessing?

It's not even that hard.  There's a great tutorial on porting an existing design to CMSMS and I've already ported some of our WordPress themes to CMSMS with ease.  All you need to do is move the CMSMS tags around in your layout and you should be fine.  No need to touch the core files.  Just take a peek at the shipped templates and you'll be able to ferret out the CMSMS code that is required.  And it's a cinch to pop that code into another layout or work a new design around it. 

4) Web 2.0 add ons: I plan to add a lot of Ajax to our web site, an example would be adding an ajax call back to log how many times a user clicks a link. How hard would it be to add this sort of thing?
I'll defer the answer to this question to someone on this board who knows more about it than I do. 

5) What separates  CMS MS from say Joomla!, Plone, and Drupal, other than a simple authoring interface?
Joomla has a very steep learning curve, I just never got it.  I wasn't much better with Drupal although I did begin to understand its "nodes" a bit after a while, but I thought the backend was pretty complicated.  I don't know anything about Plone, but as someone else pointed out, that runs on Python, for whatever that's worth, while Drupal and Joomla/Mambo use PHP.

CMSMS is exactly that, simple.  It's easy to design for, easy to tweak, there are plenty of modules out there -- although I'd love to see the module library build up some more to where there were many more things available for it.  I use WordPress too and there is simply a mind boggling array of plugins for WP.  But I think WP has been around a bit longer than CMSMS. 

The only negative thing I have to say about CMSMS is that its forum module is a spam magnet. 

HTH.