CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello.

I’m totally new to CMS tools and would really like to get some advice before I go deep in a project. A few years ago I made some webmaking in HTML, but I have not been doing it for a long time and have not learned modern methods such as php/asp. I have recently promised to idealistically create a webpage for an RC aero modelling sport organisation. The webpage has to be easy to maintain and should contain some interactive functions as a news updates, events calendar, forum. I think a CMS tool would be good for this, but have done a lot of investigating of CMS tools and found most of them to have a rather steep learning curve (im only creating the page and the future administrators probably don’t want to learn a complicated CMS). I think however that CMSMS is quite simple to use, but Im not sure it can do the functions I would like. My problem is that I don’t want to start a project and later find out that there are no modules that can do what I want. I have attached a picture of a simplified version of tha layout I have done.

Info of how I want the site is written in the picture. Most of the page will be static anyway so I have two options.
1. Do most of it in html and develop simple things like news and events list in ASP/PHP. Image gallery and forum could be some stand alone opens source applications
2. Use CMSMS (would be great) but I’m not sure there are modules that can do for instance the events calendar. Maybe also I can not get the news posting etc exactly the way I want, but I can probably compromise on this. And what about the layout. Can this be done the way I have intended.

What is the best option? Can the functions i want be done in CMSMS. I have just installed CMSMS anyway to start playing with it, so I guess i will find out sooner or later, but please share your advice.

Thanks
David


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i did a site for an r/c club 3-4 years ago. it was a static site with events calendar and photo gallery scripts added. the hardest part was coordinating the design between the two scripts with the main static site.

not having accounts work across the two scripts wasn't that big a deal in this particular case, because only a couple people handled the event calendar, yet any member could create photo galleries and upload pictures.

later on, that site got converted over to mambo, with modules for events and photo gallery added to it. mainly that was done to allow easier editing of pages by more than one person, while minimizing the chances that an edit will screw up the design.

i'm now setting up a site for a community concert band, and it will (eventually) have similar features to what you're describing. and i will be doing this one in cms made simple because it's content editing and organization is pretty darn simple, and it can do what i need it to do for this site.

the features that you're looking at; news, events, forum, are either included or available as an addon for cms made simple and many other cms packages (phpwebsite, the 'nukes', mambo/joomla, drupal, xayara, etc.)

ideally, you don't need to know how to program in the language the cms is written in order to use it, and the ones i mentioned (including cms made simple) don't require you to dive into the code in order to use it or add things (most of the time).

the layout you've drawn up is a pretty basic site design, and it could be developed and incorporated into any cms.

the best thing to do is exactly what you are doing.. play, test, experiment, and see how things work. explore the available options you're looking for and set it up.  a cms is like a lot of other things, best to learn while doing. be patient, read the documentation, and ask good questions when you get stuck on something.

if you want to take other cms packages for a test drive, without the hassles of setting them up on your server or local machine; check out www.opensourcecms.com - but i think that once you start working with cms made simple, you won't want to.

Kermit and Patricia, thank you both. I will give CMSMS a serious try. I installed it last night and played around with it for a while and so far I like it. I will download a few modules and se if i can get the functions i want before I start working to much on the layout.

I'll probably come with questions as the the project comes along.

Thanks
/David