CMS Made Simple Forums

For my first post I thought I would say hello and give thanks to CMSMS.

Just to show you how appreciative I am having found this application, let me give you a run down of the last couple months of my life.

A couple months ago I was in the process of updating my websites and speaking to a friend about it and the time it took.  One of my sites, though small by some standards, has 300+ pages on it.  Need I tell you the time in individually editing and styling these pages.  I had not yet even began to look at CSS then and I would go as far as to say I was even hesitant to think much about it.  After all, I got , , etc. tags, who needs CSS.

So I begin my search, which CMS to use.  I knew NOTHING about CMS's, what features to look for and all that jazz.  I search perhaps for a week researching and settle on Joomla!  It has a large community, LOTS of add-ons.  Of particular importance was the powerful ecommerce module, VirtueMart and the calendar module gigCalender.  It also had some very sophisticated and power site statistics modules, which was semi-important since one of my websites is a business website and I would like to know some information on where my customers are visiting from, when and so forth.

I get Joomla! installed and almost immediately run into problems.  I figure this is all new and I need to read the manual.  So I print it out.  A freaking 3" binder full manual.  Developers manual, Administrator manual, Installation manual, A 3" BINDERs worth and that didnt even cover the manuals on the modules I wanted to use.

It was a pure exercise in futility to even figure out how to put up a simple page full of content.  You got to create a section, then a categoy, THEN you can create the page.  Wasnt a CMS supposed to make my life easier?

So I figure out how to get up a page, yay for me.  Then the next issue, the template.  Quite frankly, the default template sucked.  I dont need a bazillion modules on my page.  I need an image for the site (the few graphics and colors), a menu system and obviously the content.

Well in order to design a template for Joomla! you gotta know about CSS.  So back to the printer I go, a printin' tutorials.  TWO 2" binders worth of that.  My printer dies.  I have to go get a new printer.  Of course Ive had it a couple years, but I figure it was protesting all the work and maybe giving me a hint of just what I had gotten myself into.

I get at least comfortable with CSS, I aint no know it all, but I aint afraid of it anymore, I even kinda embrace it now as I have learned about standardization, SEO, among other things from reading about CSS.

Back to the template creation project I go.  I get a template made.  Its basic but it works.  Then comes the next issue, as if I should have been surprised by this point.  The menu system sucks.  No drop down menus, which my sites use.  My business site with all its pages, its almost unavoidable to use a drop down menu to make it all relatively easy to navigate.  Im sure more experienced designers would have other solutions, but what I had worked and it worked well.

Come to find out I have to download yet another module to modify the menu system and basically its the only real solution to drop down CSS menus for Joomla!  I realize, after a long battle, that its not much of a solution.  Not well documented at all, and few other choices.  With Joomla! its not as simple as making the menu and calling it up in Joomla!.  If its not integrated into the system, your pretty much screwed, at least from what I was able to conclude from my attempts.

I decide I probably can find anothe solution for the menu using what is existing in Joomla! so I begin to layout stuff on paper trying to come up with something.  In the end, I decide that my site is going to be so cluttered with menus that I begin to consider other options, including just continuing to edit my site as I have but upgrade it with CSS to make it atleast a little easier on the presentation side of things.

Joomla's Virtumart, gigCalendar, Site Statistics were an extremely addictive feature not to mention I can also set dates as to when the content will appear on the site and when it will be removed.  So I can create stuff well in advance and just set the time I want it available on the site and Joomla! does the rest.  Though I was running into having to consider at what cost.

My wife has seen hardly anything of me for the last two months as I spend nearly all my free time in front of my PC on my test server working through all the stuff Joomla! is throwing at me.  Furthermore, if you had any applications that were not a Joomla! module, it was nearly impossible to pull it up through Joomla.  In othe words, if Joomla! did not have an ecommerce solution then you either broke out of the CMS environment to display it or did without.  Thats just wrong to me.

I start trying to get assistance on the help forums.  I must say, that as impressed as I was with the large community, there isnt a lot of help there.  Nothing in Joomla! is terribly, if at all, intuitive.  It seems to have been created with absolutely NO thought to someone with no CMS experience or all the other nuiances of using a CMS.  It is powerful, it appears to be versitle and able to do a lot of stuff, but its all at the expense of needing a college degree to use.  Wasnt a CMS supposed to make my life easier?

I understand that a CMS is 'content' management.  But what good is management of the content if you can't effectively manage the 'presentation'?  CMSMS at least gives some functionality and ease in managing the presentation.  I hope that in the near future that the presentation aspect does become a serious and well devolped addition if not add-on to CMS's in general.

So, where was I?  Oh yeah.  So after a couple months of this, my wife remaining patient as I tried to work all this out I told her that this was just insane and that Im making the decision to just switch the site over to a tableless design as much as possible and use CSS and try and get everything up to coding standards.

So I go back to the drawing board and try to find open source e-commerce solutions and scheduling soluitions.  I find what I need in ZenCart and phpScheduleIt.  So I go back and start refining my template and trying to optimise it for IE and FF since those seem to be the biggest browsers out there.

All the while Im still working with and trying other CMS's.  Mambo (pretty much the same as Joomla!), PHP-Nuke, Dragonfly, Xoop, e107, and a few others I cant recall.  All were pretty much either not intuitive, didnt have a large support base or other things that I felt I needed.

I then come across CMSMS.  I ALMOST passed it over, but the demo kind of intrigued me and decided that what the heck, Ive tried everything else.

Folks, Im here to tell you I wasted nearly two months of my life, if I had only ran acorss CMSMS before I would already have my site revamped.  It may not have as large of a community or the addons, but its functional, easy to use and intuitive.  It even gives me considerable control over the presentation.  Now I havent gotten into installing modules or tags yet, but the CMS itself is at least easy to use.

My wife got to actually spend some time with me this week.  Im even a little excited about the prospects of using CMSMS even after all the turmoil with Joomla! and the others out there.

I know this is an extremely LONG post and if you made it this far, thanks.  But I thought it important to let you know just how I came to be here, what brought me here and what a wonderful application CMSMS is.  Are there other CMSes out there?  Certainly, you know that.  But ask yourself, at what cost, even with it being open source (everything costs you something in some way), is it worth to you to use that CMS?  How much time do you have?  What are you willing to go through?  In the end, I need several things for my website, a headache and lost precious time with my family isnt one of them.

I hope to see CMSMS develop, not only in its features but its community as well.  I would like to see some of the add-on I found with other CMSes, but I'll take ease of use and simplicity.  Is there a way to be powerful, feature laden yet simple.  I'll bet that CMSMS will find the way if what Im seeing so far is any indication.

Thanks for your replay, more so, thanks for reading through all that.  I can be long winded to say the least, 

Indeed my two months weren't a total waste.  I did gain a lot not only understanding standards, css and such but even a little php as I purchased a couple books on that as well but didnt get near as deep into that as I did with the CSS.

I had no idea that this project was so young, I somehow missed that.  Thats really encouraging actually.  A project this young that has created an application that is this useful and functional is a sure sign of the futured success of CMSMS.  I'll do my best to contribute once I get my sites revamped, which shouldnt take too terribly long, but as I mentioned neither is anywhere near meeting web standards.  Ive been using FireFox recently and a plug-in that shows the errors and warnings for the code on the page I visit and that thing lights up like a red alert on the starship enterprise in a klingon battle when I visit my sites, so I have some work to do.

Finally, I am indeed also thankful for my wife.  She has put up with nothing short of neglect these last two months while I have tried to get things worked out.  The big rush for all of this is that Iam planning on incorporating my business (not really as big of a deal as it may seem) but nonetheless I am very aware that the image my website portrays to visitors when they visit is as important as if I were there myself speaking to them and I want to make sure that its not only up to code but is easy to maintain since Im the one that keeps it all up to date.  I dont want to be spending my time thumbing through a library of 3" binders looking for information on how to make what should be simple and intuitive changes.

I have also installed a couple modules since posting my message, which that process alone it infinately more intuitive than with Joomla!  With Joomla you had modules, components, and mambots and God only knows how they all tied together 'cause I never figured it out.  I was pleasantly surprised with the install of the modules in CMSMS as the ones I used installed effortlessly and I was immediately able to figure out the rest.  What more can be said?

OHH YEAHH!  One of the first ones I installed.

The world should abandon IE for FF.  Just so much more with FF than IE ever thought of (now that wasnt very nice of me  )  And they say I have no opinion.

I havent tried the CSS edit on the fly yet because I have a commercial CSS editor but I perhaps would benefit, now that I have found CMSMS, in consolidating some of the tools Ive been using to compensate /overcome some of the issues I was running into.

Ive been meaning to search for an open source CSS editor if there is such a thing.  I would imagine most still use a notepad, but Im addicted to that tag coloring and error highlighting.  Its saves me from myself alot, LOL.