CMS Made Simple Forums

Hi! Sorry that this might sound extremely newbie and out-of-place. But I want to make sure that this will work for my purpose.

What I am trying to do is to add an existing php amazon affiliate website, which is built on php and mysql, into cms. Whether it is CMSMS or joomla or druple, or whatever else, I don't care. Sorry that the site hasn't gone alive yet so I can't tell you where to take a look.

I know that cmsms can use some php, but it seems to be limited. My question is will that work for my purpose? If not, anyone can suggest an alternative? I am not php smart. I looked into joomla, drupal and none of those looks possible for me at my level. But please point me to a good start. Thanks so much!

Let me take a shot at this...

Without knowing more information about the functionality available on your site, it is hard to give you a precise answer.

In general all the CMS packages you listed are capable of supporting any kind of web site (HTML/CSS/JS etc.) and most of those are capable of being "extended" to provide the functionality that may be specific and custom to your site. CMSMS is no exception and IMHO does a great job of being a CMS and not getting in the way of doing what you need to do.

In terms of your transition, you can quite easily import your existing HTML and CSS into CMSMS and layout all the pages on your site. It is more efficient to take this opportunity to rebuild your site and take advantage of the some of the CMS functionality such as MenuManager and other modules. Then look at the additional functionality that you need to support and compare that with a list of the modules that are available - it is highly likely that some of this functionality has already been built and tested by other people. In cases where your requirements are different, you can quite easily create (or have someone create) custom modules or User-Defined Tags (UDT) within the CMSMS framework that will do the needful. Take a look at the current list at http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/features/modules .

Your assumption that the php capabilities of CMSMS is limited is wrong. The framework allows you to use the full capabilities of PHP while leveraging the benefits of a standard framework.

Again - as I stated in the beginning - without knowing more about the functionality you want to offer, it is hard to give you a more specific answer, but in general if you have a site that is working with PHP and MySQL, you can pretty much transition that into the CMSMS framework with a little effort.

Regarding your knowledge of PHP - if you are planning to transition a site that is already in PHP, then you *should* have a working knowledge of the language or find someone that does. If you are starting with a blank slate in CMSMS and are able to find modules that meet your needs, then you only need a basic understanding of PHP (if that).

Lastly if  you are willing to pay for someone to help with the transition, check out the "Help Wanted"  section of this forum (http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... ,34.0.html) and post your requirements there.

Hope that helps.
S