CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello CMSMS forum

I've received a brief for a community website, which requires content management. It's a Scottish Highland sie -- they will have pages for hotels, bed and breakfasts etc, the members to upload thir own ever-changing info.

Whether I accept this, depends on whether I can first bluff my knowledge, then acquire the knowledge of a CMS. I have to reply tomorrow.

After a quick look around, CMS Made Simple seems to be the right choice.

I have good XHTML and CSS skills, but currently limited on PHP and MySQL. That would have to change.

My noob questions:

1) I would like to design the site first, using clean XHTML markup and a decent compliant style sheet. If the design is accepted, can I then bring in CMSMS without a complete re-write?

2) The users/members will have limited skills. How does CMSMS interact with them?

3) The brief also calls for a member discussion group/forum. My first thought was phpBB. Does CMSMS provide its own forum add-in or should I use another like phpBB? I expect it to be low usage.

I've not had the time to research more. Hope you can give me quick answers.

martal wrote: 1) I would like to design the site first, using clean XHTML markup and a decent compliant style sheet. If the design is accepted, can I then bring in CMSMS without a complete re-write?

Yes you can, very easily actually. In short you paste the XHMTL in a template and the CSS in a stylesheet, add a {content} tag in your template where you want the dynamic content to be and a {menu} tag for the menu. Take a look here.

martal wrote: 2) The users/members will have limited skills. How does CMSMS interact with them?

The less rights you give them, the less options they have in the Admin. You can choose between various WYSIWYG editors for the page content (FCKEditor is installed by default).

martal wrote: 3) The brief also calls for a member discussion group/forum. My first thought was phpBB. Does CMSMS provide its own forum add-in or should I use another like phpBB? I expect it to be low usage.

A forum add-in is in development. I haven't tried it yet, so I have no idea if it is ready for usage yet. Otherwise, change the look of an existing forum to match your site (like phpBB or - as is done here - SMF). CMS Made Simple has some Smarty plugins to integrate the forum if needed ({embed} to show an iFrame and {fetchurl} which takes a single url and spits out its contents).

Regards,
D

Thanks for your quick aswer, Dee.

Regarding 1): the menu you refer to is the list of edit etc options for the user/member, not the main site menu?

Re 2): FCKEditor is a simple editor on the server?

Re 3): going to check out SMF. Looks fine.

Martin

You're welcome.

With the {menu} tag you call the MenuManager module, which inserts a (dynamically generated) (main) site menu for the CMS pages (it automatically adds a menu entry when a new page is created, moves the menu entry when the page is moved to another section, etc.).

FCKEditor is a simple "Word like" WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet editor in which your users can edit the page contents. It is included in the CMS Made Simple install, but other WYSIWYG editors are also available.

Regards,
D

Still a little unclear on the menu.

Is the menu we are discussing here, the one or ones viewed by every person browsing, or is it generated simply for the use of a member when they are editing?

I told you I was a noob. Had given little thought to CMS until lunchtime, now have to make decisions on it. 

This is about the menu viewed by everyone. In your html/template you place the {menu} tag to bring it up, look here for more info on common tags.

This was about the admin menu: The less rights you give them, the less options they have in the Admin.

You did discover the online CMS Made Simple demo and "template conversion" video? They can give a good impression.

OK, Dee, last question tonight.

I still have complete control over my menus? I could write some complex DHTML and JavaScript (not going to, but . . .) with the CSMSM tags in, everything still works.

Martin

Ofcourse, you can create your own DHTML and use it on your pages.
(because Smarty is used you have to surround it with {literal}{/literal} tags, otherwise Smarty will get confused by the { and } characters in your Javascript).

The beauty of using MenuManager is that the menu is updated automatically - when a page is renamed, moved, deleted, added, etc.

Regards,
D

Thanks, Dee. I feel confident that CMSMS will work out for me when/if I come to use it.