Best free CMS? - TTLG Forums

Yakoob on 6/7/2012 at 18:21

Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy

Following this thread with some interest as I'd like to spruce up my own site (see profile if you care).

The original was bashed together 7 odd years ago after reading a php-for-dummies book, and could do with modernising, especially the clunky cms behind the scenes. Not sure if it would be better for a revamp to again be hand-coded. Or if I should just junk it and grab a ready-made CMS off the shelf.

Aye it does look dated, but by the structure, WordPress would suit your needs perfectly. You should be able to get it up yourself but, as, I mentioned I can set it up for ya if you'd like (I've worked and custom moded/themed WP for several clients). I might even throw in some TTLG-specific discount in there (30% off if your posts ever threw dethtoll in such nerdgrage he got banned : P )

Quote Posted by jay pettitt

Drupal is a CMS construction kit - you get to build your own behind the scenes out of building blocks and then build your own database structures and eventually a shiny website. There are some advantages to that approach (especially if you're building a site for someone else and have specific criteria for the CMS that you need to meet), but if you want a fairly standard website in double quick time Drupal might be overkill and overly hard work. It's awesome. But it's also a lifestyle choice.

Yes yes and yes. But that's exactly what the OP hints at, with needing very specific panels and views and item listings and comments and... yea :)

Quote Posted by Al_B

Drupal... I couldn't quite come to terms with. It's definitely a great CMS but for serious work you seem to keep banging your head against a brick wall and needing yet another plugin. Modularity is great, but I kept feeling that anything I did introduced as many problems as it solved.

Yep, that is my only concern, you can get amazing functionality out-of-the-box when you slap and configure together 30 different modules... but that also means having to keep track of 30 different modules, ensuring they are all configured properly AND cross-compatible. A single unchecked checkbox somewhere in not-always-intuitive menus and a 3rd party may gain full access to some small chunk of admin-only power :/

Chimpy Chompy on 6/7/2012 at 19:48

I'd want to do it myself to feel like I'm accomplishing something vaguely techy, but thanks for the offer!

SubJeff on 6/7/2012 at 21:30

Trying to install Drupal now.

From the sounds of it it's what I'm after but we'll have to wait and see.

SubJeff on 6/7/2012 at 22:43

Well, this isn't going well. I can't get it installed. The instructions are, err, bollocks. WP was easy, this assumes far too much.

SubJeff on 6/7/2012 at 22:55

Tried a different way.

Nope.

:(

jay pettitt on 7/7/2012 at 11:47

I was flustered with Drupal installs, until I got it right. And then it was like - oh is that it? Installing is definitely the easiest bit.

SSH is your friend. Unpacking zip and tar archives is super speedy if you can do it direct from the server, but something like Filezilla will do if you prefer a graphical interface.

Once you've unpacked and got everything where you want it, rumage around until you've found drupal's sites directory. Go there and once inside, make and name a folder for your website - ie mysite.com (so your new folder has the same name as the site's URL including the TLD)

There's an existing default folder in the sites directory. Copy settings.php from it to your new directory.
(-- edit -- I think I copy the sites/all/themes and sites/all/modules folders into sites/mysite.com when I do it too - thanks for reminding me AI-B - but might be redundant, see post below - should work either way)

You're now ready to go...

You'll need access to a mysql database and you need to point the destination for your URL (mysite.com) at the Drupal base directory (not your site directory, but the directory you installed Drupal into) from your webhost control panel.

Point your browser to mysite.com and off you go.

My earlier comment stands though. I think Drupal is massively overkill for what you want to do. That's not to say that you shouldn't or that I don't think learning Drupal will be worthwhile, especially if you can use what you learn in the future for other sites too - but it's not the path of least resistance for a single site.

--edit--
Depending on luck, your webhost and the server, you may have to fart around with the .htaccess file. Googling "name-of-webhost drupal .htaccess" should set you straight.

Al_B on 7/7/2012 at 11:56

Quote Posted by jay pettitt

There's an existing default folder in the sites directory. Copy settings.php from it to your new directory.

Interesting - I've never had to do more than set up a database and user (with appropriate permissions as documented in the various INSTALL.<db name>.txt files), make sure the web server points to the correct location and point a browser to the site.

Subjective Effect: What step of the installation is failing?

jay pettitt on 7/7/2012 at 12:11

Quote Posted by Al_B

There are a couple of extra steps if you want to do a multi-site install (which is what I do) - I think I copy the sites/all/themes and sites/all/modules folders into sites/mysite.com when I do it too. It might be an extra step that you don't actually need for a single site or something. Or just completely redundant.

It works though.

Given that the extra steps needed for hosting multiple sites from a single install are so easy, I think I'd argue that you might as well, just in case you ever want to have more than one drupal website - even if you never actually get around to making use of it.

SubJeff on 7/7/2012 at 17:30

I've decided to just use Wordpress now. I think it'll do the job, it's just a shame it wont look exactly how I want it.

Content is king though, so...

Yakoob on 8/7/2012 at 20:31

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Trying to install Drupal now.

From the sounds of it it's what I'm after but we'll have to wait and see.

Keep in mind the documentation is a bit of a clusterfuck (not as bad as Joomla's though), but once you get the hang of basic concepts and the design principles, it will become pretty easy and intuitive (small UI quirks aside). If you get stuck feel free to message/steam/skype me.

Quote:

I've decided to just use Wordpress now. I think it'll do the job, it's just a shame it wont look exactly how I want it.

You said you do HtmL/CSS/JS so there is no reason it cant look the way you want it to; making WP themes is dead easy, and I actually hacked together some (http://www.kacperskowron.com/) animated and interactive stuff for clients, all using standard WordPress features and admin backend.