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I would like to put more care and thought into my site - which is an informational site about my mobile software product. I would like to make a good CMS choice so I could worry more about the content than the system and hopefully have most of the time to make a better product.
Here are some desirable things I would probably use from a CMS:
Content arranged in categories, and subcategories.
Possibly a blog or news section, but the whole site is not a blog and shouldn't neccessarily look like one.
Clean look and simple navigation.
Looks decent in mobile browsers (particularly Windows Mobile, whose browser seems stuck in the dark ages.)
Since the site promotes windows mobile software, many of the content pieces will have screenshots that happen to be 240x320.
Some good SEM potential, preferably with the built in features. By this I mean:
= Have a title for a page be just about the page.
= urls with words, not like "/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,74/board,6.0/"
Joomla 1 didn't do well, or, rather, I didn't use it effectively. I found it annoying that it wanted to put the title of the site in front of everything - the site title was the only thign I got good search engine referrals for. I have edited it to take that out, thoughh I forgot to do that in one of the updates.
May require a user to register to download trial software, though I'm thinking of dropping that requirement. Still would want a login to post in forums.
Would like to be able to have a forum and hopefully keep the content and registered users. With Joomla, I had the SMF forum "wrapped" in a bridge.
I prefer as much as possible that the features be built into the CMS as opposed to a dizzying array of choices of plugins and sub plugins, though I understand the benefits of plugins. In joomla, I had the SMF forum and community builder connected by some (rickety) bridge that usually broke when the pieces were out of sync - or because of human error ( I being the human).
Does anyone have experience migrating from Joomla 1.0x to something else?
I don't believe I have many deep links, so I am not trying to necessarily keep urls the same.
Drupal sounds interesting because it seems flexible enough, has enough of the functionality built in, and may be able to survive a migration from Joomla.
Have you tried opensourcecms website? for trying out various CMS out there . It would depend on which technology you would like to go ahead .
In LAMP system , I would vote for Drupal as i have been using it since long.
You have to put some efforts in learning it as usual , the code is standard complaint , is modular , is clear for SEO purpose ,has categories , has mobile friendly modules , can migrate from variety of platforms , the possibilities are unlimited for doing things with it.
Try to download version 6 is latest at present and play around.
Thanks
Bill or someone might chime in with how well Typepad meets your requirements. Also, you might look for the Pakt publishing list of best CMS to come up with a short list of CMS to test. Like any list, it's debatable, but it's a starting point. I've tested a handful from that list and there are some good ones, but so far nothing to tear me away from Drupal or WP, but some that might have stopped me from choosing those in the first place (in other words, familiarity breeds comfort, not contempt, when it comes to a CMS for me).
The advantage to drupal is power and flexibility. I think it's the hands down winner there from what I've seen.
Disadvantages to drupal
- I find more conflicts between drupal modules than between WP plugins. True, that's partly because the drupal module system is so powerful, but it can be a real hassle when you find out some combination of plugins just won't work together (I'm dealing with this now on a Drupal site).
- no pushbutton updates. Keeping a drupal install with numerous plugins up to date can be a real chore.
So though I am a huge drupal fan, I think everything you want can be done easily in WP EXCEPT the forum and the register for downloads, which will be pretty much built in to Drupal.
So, going through your requirements.
>I could worry more about the content than the system
Wordpress is rarely hacked if kept up to date. I know a lot of people here will differ, but I think that's true. And the interface for adding and managing content is very easy to use.
>Content arranged in categories, and subcategories.
I think almost all CMS will do this. Certainly Drupal and WP will.
>Possibly a blog or news section, but the whole site is not a blog and shouldn't neccessarily look like one.
You can use "pages" for your main content and "posts" for the blog and just have a "recent posts" and "featured posts" section on the front page (or just a link to the blog). This is really simple with Drupal and the block system, but you can pull it off with WP and some themes are built with this in mind already.
>Clean look and simple navigation.
Regardless of CMS, that will depend mostly on the theme you use.
>Looks decent in mobile browsers
There are "mobile" themes for Wordpress. I haven't seen one for Drupal, but I'm sure they exist. But again, in both cases there are thousands of themes and also some theme frameworks that are built ofr customization.
>Have a title for a page be just about the page.
I'm not sure what you mean, but with the Headspace2 plugin for WP or the PageTitle module for drupal, you have total control of page titles. By that I mean that you can have separate H1 and <title> titles. In Drupal, the ability to customize anchor text is built into the menu system, so page/category titles need not be the same as menu anchor text.
>urls with words, not like "/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,74/board,6.0/"
Standard on both systems if you enable "clean" URLs
>May require a user to register to download trial software, though I'm thinking of dropping that requirement. Still would want a login to post in forums.
Forums. That's the stickler. There is BBpress (I think) that integrates forums with WP, but of course Drupal is designed to handle forums from the ground up with perfect integration.
Drupal sounds attractive because it at least has forum and login built in.
There's still the challenge of finding the right template(s) and getting the right plugins to activate them for mobile content, so I probably won't get away from plugins altogether.
It's worth asking - does anyone have experience with a java based cms?
One of the chief reasons (in my view) that I had incompatibilities with some joomla plugins is that they tended to use the "search and replace" mehod of integration. Eg a forum bridge plugin, as part of it's install, would modify the index.php from joomla and the index.php. This was very sensitive to slight changes in either one.
Is that a still a common practice for CMS plugins?
From a search of Extensions, it seems Joomla 1.5 has much better forum integration through extensions.
As for SEO. Even on 1.0.15 I have it so there is no site title, on pages. I did have to exclude blog though due to conflicts, but would say over 80% of site is titled urls.
So I would say take some time and compare the two. I just installed Drupal for a different site because I want to learn it and think it can be much more customized, especially in how modules(components would be closest in Joomla I think) interact.
If anyone has some good tutorials on Drupal 6, I would love them posted or PMed. Has a definite learning curve.
would modify the index.php
Seriously? No that is not common practice.
If anyone has some good tutorials on Drupal 6
As a developer or an end user? For the developer, I can't recommend John Van Dyk's Pro Drupal Development highly enough. It puts the pieces together in a way that the online documentation just doesn't.
