Which Content Management System for Directory, Recipes, Reviews, etc

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

I hope you don't mind sharing your thoughts on a good content management system that can do lots of things. I have several sections of my site running different things (like a directory application, wordpress, etc.,), and I would like to combine everything if possible.

I currently have (or will have very soon):

- A directory of businesses using phplinkdirectory (hope it's ok to mention software name here)

- Blog posts by multiple authors

- A list of workshops by city (currently in development - not live yet)

- Movie reviews

- Recipes

and, everybody's favorite...

- informational articles

I think that wordpress could probably handle a LOT of the functions, but I don't know which plugins I might need.

I would prefer the ability to have different navigation (i.e., a different "category tree" of navigation links) depending on which section of the blog they are on.

so for example, if they are on the recipes section, I want the navigation to show mostly links to other recipe groups, and not to the workshops or movie reviews.

Maybe the directory CAN'T be combined, because there is a lot of functionality that I need (like changing the position of the listing based on reciprocal linking, and allowing sorting on different dimensions).

Thanks in advance.

[enigma1]

Usually you customize code for whatever features you need. There isn't a CMS that does it all. All come with some basic content management functionality.

From my experience the key is the codebase to be as simple as possible and work with different server/hosting environments and of course you need to be familiar with the framework. I have taken an old web engine and made a cms out of it, now I use it for anything you can imagine and I write the necessary code.

If you give me a list of CMS packages I will pick up the one with the best structure but minimum complexity and use a 50/50 balance on these to measure it perhaps. Too much object oriented and learning/development may take ages. Too little structure in place makes the package impossible to work with after integrating few features.

So ask yourself if you need 10 different category trees based on the blog section you view, how many hours you need to spend learning and how many files you have to change or create to have this done with each CMS? I am sure it's not going to be the same for every single one of them.

It's best to use the same package for each site. So if you have a link directory with blog and you want both to be on the same domain or same sub-domain for some reason, use the same package. It reduces maintenance and management. If the site's sections differ a lot, consider using different sub-domains.

And gradually as you become an expert with the code you use - because you use it extensively, lots of features and modules are very simple to implement.

[ergophobe]

I don't know phplinkdirectory, but my experience with combining packages has always been bad.

So you pick CMS-X and PHP LD and you either find something so that PHPLD integrates into your CMS or you build something so that logins are shared, navigation is shared and so on. Then the API changes and you have to update the CMS for some security patch, but the person who wrote the bridge script that connects them has moved on to other thing.

So I think you could achieve your laundry list with a variety of CMS, but I'd try to stay all in one app, whether you build it, buy it or steal it -- it will simplify ongoing maintenance.

Just my two cents.

[Planet13]

Thank you, enigma1 and ergophobe.

[edited by: ergophobe at 9:16 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2012]