Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Let me first introduce myself a little. I am not a tech-expert or programmer, more a marketing+business driven fan of www that started a portal community for a very know business field almost 3 years ago.
The website was developed by a freelancer with minimum resources but with much effort and vision by me. We used a free CMS called "Coranto" (Perl + MySQL) with limited features but with great stability (until now!).
The site has grown very fast and it now hosts 20,000+ pages of content and a great worldwide respect within its industry.
Here is the challenge now:
My company that operates the site, is very small and cannot afford to hire a full-time programmer, but I think that the time has come to establish a new rich-featured CMS that will fullfil our needs for the next 2 years and support our strong potential for growth.
The CMS can be open-source or commercial but plz keep in mind that the available budget is limited.
It should support full-static pages (for search engines pursposes) and be easily-enough configurable.
Furthermore it should be available to be used to support several content-websites as I intend to establish a couple new ones very soon.
The problem - as always - is the same:
I don't have enough financial resources to choose a high-end commercial solution (that provides also reliability and it helps being independent from freelancers' instable relationship) and...
I don't have enough human resources to choose an open-source, modify it accordingly and gain from scalability, flexibility and reliability.
Well maybe it sounds that this is a no-end situation but I am sure that many of you have faced the same problems so any advices and input on the CMS issues (for a business portal community) I am challenging will be very much helpful.
Thank you in advance for your kind help.
PS. Key issues include:
1. Commercial CMS Solutions and Costs that apply for me
2. Open-source CMS that can be supported efficiently and meet the above requirements.
3. Commercial vs. Open-source CMS
4. Does anyone have any comments about "Typo3" CMS?
I mainly have comments for you about Typo3: Superb. Flexible. Stable. Secure. A little hard to learn ;-)
I have no experience with commercial CMS packages, but I have found very few things that Typo3 can't do either out-of-the-box, or with the help of one of the many publically available extensions. Furthermore, extension development is quite straightforward - and I am not a hardcore programmer. In the hands of a more experienced programmer, I think just about anything should be do-able.
Two of the nicest things about Typo3 compared to other open-source projects are the huge amount of available documentation (including 100+ how-to videos, and a well-documented API), and also the large community of consultancies specializing in the use of Typo3.
On the downside, Typo3 is not simple to learn; but this is as much a result of the degree of flexibility built into the system as it is with anything else. You can do so many things with it that it will take some time 1) to learn what is possible, and 2) to learn how to do it. It's like any other powerful tool: it takes a while to become really comfortable with it.
-B
By the way, search this site for Typo3, I've made some longer posts than this about it...
I have not used Type3 myself but heard that is much harder to setup and use.
mambo is open source and the manual/documentation is quite good.
There community is very active, comming out with new modules and addons all the time.
I like open source and they have a strong community putting out some very nice stuff IMO.
Also, if there are features missing, it will often be cheaper to pay an OSS programmer to write an extension than to pay a license and maintenance fee to a proprietary shop. Plus you get to "sponsor" an OS project, which is good for your karma :)
It's been said that no Content Management System can be any better that the Content Manager - the human being ultimately responsible for what content gets published and how. Running any website puts an organization into the publishing business, when their core competency may well be something far removed from publishing.
So what many businesses who are considering a CMS really need is first to learn something about the publishing business, this new area they arre venturing into. They often need an editor (or three), and perhaps a senior Content Manager who can establish and execute publishing protocols.
Sometimes taking that step into the "real" world of publishing is all it takes. And sometimes those people can see and advise on the software that their jobs require.
I've recently see one client completely abandon a software CMS solution, go to a human-based solution, and then begin to thrive when they were previously tangled up in bits and bytes. After ten months with their human-only managemnet solution, they are now about to deploy a much simpler CMS application, based on what the people involved can see they need to handle things like version control.
So bedlam's comments about taking time
1) to learn what is possible, and
2) to learn how to do it
...are right on the mark. And even then, knowing that something is possible doesn't mean you need it. So I suggest you take some significant time to determine what features you really need, and don't deploy one thing further. You don't want to tie the hands of your organzation when you were trying to free them.
You'd need a dedicated server running Windows 2000. You wouldn't need a full-time programer, but you'll need someone proficient in .NET to at least get you up and running. Once it's installed on the server, setting up new sites is not too complex, and only takes a few hours.
Another option if you don't have a dedicated server, is to host with someone like us that has a CMS installed on their server. That might solve both your human and financial resource problem.
This is what's known as Remotely Hosted Content Management Solutions. This is a monthly paid service — no application software or web server to buy, install, maintain, troubleshoot or upgrade. In some instances, you can stay with your current hosting provider, as the application is hosted by the vendor and accessed by the user through a web browser. The application publishes the changes to the user's site, wherever it is hosted.
One of the major benefits associated with hosted solutions is that they typically take substantially less time to deploy. In addition, they minimize the internal technical issues associated with installing a content management application.
Here is a list from some research I did on the topic. The information's about a year old, so don't hold me to it's accuracy.
contentQueue.NET
Starts at $40 per month
[contentqueue.net...]
WebPartz
6 User/$85/Month + $1,000 SU
[webpartz.com...]
LinearCMS
Starting at $250/mo.
[hosted-content-management.linearcms.com...]
Clickability
Few hundred dollars a month
[clickability.com...]
Atomz
Yearly subscription cost starting at $20,000 for a single site with as many as five users, (Priced on par with most midrange self-hosted content management applications, including Microsoft Corp.'s Content Management Server.)
iUpload
Starts at $400 per month and $50 per user per month
[iupload.com...]
CrownPeak Technology - Advantage CMS
Advantage CMS is based on the number of users and number of assets in the system. According to CrownPeak officials, a typical implementation costs about $60,000 the first year, dropping to $30,000 the second year. (Compares favorably with high-end content management software applications such as Vignette and Interwoven) Monthly fee is typically in the $2,000K – $4,000 range.
[crownpeak.com...]
Don’t Buy a CMS when a service is better
[crownpeak.com...]
Kitsite
Cost: around $19,700 in the first year and $9,850 per year thereafter.
[kitsite.com...]
Hannon Hill
Unlimited users for $20,000
[hannonhill.com...]
Crossbow Web
[crossbowmedia.com...]
EasyPanel
$41/month
[easypanel.co.uk...]
Refresh Software
$99 per user per month
[refreshsoftware.com...]
Hope that helps.
It compares easily to systems costing $20,000 or more. There are already web hosting firms offering FarCry accounts.
[farcry.daemon.com.au...]
The only knock I've heard against it is that it's a little difficult to install. Shouldn't be too hard to find a CF'er to help you though.
There's even a free CF engine from NewAtlanta.com called BlueDragon so the overall cost should compare favorably to the perl or php alternatives.
I have the same kind of problem. It seems that all software packages either too simplistic or at the opposite too much complex without being a hard core programer.
So I had to make develop a package suited to my needs: I have to manage a lot of articles and tutorials and same spec as you it must be static page and at the same they can be modified easily.
Maybe I can help you (or anybody else with the same kind of problem) with a customized version for your own needs. Email me by describing your needs.
You might want to look into [cofax.org...] and also, you should look into Mambo CMS (http://www.mamboserver.com/)
P.S.. next versin of Mambo CMS (5.0 I think) is suppose to be really great. One main install/db (anydomain.com) and you can handle many other domains and their content.
Hope this helps.
NS
LisaB
