Content Management vs. Handwritten

For dynamic website with lots of content

[pulszar]

I am revamping, so to speak, my wesbite to be easier to manage, and more user friendly both visually and interactivly. My site has pages like news, articles, reviews, etc, and I am starting to learn PHP because I figured that would be the best way to dynamically maintain and add content to the site.

My question is, it it better, or more common to use a CMS like Joomla, PHP-Nuke, etc to handle everything or code it yourself? I tested a few CMS apps out and quite frankly, I feel a little more comfortable with my own designs, control, and pages.. but when it comes to using PHP to post dynamic content, keep track of everything, etc, I'm not sure I'm looking at the right methods.

I planned on using a mix of XHTML, CSS, and PHP to create the site, nothing extreme as far as design.. just something clean and functional with a little bit of style. There will be a forum and the ability to post comments to articles, news, etc but the core of the website is content with community interaction an afterthought. Another issue is how to incorporate blogging software into an otherwise non blog site so users can have the ability to comment.

Anyway I guess I'm just mainly curious to how many people, with sites similar to what mine sounds like, use CMS, and if so do you like it?

[Lobo]

Then why not use contribute?

[pulszar]

Is Contribute going to offer any kind of benefit over using Dreamweaver 8? (my current weapon of choice).

[mack]

With a CMS you are not really as limited as some people may think. The styles and templates that come with the cms are really just samples. You can design your own templates to make the cms look and feel just how you want it to.

Mack.

[pulszar]

After doing some reading, I think I'm going to stick with handcoding (Dreamweaver) for now. I dig the DW environment and in the end I feel like I have more control.

The only thing I have to figure out is how to make it so users can respond/comment to something (a story, for example). Again, its not a blog site.. but I would like to enable this feature. Do I have to incorporate something like WordPress into the home page of the site? Or is there a script that I can use that will allow this? (I've done a ton of searching and have found a ton of answers, but this one particular question is still a mystery to me)

[Lobo]

Contribute works more like a content management system.

if you are simply creating new pages adding content, then it is much simpler than using a straight template.

It would also allow others to update, keeping the structure in tact..

read more on contribute..

[TimmyMagic]

Pulszar,

I'm in the same boat as you. I currently use Dreamweaver for my site and hand code everything.

I have looked into various CMS's and the main concern I have is that they will affect my SEO. I'm sure that they can be customized to fit my sites style, but I really don't see any major benefits.

However, like you, I want to add a comments section to some of my reviews/articles. I have found it quite hard to find something suitable.

One major concern for the comment section is spamming. I run a forum on my site (PHPbb) which is gets lots of spam. Therefore I don't really fancy more spam for sitewide articles/reviews. So I thought a better way was to just add a form at the bottom of each article/review. Then I would manually upload the comments using DW.

It might not be suitable to very busy sites, and it might mean spending time adding/uploading them. But think of the time spent deleting all the spam!

If you find a suitable system then i'd be interested to know.

Tim

[pulszar]

Tim,

I see what you are saying, but like you said, if the site takes off, that could be alot of work either way (reposting comments or deleting spam). Since I originally posted this question, I came up with an idea that is not original, as I've seen it posed by a few people, but it would work.

My board uses phpBB also, so I was thinking, if I can somehow find a script or mini CMS (like NewsPHP) or something similar that allows user comments, then perhaps I can take the database info for the registered users of the board and extend the permissions to the database that runs the comments/CMS.

Essentially, you would get an account by signing up to the board, or a general sign up, and would have access to both the board and the comments. This would be tough for me because I don't know much about fiddling with databases but I'm always up for a challange.

I looked around here and found similar posts but no definitive answers so it's time to start tooling around. If I come up with something, I will post it here.. if anyone has any ideas or has done something like this, I'd love to know how you did it.

[TimmyMagic]

Pulzar,

Perhaps there is a mod for phpBB which would do this. I came across a competitors site a while ago and they seemed to be doing it.

Tim

[pulszar]

I browsed their mods briefly but I will look more into it later. That would be a great fix.

Thanks.