free content management systems...

recommendations, experience?

[msampson]

I'm looking for ways to convert a static art gallery site into a database driven one probably using an open source php content management system based on mysql.

What I'd like to know is whether anyone here has recommendations on programs to look at (bearing in mind the brief set of requirements below).

Requirements:

* Site needs to generate page for each new artwork and update thumbnail based menus etc

* Need to be able to add artists

* Need to be able add/delete categories of artworks and assign templates

* Need to be able to add/update/delete artworks, assign category, add description, price, caption etc upload full size image, upload thumbnail

* No need to worry about user permissions etc - will only be accessed by one person

Any tips much appreciated - the site is in my profile if anyone wants a better handle on what CMS needs to do. <edited>oh no it's not - new rules on new users' homepages being displayed. when does a new user stop being a new user?</edited>

Thanks

Miles

[edited by: msampson at 4:23 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2002]

[rogerd]

I can't speak to the availability or quality of true CMS systems that are freeware (or really cheapware), but there are several blog software titles that can be bludgeoned into doing content management with a bit of tweaking. MovableType is one I've used, and other members here have reported success with other major blog titles.

[rcjordan]

Many are converting blog scripts into make-shift CMS. Probably the best-known is Noah Grey's greymatter [searchengineworld.com]. I've seen a "photo-blog" module for it that produced some extremely nice pages. Dig around on greymatter's support forum for more details.

Zope is free, but I gave up on it for several reasons. It may be overkill for your project, anyway.

I'm currently muddling through an installation of MoveableType for my own projects, the commercial license is $150, I think.

[msampson]

thanks for those tips. i hadn't thought of adapting blog software and greymatter looks good - altho i haven't got to the bottom of whether it will handle an online catalogue.

other things i've seen from reading around today are "magellan", "phpWebSite" and "phpCMS". anyone know anything about them?

miles

[chiyo]

Movable Type is no longer free for commercial use. There are quite a few MT powered sites that use picture galleries.

[shelleycat]

Greymatter doesn't create dynamic pages and is entirely Perl and static HTML. I'm personally in the process of setting up a b2 blog to use as a photo gallery and have seen a few MT ones as well. These are both blog-type systems using PHP and MySQL.

However there are also PHP driven programs specially made for creating galleries such as you describe. I don't have any personal experience with them so don't know which ones are good or if they're better than blog software, but I've seen a few of them around and they seem to be good at deaing with large numbers of photos and setting catgories and templates and suchlike. They're freeware too.

[martinibuster]

I have set up Moveable Type for a non-profit client, and they're doing fabulous things with it, as a CMS.

I had to strip out a bunch of features from the code and configure this and that variable. Finally worked. Basically, it works like an include, dropping the content into a designated table data cell. Their forums are GREAT if you get stuck, and there are people out there who you can contract to install it for you, if you get stuck.

However for photos, this is something I'm investigating. There is a php program out there called Gallery, or Gallery Project. It instantly thumbnails photos etc.

[chiyo]

good point martinibuster, Ive seen that one too. In fact msampson, I think a great use of 30 mins would be to browse hotscripts.com in the scripts driectory under cms, or image whatever, under php, or maybe perl. I know there is at least a couple of these scripts available from there.

MT is absolutely brilliant for a CMS system. Some customization and you can, as Martinibiuster says, with the use of includes, drop any content in whatever format (HTML, JS, XML, etc etc) in many ways in any part of your web site. For customization and a dynamic site it suits us perfectly. I'm not sure how well suited it is for picture galleries, but worth a look around theur forums and featured sites to see what others have done with it.

For me hotscripts.com would be my starting point.