CMS Suggestions?
Asked by
justn (
1382
)
February 13th, 2009
I finally have the ability to take over the web development of Sugarloafers.com our snowmobile club’s website. It is currently maintained with Frontpage.
I’m just not sure what I should do for a CMS. I really want to have a beautiful, modern, but unique looking website. I would love to have a forum intergated as well, then I could move the bullitin board, buy sell trade, and trip reports pages into there. I don’t want a system that is unwieldy either, simple is how I like things.
Please, take a lot around the site, as I want to replicate everything that is there in one form or another and need a CMS that can do that.
A web based solution would be best (or an easy to use cross platform local editor can be considered).
Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!
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6 Answers
I would probably go with Expression Engine myself. It has an optional forum module and is fully customizable with custom entry fields, etc. Almost like programming a database driven site from scratch but much much easier.
I agree with StellarAiman. Expression Engine is very nice.
I’d recommend Drupal if you have web development experience. It’s very customizable, though the forum support is weak in the stock installation. The rest of the CMS is top—notch in terms of feature-set and robustness and the forums can be brought up to grade with a few additional modules.
Check with the web hosting provider of the current site. They may offer a control panel to deploy one or more of the solutions listed in others comments. If they don’t you will need to check what services are available with your current account. Most CMSs require a database.
Looks like your site is hosted by earthlink. The basic plan seems to offer everything you would need to install one of the solutions mentioned above (PHP, MySQL DB). They also appear to provide some pre-set apps (phpBB for forums, and wordpress for blogs). You should log into the hosting providers account management and look around… make sure you have a local copy of everything in case you decide to try something and things get blown up.
How knowledgeable are you about web application design and development? If you are not very experienced, be prepared to spend some time or find someone who knows this stuff to get the design and content integrated/input into the CMS.
Note that the strength of using a CMS is to delegate the upkeep of content to people who do not have tools like frontpage. It may not make things easier if you are the only editor/content creator. It can help in maintaining navigation links, but it depends on the system and the template you use for your site.
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