Content Management Systems are all the rage these days. Not just because they are fashionable and carry some hot brand names. Content Managements Systems, CMS for short, are cool, versatile, useful, fun packages that can help bring life to a site.Before we dive into the wonderful world of Content Management Systems we dive into ministry blogging with Dan Lee of blogministry.com. Blog Ministry is all about, "...helping Christians use blogs and the Internet for ministry and evangelism."
We also yak on and on about the news of the day in This Week in Geek: Internet growth in developing nations, Computer customer satasfaction, and Microsoft Live Writer.
On the CMS home front we tackle what they are through features you should consider including in your CMS built site. The episode did run a little long but is action packed right up to the end. Check it out...
Show Links:
-Windows Live Writer
-Windows Live Writer Review
-blogministry.com
-Blog Ministry Flickr Lab
-Wiki on Content Management Systems
-drupal
-Mambo
-Joomla
-www.opensourcecms.com
-www.cmsmatrix.org
Drupal Questions
You mentioned in a previous podcast there was a page that had all the drupal tags to use in your template referenced ... Where can I find that? Also you mentioned a program named feeder. Do you still use that program with Drupal? Do you need a feed generating program in addition to Drupal? Thanks
drupal theme tags and feeder
In drupal there are a few different theme engines that do tags for the templates differently. In drupal 4.7 the default engine is phptemplate. You can find the tags and more at drupal.org/phptemplate.
Drupal generates feeds automatically for any list or taxonomy. So, each blog has a feed. Each taxonomy term has a feed. There are feeds all over drupal. Modules like the audio module will create feeds all set for podcasting with the included tags.
So, you don't need feeder to generate your feeds in drupal.
Feeder does allow you to create some extensive feeds for podcasts. Adding in extra iTunes tags for certain categories.
Does this make sense? If you have more questions please let us know.
- Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
CMS Part 1 Notes
When I first looked into CMS, I was initially confused by Mambo and Joomla. In case this helps anyone, Joomla derived from the Mambo project. From what I gather, the developers were at Mambo, somehow became upset, and essentially continued develop under the new Joomla name.
I believe many of the components for each are portable between the two, but continued development will inevitably fork and reduce cross-compatibility.
Also, while there are too many systems to count, I would comment on a couple. One is the Seagull project. I found it very clean and easy to work with. Typo3 is another one that looks like it would be very developer-friendly. One caveat: check if the CMS requires PHP5. Most will work with PHP4 or PHP5, but some require the object-oriented features of PHP5. If that's the case, check that your host supports PHP5. If you already have a hosting account, an easy way to check the version is to use phpinfo().
minicast idea
System requirements are a biggie. That is another point in this. Content Management Systems can give a lot to talk about. We will cover more in the next episode.
- Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Joomla and CMS
Thanks for talking about the topic of CMS's's's's'. I've heard about joomla and drupal before but it never clicked what it was. Your podcast got me excited about it and I looked into joomla. Ive uploaded to my site and have been messing with it since then. Its pretty cool. Once I understand this a little more I think this will make things a lot easier for me.
Thanks
CMS Stuff
CMSs are a huge topic. More than we can talk about in a few episodes on the show. Check out our blog. I'll be blogging about them over there for the next couple weeks to add to what we talk about on the show.
- Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Writely As A Blogging Tool
Add into the heap the Google Writely option. Read review here: Writely Review
The delayed minicast...
Hey David...
Funny you should mention this. Matt's minicast this week includes a review of Writely...it was delayed due to audio problems and should come out tomorrow.
Thanks for the heads up, though!
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.bobchristenson.com
Wonderful cast!
I really loved this episode. I've been wondering if I should use a CMS or just code my new website. I'm now convinced of using CMS, and Drupal is my choice. I had messed around with Drupal a bit before but didn't really like it. I dug a bit deeper into Drupal and then I saw what true power it has.
So thanks for the this cast! If it wasn't for this one, I would never have known how awesome Drupal really is!
glad you liked it
I am glad you liked the cast and found it useful. Check out our blog as I will be blogging about a bunch of cms related things and posting some drupal specifics that might help you out.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Things I Tried
I have been running CMS software to host our TV shows website for 7 years now. Here is a list of ones a tried and why.
Postnuke - My first site which used CMS was run on Postnuke. A guy at my church showed me another CMS called PHP-nuke and I said WOW I need to use that! But after doing research I found it was not really Open Source and Free so I chose what is referred to as a Fork. This is, they start with what they have and go into a different direction. Like a fork in the road. For a while plug-ins will still work but after awhile they will not work with each other. So I used postnuke and like it. Then I found a cool plug-in that change my site forever. It was called pnflashgames pn stood for Postnuke. It was a game plugin that my users loved. But it was only for Postnuke. You can check out kind of how the site looked here:
http://web.archive.org/web/
20021201144149/66.78.26.24/~ravenna/nuke/html/index.php
eNvolution - was the next one I used. (eN) was a fork of post nuke. That is one thing you have to look out for in open source. These people fight about who is in charge. So they fork and start there own stuff. Well (eN) had cool themes and you could just do
stuff easier in it. Plus everything that worked in postnuke work in (eN) so I switched. Used this one for a few
years. You can check that one out here:
http://web.archive.org/web/
20030603203847/www.ravennaoutpouring.org/nuke5/html/index.php
MDPro - This was my last Postnuke fork I used. The guy who runs MDpro use to run (eN) but he got kicked out. So he started MDPro. When I switch to this one it was the first time I didn't have to start all over. Every other time I lost the user data. The move was simple and the site looked nice.
this is what it looked like:
http://web.archive.org/web/
20050302022245/ravennaoutpouring.org/maxdev/index.php
PHP-Fusion - After using Postnuke forks for so long I wanted to try something different. But I still needed the games. I found PHP-Fusion doing a search on Digg.com This CMS is very well done and is easy to use.
Check it out at www.cuttingedgeweb.net
I have put together a site for a Ministry using Mambo and was able to hand it over and he updates him self. Check it out Here:
http://www.evidenceofcreation....
CMSes are very useful but be warned they can be hacked. I have been hacked about 3 times BAD. Some people don't like you talking about Jesus and they take it out on your website. Make sure you do your updates.
Hope this helps someone
Jason
cms pluses
I got my start with the nukes, too. The first CMSs I used were php-nuke and post-nuke. They were great for their day, though I see major leaps in the systems since those days. One reason is that the languages, like php, are more advanced. At the same time better software architecture is used on the systems.
Porting from one CMS to another can be a pain. Luckily, with the large projects someone has figured out to port the information from one system to another. I the rare cases where that hasn't been done there are people for hire at a minimal cost who can do it.
Security is one key where I think active CMS projects excel. When a bug is found there is a security list to notify people about it and they put put an upgrade quickly. That's why drupal is at version 4.7.3. They have found security holes and filled them. Every CMS has them so getting them patched is important.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Security with CMS
I decided to go with joomla for a CMS. Right now Im just testing it out and trying to learn about it as much as I can. As Im learning more about security issues its getting me worried. I see in forums that people do have their sites hacked. A lot of it tends to be issues with php settings. I dont know anything really about php. I know my hosting company uses php 5.x which from my understanding is a current version. What should I be looking at to make sure I dont become a victim of a hacked site?
Thanks
security
This is a very good question and security is really important these days. Sites can be hacked and people hack.
This is one of the areas where a CMS can be a good thing over a home grown system. A CMS will have a lot of people using it, identifying security issues, and fixing them.
Look for a security mail list and sign up for it. When that list posts an issue look for a fix to come out quickly with it. Also, take a look at the releases. Every CMS should have security releases that fix these. Drupal is on 4.7.3. This is the 3rd security release. Every CMS should have these. If a CMS doesn't or says they don't need them they are not being honest. Every complex system has holes.
Now, I can't speak for Joomla! but with drupal, security is one of the things I love how the handle. There coding standards and a system to check for cross site scripting (XSS) is managed in a great way. So, if a module follows the proper coding standards then when an issue comes out the XSS checking just needs to be updated and every module, that followed the standards, is up to date on XSS. This is a great part of the drupal and makes fixing security issues easy and in one place to fix.
Now, not everyone reads and follows the coding standards. But, there are ways to have modules fixed when there is a bug and it does happen. The mentality on drupal is software development and not hacking.
Now, PHP 4 and PHP 5 are both the current versions. PHP 5 is very different from 4 so both versions are being continued concurrently. There is a lot to security in the PHP and that is up to the host. They should be pretty secure with things like global variables being turned off. If you are hosting yourself I recommend your admin learn about security and setting up the environment for security.
I am not sure about Joomla! but drupal has a specific part of the handbook to address security. Security is important to us drupalers.
Now, you are a Joomla! user so if I would be very interested to hear what Joomla! does with development to address security. What are the standard practices, how to they address is so every module/plugin/whatever is managed in a common way?
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Joomla security
Thanks again Matt. I first started out with joomla a few days before they had a security update. I was notified by email that there was a security update which needed to be applied asap. It was nice to be notified. Updating was a breeze. A simple upload to replace previous files was all that was needed. No configuration on my part at all. That was a sigh of relief. I was thinking the update would be a multi step process. Joomla has a book thats available on amazon or a download pdf version available on ebay if you search for it thats a lot cheaper. Im currently on page 150 or so. The book offering a step by step introduction to joomla and its features is a big plus for me. Its really helping.