Cms Made Simple A weird experience for this Mambo user

[michaelper22 0]

I came across yet another CMS called CMS Made Simple (I'll just call it CMSMS from here on). Of course, it is free and open source, and it is very compact (its latest stable distribution is 1.89 MB zipped, Mambo's is a lot larger, like 8 or more MB proably). Any page loads quickly, and are clutter free. Part of CMSMS's features are its templating system, which works pretty differently. In Mambo, there are the index.php template, and its accompanying template_css.css files. In CMSMS, there's the template (stored in the DB as far as I know), and a whole bunch of stylesheets (also stored in the DB), each of which can be used in multiple templates. Each stylesheet is CSS, but eah one controls a certain aspect, as opposed to where in Mambo, where one stylesheet covers everything. I also haven't tried installing third party addons, and I don't even know how to implement them (which in Mambo is as simple as adding a menu item). One thing I like is how menus work, you don't even need to make menu items since they are automatically created with the content item (appropriately called a 'page').
I look foward to learning CMSMS. It will be a new experience for me since I am so used to Mambo.
Here's their site: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/

Edited May 10, 2006 by michaelper22 (see edit history)

[Dragonfly 0]

Thanks for the information. It could have been cool if you provide a link to the cms. I search google and found cmsmadesimple dot org. I like this CMS. It is simple and search engine friendly too. They integrate Simplemachine forum (smf) and news url looks like this topleveldomain/news/45/2 this is very nice unlike other cms which will have modules/contents/ this and that.But it seems it will take sometime untill a stable ones are released. Though most of the CMS are like that only. This cms looks impressive. I'm checking more on templates structures, modules and tags. Thanks.

[Tyssen 0]

I haven't tried it out personally yet but from what I understand, you can circumvent the way it links to CSS files and instead link to one external stylesheet.

[michaelper22 0]

Thanks for the information. It could have been cool if you provide a link to the cms. I search google and found cmsmadesimple dot org. I like this CMS. It is simple and search engine friendly too. They integrate Simplemachine forum (smf) and news url looks like this topleveldomain/news/45/2 this is very nice unlike other cms which will have modules/contents/ this and that.
But it seems it will take sometime untill a stable ones are released. Though most of the CMS are like that only.

This cms looks impressive. I'm checking more on templates structures, modules and tags. Thanks.

A lot of the SEO features are only on their site, or could perhaps be the result of some third party addon. And they don't intergrate SMF, they just made the template for SMF to fit in with the rest of the site (same for the Forge, Wiki, and other parts of the site). That nice URL structure is only on the CMSMS site, because the site I set up doesn't have it like that (look here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, and click a link in the menu; there may not be any aside from the home page when you look). CMSMS doesn't have URLs as complicated as Mambo (like index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=31 in Mambo, compared to index.php?page=home in CMSMS).

[RaveNBlack 0]

There are loads of open source cms now and its sometimes hard to find just the right one. If you know at least the main requirements for cms you require you might like to visit http://cmsmatrix.org/ This website gives you possibility to find the cms that meets your criteria. It searches mainly in a list of free cms though some commercial products are included. Best thing is - it gives you link to cms home website

[Tyssen 0]

That nice URL structure is only on the CMSMS site

How to create pretty URLs with CMSMS: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Edited May 16, 2006 by Tyssen (see edit history)

[michaelper22 0]

How to create pretty URLs with CMSMS: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

I had problems with those instructions for pretty links. But I am sorry, I admit, that can be accomplished on any CMSMS site with a certain version and higher, which one I don't remember off hand. I'd like to learn the CMSMS templating system, or even just get some templates other that the included (and really boring, but also pretty nice looking) templates. Or maybe I'd like to learn the templating system, which is very different from Mambo's (Mambo templates use PHP function calls, while CMSMS uses it's own 'tags').

[Tyssen 0]

CMSMS is quite similar to another I've been trying recently, Expression Engine. As far as making your own templates go, just create your design for a static web page first before moving on to making a template. Then copy all your HTML into a CMSMS template and replace anything that is going to change from page to page with CMSMS tags and use the menumanager module for creating your menus.

[Inspiron 0]

I'm not sure if they had got a bad demo as it looked badly designed. Also, many pages include a bug code which looks like the following

{nocache:d08bb85e3b10a8b42359738385e0cd83#9}

It certainly don't look good to me.

[Tyssen 0]

I'm not sure if they had got a bad demo as it looked badly designed.

Who's they? What are you looking at?

[arnz 0]

It's worth having a look at, as for templates, would be interesting to have a go at designing them for that CMS.