Wise Women List Archive File
Content Management System Using PHP
Question:
A solution that I've been looking into is a content management system that
is available free. Believe it or not there are ones out there that are free.
How good they are right now, I can't tell you (yet!). I'm looking into a PHP
solution that's called PHPWebsite. I'm doing a freebie web site for my
church and I need a way for the staff to be able to make changes without
knowing HTML and without messing up the site. I'm going to be downloading it
this weekend and hopefully installing it Monday just to see what it's like
and if it's any trouble. I'll let you know how it goes if anyone is
interested.
The web site for PHPWebsite is:
http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/
Some other ones that I've looked at briefly are:
http://developer.ez.no/home/
http://www.phpnuke.org
http://www.postnuke.com
PHPWebsite is supported by Appalachian State University which I think is a
good thing. Evidently they have students working on this and improving it.
One of the things I read about PHPNuke is that it installs a bunch of stuff
at one time and I think you can add additional modules. PHPWebsite is
supposed to install the basics and allow you to install additional modules
as you see fit. The PHPNuke looked like overkill for what I want to do with
my church web site, so that's why I'm going to start out a little simpler
until I get more experience. PostNuke is an off-shoot of PHPNuke although
just skimming through the web site I couldn't find out why it split off.
I checked out some other scripts at www.hotscripts.com and was totally overwhelmed
at the possibilities there. There are all kinds of PHP, PERL and
other types of scripts that let you do amazing stuff. I mean I know you can
do this stuff on the web and all, but I guess I just always looked at that
stuff like it's too advanced and you have to really know programming. Some
of the things I looked at was adding an email feature to your site. So
through your web site, you could check email from any POP3 account. There
were a ton of other things that just seem to me like they could make our
lives easier if we only had the time to learn about it initially.
Well, if anyone has had any experience with any of these PHP solutions, I'd
love to hear from you :) Otherwise I might just keep a little journal and
maybe write it up to help others who are a little intimidated by all of it -
like me!
Hi
I'm somewhat familiar with PHPNuke, having installed it and fooled around
with it. It's not part of any site that formally launched though.
I really like what I saw though. I especially like that it comes with a
bunch of stuff that most people don't ask for, and then regret later.
It's easy to install and customise. *And* you can have it hook up to phpBB,
a message board, so that people can discuss the news items that are posted.
> I'm somewhat familiar with PHPNuke, having installed it and fooled around
> with it. It's not part of any site that formally launched though.
> I really like what I saw though. I especially like that it comes with a
> bunch of stuff that most people don't ask for, and then regret later.
Good point :)
> It's easy to install and customise. *And* you can have it hook
> up to phpBB, a message board, so that people can discuss the news
> items that are posted.
I just downloaded PHPWebsite and was surfing their site to see what add-ons
they have. They have some similar ones for bulletin boards, forums, email
forms, guest books, polls, etc. Just about anything you can think of. I just
need to make sure that I can get everything I want in one package - or
compatible.
Thanks for the input! I might also download PHPNuke. I've got two different
projects I'd like to work on with this, but I'm just going to start with one
:) I'd hate to be switching between the two especially since I'm learning!
Thanks for the feedback!
I would really appreciate a duh! level explanation of what PHP is. I went to
the Appalachian U. site and didn't even know where to begin. I've never used
PHP, have no idea what it is, but could really use a good free content
management system.
It's popular open source middleware. Here's a good definition from whatis.com:
In Web programming, PHP is a script language and interpreter that is
freely available and used primarily on Linux Web servers. PHP (the
initial come from the earliest version of the program, which was called
"Personal Home Page Tools") is an alternative to Microsoft's Active
Server Page (ASP) technology. As with ASP, the PHP script is embedded
within a Web page along with its HTML. Before the page is sent to a user
that has requested it, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform
the operations called for in the PHP script. An HTML page that includes
a PHP script is typically given a file name suffix of ".php" ".php3," or
".phtml". Like ASP, PHP can be thought of as "dynamic HTML pages," since
content will vary based on the results of interpreting the script.
PHP is free and offered under an open source license. The latest version
is PHP4.
I know of many people who prefer it to ASP, and think it's more
reliable, easier to learn, and of course, free.
Here's the web home for PHP http://www.php.net/
The tutorial at http://www.php.net/tut.php
has some simple examples to give you an idea of what can be done with PHP.
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