OFB Community Mailing Lists

[Timothy R. Butler]

Hi Kathy,
> I've been looking at a Content Management System as a possible way to 
> construct a decent-looking web site without having to design one 
> myself.  :)  However, I'm completely new to the CMS world.  Anyone 
> have experience with any of the following?

	Yes. A lot of it depends on what you are trying for... do you want 
something like Slashdot or OfB where it has news articles and such as 
the center of attention?
>
> Mambo Open Source

	Mambo is nice for a bit more full featured web site. I'd also 
recommend considering Metadot (www.metadot.com), I use that (heavily 
modified) for FaithTree. It is VERY powerful.

> PHP-Nuke

	Fine, but very bad security. Very bad. OfB runs PHP-Nuke and has been 
hacked into twice despite my best efforts. The first time was a fairly 
innoculous addition of a political message, the second time planted 
spyware on visitor's computers and forwarded them to a porn site.

	If you go with PHP-Nuke, it is best (I found out too late) not to 
modify the code base, that way you can do frequent upgrades to the 
latest releases. Or, if you want to stick with a certain codebase so 
that you can modify it to your needs, go through the modules and remove 
every module you do not plan to use and break any functionality you 
don't need. Also remove the ability to add admins by force (i.e. 
removing the files that do it) after you've added the necessary admins.

	Crackers must have bots that surf the web looking for PHP-Nuke sites, 
because you'll see a lot of them go down at the hands of the same 
cracker each time a vulnerability is found.

> phpWCMS
> phpWebSite
> Post-Nuke

	I'm not sure about phpWCMS but phpWebSite and Post-Nuke are both 
decedents from PHP-Nuke, again, be wary.

> Siteframe
> Xoops

	Xoops -- I think -- might be a distant relative of Nuke, I'm not sure. 
It looks OK, but I think if you are looking for more of a web site-like 
thing, I'd go with Mambo or Metadot (my preferred solution).

	If you want a news site/blog, go with WordPress, I'd suggest. I run a 
homegrown blogging tool on my personal site, but I won't recommend it 
because it has its own failings. I'm presently writing my own CMS for 
both my blog and OfB. It may have its own glitches, but the casual 
cracker is discouraged by security through obscurity.

	-Tim

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Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
==================== <tbutler at uninet.info> ====================
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