[thelist] discussion forum

Stuart Young syoung at unitec.ac.nz
Thu Nov 17 16:55:59 CST 2005


> I would be reluctant to use phpBB if 
> it crashes as much as everyone seems to indicate it does as well as the 
> noted security problems. 

FUD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD 

There are many problems with phpBB relating to it's usability and coding and ease of patching updates but neither of these are them.

If you want 3 different things on your site I would always recommend a single CMS solution. As others pointed out there is no inconsistency between the apps and you only have to learn how to customise one app.

It does sound like you should avoid Mediawiki, because although it is easy to change the layout and design, it is difficult to change the functionality.

If ease and quickness of set-up is important then perhaps Mambo is a good choice. Does it allow content to be filed in multiple categories yet, or can content still only ever have one category? Personally I would recommend Drupal, but it is probably a bit hard to get to grips with for a CMS newbie.

Just accept that you will probably make a mistake with your first CMS choice because you don't know all the ins and outs of CMS yet. The only way to understand all of the issues is to practice and actually set a few different ones up for real users/clients.

Never underestimate the amount of work it is to customise an OSS CMS for a real client! They will ask for so many changes to be made that are not what the software is normally expected to do, or that cannot be easily done due to a quirk of the CMS. Personally display:none has often been a saviour for me. Leave the element that the CMS won't let you remove in the page but make it invisible to the client with CSS!

cheers

--
Dr Stuart Young,       	+64 (0)9-815 4321 x 8656
<syoung at unitec.ac.nz> 	+64 021 183 2846 (mob)
Lecturer, School of Computing and Information Technology,
Unitec New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand
http://tinyurl.com/4956o
(the official URL for my staffpage is too long and complex)
http://blog.stuart.cpanel.unitec.ac.nz/
My Unitec internet and web development blog.
http://www.pixelandgrain.co.nz/
Web development, graphic design and photography




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