Easy to use and flexible PHP/MySQL CMS

[GNEP]

Guys,

Several years ago I built the site: http://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/ in static HTML/CSS.

I continue to keep it updated whenever the staff there need something changed. However this is a bit of a pain in the proverbial especially all the annoying academic brief CVs. The diary section was a pain, but I am now lazy and just turn their termcard into a PDF and link it in...

So I'm thinking of giving them a little present of a content managment system so they can keep it up-to-date themselves (maybe only using me for bigger changes e.g. a new section). It's also time to try and make it fully accesibility-policy-compliant I think.

The look of the thing and most of the content can remain completely unchanged from the outside, and as this is only a hobby for me, something that doesn't require too much work on my part woud be nice. I am looking for any experiences you have with CMSs - I have established that I can get Apache/PHP/MySQL hosting from OUCS. And I think full ASP/ISS hosting would probably also be available, but not so easy to give myself a test environment (I already have Apache/PHP/MySQL set up on a machine at home).

The staff there are completely IT-illiterate (can't always attach a document to an email properly it would seem as an example) so something with a seamless WYSIWYG interface would be nice.

Oh, and something free would be nice

TIA

George

[Sasq]

joomla or wordpress

[GNEP]

Cheers D will google em up now

[GNEP]

Hmmm they both look just like what I am looking for - especially Wordpress. Will have to download and have a play Thanks as ever Sasq.

[Jammrock]

I use e107: www.e107.org

I found it easier to use than Joombla/Mambo, easier to install and they are very flexible and has some great plug-ins. I posted a coding question and had a response within 2 hours.

[TnT]

I use Drupal

[VJ]

I useTypo3.


Jörg

[Rakido]

I useTypo3.

Jörg

He said "easy to use"

[Jessterw]

Wordpress or Textpattern

Both are great packages, though I've found the latter to be far more extensible with some effort; Wordpress is to a lesser but easier extent. WP definitely has a larger community behind it, while TP is the brainchild of one man with a growing community. The good news is both packages can import from others.

That said, I've also found that there are no packages out that are good for IT-illiterate users. Some users are okay once they get to the article/post/page creation page, but getting there or setting any sort of peripheral information is a challenge.

[GNEP]

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. So far I like the look of Wordpress, and so now need to find the time to actually sit down and have a play with it and try and get some sort of prototype up on my server for the clients to have a play with and see if they like it... I do have a sneaking suspicion though that they will end up still sending me requests to update stuff even if they can do it themselves. At least this way I could, erm, update it for them from the office

A couple of questions though (probably could find out myself, but hey, I'm at work...): if I changed or updated the main template for the site (e.g. adding a new link to appear on every page) would I be able to do this just once and let it propagate throughout the site (even though each site section has slightly different colouring)?

Also, I assume that my rather dodgy use of fixed/fudged popups would have to go if I went to one of these CMSs - therefore is there an elegant way of adding a third layer of navigation? (This one's probably less to do with the CMS and more to do with my lack of desire to do a complete site redesign - I reckon it still looks fine as-is )

[Jessterw]

This is where I prefer Textpattern over Wordpress, in that it allows for easier creation of sections and bits of code (what they call forms) that can be placed damn near anywhere (as in a set of links or a... form). That said, Wordpress is capable of doing this as well, just in a different manner.

You can code the pages and style them in any manner you like; even changing the way the content is displayed. You'll definitely want to be taking a long look at the docs, of which Wordpress has some rather extensive coverage. You'll likely find that plugins are your friends, as well as taking a look at how some of the themes do things - find one that is similar to what you have and reference it.

Wordpress themes can be found here: http://themes.wordpress.net/

[GNEP]

Cool - thanks Jammy. Also there's a rather specifically hand-tuned form at: http://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/scholars/application.html

Presumably I'll be able to just drop the HTML for that as-is into whatever bucket wordpress/etc gives me? And then be able to change it by hand later as I need? I'm guessing that setting the form up to look right would be a bit of an arse to do it as per the CMS...

[KeiFront]

I found 2 interesting sites today:

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix?func=search

http://www.opensourcecms.com/