So I talked a bit now and then that I own a few websites and that this blog is a...hm... kind of a support blog for these websites. Support blog to get some links out and a cool and legitiamte blog where I could post anyting that I find interesting online or off. Anyway. Forget that. This post is about how do I make my websites and what CMS do I use!
First of all - what the hell is a CMS?
CMS is short for Content Management System. Content can be anything from text, to pictures, to videos... Management means that you use a script, a program, something the helps you write, add, delete, arrange, list, sort etc.. your content. This means that (in theory) you do not need to know anything about things like HTML, CSS, PHP... Everything is done through an interface that is usually simple enough to understand. Why I said in theory? Because sooner or later (believe me, it will be sooner!!:) ) you will want to make some changes to your CMS, use it an a way that was not originally meant to be used...even if it is just a simple change, you will need to know a few things about HTML and CSS. These two can take you a long way. And PHP? I only know so much that I know what I can and what I can not tuck and delete :). And system is well...whatever.
So CMS is something that you install on a server and you have a website. What content management systems do I use?
Joomla!
Joomla! is one of the most popular free and open source CMS out there. It's popular because it's good and simple for beginners to use. Because it is so popular there a tousands of extenstions, plugins, components, free Joomla templates and other things like that that will help you turn your Joomla website into what you want it to be. And because it is so popular it is also very popular to say that Joomla sucks and pretend that you are soooooo cooler than all the people that use Joomla. Well it doesn't suck. The only (maybe) downside to it is that it is quite a large CMS with lots and lots of files. so it is not the best thing if you just want to make a small simple website.
Pro: you can turn it into anything you want, it's free, great community that will help you, great community that constantly pumps out new extensions, it's pretty simple to understand
Con: it's big, so don't use it for a 4 page website.
sNews
I have been using sNews for a while now and its all that Joomla is not. It's soooo small that the whole CMS is packed into one singe file!!! And it can still do a lot of things while it looks more like..well a CMS that is run from a single file. The backend in spartan, but the templates are really easy to understand and modify.
Pro: simple, free, great for small sites, still can do a lot of things, it's not updated regularly (I'll explain later why I like that lol)
Con: it's not very fancy, it's not so expandable, you can not really turn it into much more than a content website, and what I hate most - you have no text editor out of the box.
Wordpress
Some people just love Wordpress and the go and turn it into every possible website out there. But if I tell you the truth - Wordpress is meant for writting blogs. It's perfect for that and it's perfect to make simple websites that pretend not to be blogs. For everything else just use Joomla. Since WP is also very popular you can find lots of free extensions and plugins (check here for top wordpress plugins) that will help you modify your website.
Pro: great for blog, simple to setup, fancy templates
Con: templates look cool but the templating system is WTF? at least if you are a beginner, chaningn wordpress templates for beginners is a pain in the ass, you need to know HTML, CSS and PHP and you need to know how Wordpress works. This sucks. Also admin backed is a bit confusing for me but you'll get used to it.
19Pages
This one is a gem for all niche website makers. Is there a CMS that you install simply by saving it on the server and it works. No creating MySQL databases, no users, no crap... you upload it and it works? Is there? Yes it is and it is called 19 pages (it was meant that there are at most 19 pages on a niche website, if there are more it's not a niche website anymore...but you can turin it into CMS that allows more that 19 pages without a problem). So yes - 19 pages saves your articles into text files.
Pro: it's so simple even a monkey could install it, template system is also so simple that a monkey could teach another monkey how to change and modify your template (the same goes for sNews btw...).
Con: you need to modify the script to post more than 19 pages, since it is so simple it's really simple :) you might miss a few things but hey - if you want something complex use wordpress or Joomla.
That's it! These are the 4 CMSs that I use and all of my websites are made using these. No website is made by hand in Dreamweaver or smthng like that. Then of course there are websites that use free online platforms like this blog on blogger. But this is another story.
I will use the next post to explain why I hate CMS updates. I hope all the updates die and rot in hell :). Stay tuned (who am I kidding, I'm the only one reading this blog).
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