No worries went to sleep ...
I ask about the features you require as I think a lot of the features can be duplicated in other systems

I've used various systems all with +'s and -'s ,,,

Textpattern - Lots of nice features ... quite nice but not extremely friendly for clients and the templating and
doing anything cool is a bit**

Wordpress - Great for a lot of things ... most customers of a certain age group are comfortable with it .. adding a page is quite simple for them .. it gets updated on the menu ...

MovableType - Bit of a change on this one its a publishing system and took me a while to get my head around. Quite powerful ... but on a down side a lot of the plugins seem to be commercial in nature

Joomla - Nice BUT ... I don't think its that great ... to be honest with mambots / compontents / templates and a limited structure for pages / subpages / sub subpages / sub subpages its a bit of a nightmare. I've not let too many clients play with the backend. Those I have .. have been impressed but confused in some instances.

CMSMadeSimple - NICE ... just plain NICE ... it works the way it should for me ... its got Admin / Editors / Content writers ... Templating is nice ... not a huge community but well worth a look

sNews - nice but simple .. very simple .. quick to get up and running good for what it is.

OS Commerce - A Nightmare to template / Mod ... a lot of hacking required and a nightmare to upgrade
Zen Cart (pretty much similar though I've only done modifications to the code with ZenCart .. but to the best of my knowledge its a spin off ??? from OS Commerce)

Joomla Virtua Mart - Nicer than OS Commerce .. but still ... lacking something ...

There are various other systems I've used some very basic .. some quite complex but I'd reckon this covers teh majority of what php developers use ?

TYPO 3 for instance ... is SCARY ... huge learning curve on that but then the possibilites are huge and scale of projects.

Custom Frameworks can be a way to go as well ... but once you get into custom frameworks you're opening up a whole new level of pain. You do tend to lock clients to you though which can be a good thing as if they want modifications to code its up to you to make it.

Hmm... no doubt I'm missing a few in there ...


EEK :P ... actually I messed with myspace templates a few years ago .. hated the way they've done it and decided I really hate myspace as well .. even though I've an account. I think I ripped out the templating and left myself with a white page on it
is your friend

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )

Recent Work: Safari Club African Safari Holidays - Botswana Safaris

Hi,
Sorry for the long delay in replying. I've been swept away with work!

I tried TYPO 3 it looks interesting, but not quiet as friendly as Joomla. CMSMadeSimple I'm going to look into!

Yea myspace is a funny combination of tweaking and adapting. You'll never get it right until you learn you can't be too different! (Unless you are hacking )

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Innovative Solutions

Hi guys,
Saw the conversation about Joomla and wanted to add my 10 cents. First of all Joomla was the first CMS I started to really get involved with. However after some time I've come to see many flaws in the system.

The new 1.5 is a huge step forward but it still claws onto the old concepts of 1.0.XX which goes back to the Mambo way of thinking. I don't like the fact that you need a mambot (now plugin) a module and a component. I think it complicates the situation. Just call a plugin a plugin.

I've actually written up an article about Joomla.
Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems - Gavin Doolan

I plan to cover Drupal next and discuss how it works. You should really really look into Drupal it's improved much since version 4.7 and the latest release 6 is out now.

There is one other CMS that I have been really impressed with and that's Expression Engine - It's not open source but the templating system is amazing.

Baz have you checked out the tutorials on compassdesigns.net for Joomla? That might help with building a more semantic template.

Sorry I should mention ExpressionEngine - Publish Your Universe! is not Open Source its licensed but its relatively cheap (kinda like Vbulletin) and you can modify it the code is not hidden from you or anything like that.