I’m starting to get tired of the system that runs behind the scenes here on alexking.org. I’ve found that I update my blog more than I update the rest of the site in part because it’s a habit and in part because it’s just easier.
I built the basic template system used for the rest of the site over two years ago and I certainly wouldn’t do it the same today as I did then. There are a number of things I don’t like, crufty URLs, no comprehensive search, more manual updating than I’d like, etc.
The solution that I’ve been thinking about for a while is to use WordPress to run the entire site. This would make a lot of really cool things possible:
- True site-wide search capability and other cool stuff you can do when everything is in a database.
- Ability for people to leave comments/trackbacks on every page.
- A comprehensive what’s new/changed list for the site.
- RSS/Atom feeds for everything.
- Auto-generate the menu and landing pages at each level
There would be a few places that I’d still want to run stand-alone PHP scripts (like my fantasy baseball draft page for example) or execute utility code, but I think I could build in some functionality to include generated content using the custom fields in WP to point to my little scriptlets. Using something like the Staticize plugin, the database overhead wouldn’t really come into play.
I know this is what Mambo and Drupal are built for, but I’m playing with Mambo right now and I’m not entirely sold on it. I still want to take a closer look at Drupal. Any CMS would probably give me most of what I want.
Of course, I’ve got some stuff I need to get wrapped up before I get to do something like this; it’s good to let stuff like this simmer for a while anyway.
I’m using WordPress pretty much in the way you describe.
A good CMS system is a real time saver.
For awhile I used phpnuke but I got hacked. Picking a CMS that has an active development team that are aware of hacks is important.
Most likely poor research on my part.
One advantage of Drupal is while it can obviously duplicate the functionality of WP and other blogware, it’s a full featured CMS. I’ve been using it for a while now, and I can tell you that you may eventually find a use for a full featured CMS when it’s already installed and available to you.
Wasn’t Matt rumored to be working on a CMS?
I was going to paste some links to some of his interesting blog posts but can’t find a search option on his page…
charlie: Mambo is a full featured CMS too and it does too much for my taste. I’m definitely going to check out Drupal before I take the leap.
JS: Matt does have a CMS in the works that he’s mentioned on his site before. I should check in with him about that.
Have you looked at e107? I will be interested in how you proceed with this, being in a similar spot myself. Thanks.
I can’t tell from their web site what e107 is, but it looks like a Nuke type package. If so, I don’t want anything that heavy.
After reading this post I did some CMS shopping today and it seems that e107 and Drupal are in the same league, both having page caching and similar features like a forum. Both seem to be Nuke type packages as far as I can tell. This page load comparison was interesting. I don’t need a heavy CMS, but I am looking for a little more flexibility than a simple blog. I’m going to install e107 and Drupal on my Mac and give them a workout. BTW, I really like the forum on this site, so it would be nice if whatever solution you go with could integrate with that.
I’m a big fan of PunBB, but why would whatever I go with for the web site need to integrate with PunBB?
I generally like to use a best of breed solution rather than a package that tries to do everything.
I agree with the best of breed concept. For myself I was considering how to integrate the member registration in the CMS with the forum so two registrations wouldn’t be required (some packages will do that). Perhaps that wouldn’t be an issue on Alexking.org if there was no registration on the CMS side. Just a thought.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have any registration for the web site – it would mostly behave like it does now.
Mambo Server Notes
I finished the initial draft of a site that is built on Mambo Server. Mambo seems to be a very capable platform that does quite a lot. There are some things I liked about it and some that I didn’t.
Here are some of my notes:
I initially cre…
Alex,
I’ve had this same delimma about choosing a good php site architecture. I’ve used phpnuke, postnuke and others and have always been unhappy. I choose these platforms to save time, but in the end, it takes me longer to tweak these solutions and they are always much heavier than what I am after. So… I’m thinking that the best choice for me to explore is an API like the PEAR Libraries… My thought is that these will save me development time and allow me the most flexibility. Have you had any experience with PEAR or comparable API-type solutions? (I am using wordpress too and I really like the hooks that they offer — like the calendar function etc — this is the type of thing that I’m after.) Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
I don’t know what the PEAR libraries would give you… I’ve already got a hand-built framework and that’s what I want to move away from.
Blog Questions
I got this e-mail last night:
Hi Alex,
I’m interested in getting a blog started but I don’t know much about them, their capabilities, etc. Is there a primer you could recommend? What are the benefits of a blog over an official site? I plan …
I’ve been playing around with Mambo CMS for a while, I can’t believe how hard it’s been to grasp, and their documentation site is down so basically trial and error was how I had to figure everything out, it’s very hard and takes a lot of time to figure stuff out!