Choosing a CMS

[BobRoosth]

I am working with a non-profit organization that wants to rebuild its site in a way that allows various team members to update content on 'their' pages. Including a blog section might be of future interest as is hosting a photo gallery of events.

I recall a thread here in the past couple of months addressing the topic of CMS choice, but cannot find it now. I do not recall that it addressed the issue of non-professional content maintenance.

Opinions? Suggestions?

[Kelvyn]

"Non-professional" users are what a content management system is ideal for. They follow a simple instruction set to login, select the page to edit and make the edit using a WYSIWYG editor, save and logout. The Joomla! sites that I build are aimed at just that type of content editor.

Joomla! is but one of a whole array of CMS systems so I guess you have a bit of research to do.

Previous threads include:
http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/showthread.php?t=6361
http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/showthread.php?t=6430

[terrie]

bob: I recall a thread here in the past couple of months addressing the topic of CMS choice, but cannot find it now. I do not recall that it addressed the issue of non-professional content maintenance.The forum Search function doesn't work well with any search term that is 3 characters or fewer so that's probably why you had a problem finding anything...

I did a Search on "joomla" (no quotes) which is CMS software that Kelvyn uses and it's often ref'd in CMS threads and also try searching on ["content management"] (no brackets but keep the double quotes)--both search terms get a number of hits

Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

Does Joomla support non-western languages?

I'm doing a simple site that requires both English and Japanese text. Pretty much have it covered now but down the road, a CMS might be nice.

I arrived at "covered now" by a silly route, though. I spent a day writing some utilities to convert Unicode text files to Ӓ style character representation and then back the HTML tags out of that mess. It worked but my was it worky and ugly.

Finally I realized that all I had to do was set the encoding for the HTML to UTF-8 and save my text in UTF-8 instead of Unicode format (even good ol' Notepad will do that).

Couldn't be simpler.

[Kelvyn]

Does Joomla support non-western languages?

Yes, it does, including RTL. Most of the language packs are here. (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/languages/translations-for-joomla)

[Steve Rindsberg]

Yes, it does, including RTL. Most of the language packs are here. (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/languages/translations-for-joomla)
Very nice ... thanks, Kelvyn. It looks like the language packs are to translate Joomla's UI into [whatever_language_you_like]. We wouldn't even need that; English would be better for the UI in fact, so long as we can also enter Japanese content.

When it gets to that point, I'll have a serious gander at Joomla.

[BobRoosth]

Thanks. The current site host has an automated installer for Joomla, so I let it proceed to a folder named /newsite/, with sample content. Can you point me at a tutorial that provides guidance for developing a site's menu structure from scratch? I have a menu tree.

What is involved in moving site content from a development folder to live operation?

Are these questions I should be asking in the joomla forums?

[Kelvyn]

In the Joomla forum with basic questions you would just get pointed to the extensive documentation, but good help can be provided for more complex problems.

Firstly do not use a server autoinstaller. This frequently causes file permissions and ownership issues which can hinder site progress and operation when you install additional components or modules.

To move from a subdirectory to site root you would just need to transfer all the files & file structure by ftp. As long as it is on the same domain then Joomla! should still work, although you may need to change some server paths in config files (or possibly in the database), depending on which components are installed. Alternatively use JoomlaPack to move the site (see below).

When you first get Joomla! installed and working I would always install JoomlaPack (http://www.joomlapack.net/) which can be used to make full site backups, so that if you break something you can't work out how to undo then you can simply re-install the last pack.

When installing Joomla!, make sure you install the dummy content. That gives you working material so you can see how the backend works and how what you change in the backend affects the public side. This will also give you an insight into the manu options. The main menu is the one you will need to edit, and already has a structure you can look at to see how things work. You probably don't need the other menus in the sample installtion, so they can be trashed - but do not remove the user menu. That shows when users are logged into the site frontend and if the user has editing status allows them to edit content without using the backend system.

A good place to start learning is on http://docs.joomla.org/Beginners