An SMF CMS?

[Vionetwork]

I say, we throw away an ideas that have to do with money O_O!  Wether it be 1$ or not, once money is evolved, MORE problems are evolved.  Lets just stick to the OPEN-SOURCE lifestyle, if this script turns out to cost money, here come the warez community etc, lets keep it free!

[torkil]

Mambo works, in my opinion, like a charm. There is also built a 3rd party addon that creates a bridge between Simplemachines and Mambo that works fine too

[chupacabra]

Hmmm, maybe i could help..
I know php&mysql coding and i'm pretty sure i could handle to code a core for a cms, but when it comes to graphic i suck..
you decide, but still i'm not planning to do everything myself.., i think i could invest a hour/daily for the coding

[richards]

We all know mambos works.... but that has NOTHING to do with this topic. A CMS made to work with forum software is somthing not seen alot.  If you are fine with mambo then use it. There is nothing saying that you will have to use it.

When will be a good time to ask for feature requests?

[Benta]

We all know mambos works.... but that has NOTHING to do with this topic. A CMS made to work with forum software is somthing not seen alot. 

Actually, almost all of them have some kind of forum or the possibility to add a forum of some kind. Mambo has Simpleboard, for instance.

IMO, the problem with the existing CMSs is that they feel a lot like each other. Xoops sites, Etomite sites and Mambo sites are often pretty similar. It can get a little boring.

It would be cool if someone made something that works completely differently, but is still simpler to use than Xaraya and Typo3.

The SMF team are probably the kind of guys that could pull that off.

So rather than a wish list, maybe we should have a list of what we don't like about other CMSs?

[richards]

We all know mambos works.... but that has NOTHING to do with this topic. A CMS made to work with forum software is somthing not seen alot.

Actually, almost all of them have some kind of forum or the possibility to add a forum of some kind. Mambo has Simpleboard, for instance.

If i remember correctly the mambo team did not make simple board.

[bloc]

IMO, the problem with the existing CMSs is that they feel a lot like each other. Xoops sites, Etomite sites and Mambo sites are often pretty similar. It can get a little boring.

It would be cool if someone made something that works completely differently, but is still simpler to use than Xaraya and Typo3.

The SMF team are probably the kind of guys that could pull that off.

I agreed on this...but as I understand its not the SMF team who is developing this, rather people/members of this board. Correct me if I am wrong here...

What I mean is that SMF is coded in unique style, and already its been talked about coding it in another..so its not exactly the same. I am not saying it will be worse or anything, just so the credits go in the right direction here.

[TTA]

SimpleCMS is a great name. I love this idea. It would be greatly appriciated if it came pre-installed with SMF 1.4 or whenerver you plan to do it.

[richards]

SimpleCMS is a great name. I love this idea. It would be greatly appriciated if it came pre-installed with SMF 1.4 or whenerver you plan to do it.

Keeping the forum software and a CMS is better left as different installations.

[Benta]

What I mean is that SMF is coded in unique style, and already its been talked about coding it in another..

Agree. SMF is coded very differently from the CMSs I have seen, that's why I am hoping for a completely new kind of CMS here...The old style CMSs already exist and some are pretty good at what they are intended for.

[Benta]

We all know mambos works.... but that has NOTHING to do with this topic. A CMS made to work with forum software is somthing not seen alot.

Actually, almost all of them have some kind of forum or the possibility to add a forum of some kind. Mambo has Simpleboard, for instance.

If i remember correctly the mambo team did not make simple board.

You are right. SB is made by a team centered around Jigsnet in the netherlands.
There is also a Loudmouth forum ported by some russian guy that is decent.
None of them compare to SMF, though.

[Mortie]

I have neither coding or HTML experience/expertise so I speak as an end user. For a web iste's end users I wanted many of the things that people here have stated. I was originally using YABB Gold but moved to SMF because it had all the appearances that it would be most easily integrated into a variety of CMS. Unfortunately for me it seemed the learning curves, etc for most of these CMS was too steep. Then I discovered a portal that seemingly has not been mentioned here. It is called MKPortal. So far I have SMF 1.0.2 full integrated, tufat Flash Chat and Coppermine. My goal was to allow for just one log in to a variety of services. And of course I wanted a menu system that allowed for users to navigate but non-registered members could not use any of the systems. At the heart is the SMF database and regsitration system. SMF forum is the current heart of the system as that is the most used function on the site.

So given all this, and after reading all the materials in the first 9 pages, what have I missed by implementing MKPortal that I am not getting by using the other systems?

[richards]

I have neither coding or HTML experience/expertise so I speak as an end user. For a web iste's end users I wanted many of the things that people here have stated. I was originally using YABB Gold but moved to SMF because it had all the appearances that it would be most easily integrated into a variety of CMS. Unfortunately for me it seemed the learning curves, etc for most of these CMS was too steep. Then I discovered a portal that seemingly has not been mentioned here. It is called MKPortal. So far I have SMF 1.0.2 full integrated, tufat Flash Chat and Coppermine. My goal was to allow for just one log in to a variety of services. And of course I wanted a menu system that allowed for users to navigate but non-registered members could not use any of the systems. At the heart is the SMF database and regsitration system. SMF forum is the current heart of the system as that is the most used function on the site.

So given all this, and after reading all the materials in the first 9 pages, what have I missed by implementing MKPortal that I am not getting by using the other systems?

The reason there is no mention of MKportal is because this is topic is not really about MKportal.

[Mortie]

okay, I understand; I did subsequently find other areas as to CMS.

[QurazyQuisp]

I believe that if you guys want to create a truely unique CMS, with a lot of flare, you need to stay away from the typical navbar on top, then the right modules, center (news and content) and the left modules. I dislike webpages that are all the same, it makes me not want to visit it.

You also need to make the templating system easy, but very powerful.

[NoRad]

Building and maintaining a website with CMS can sometimes take me longer than doing it from scratch. Sometimes I'd rather have custom templates for dreamweaver than a CMS. 

[roxpace]

Very good point

Building a good CMS or even using a pre-coded CMS and creating own templates do sometimes consume too much time compared to how long it would taken making a site entirely with Dreamweaver, Golive or my prefared editor Scintilla.

If you are going to build a site with a couple of hundreds of pages and the pages will be more and less static it can be great to use a normal HTML/text editor. But if you plan to have a big growth on your site with thousands of pages with several editors you save time with a CMS.

Unfortunately there is no really good pre-made CMS, atleast not free. So I has been forced everytime building CMS solutions for customers to make our own since all customers we have has specific unique needs, and free alternatives like Mambo, Drupal, TikiWiki, WordPress and more doesnt offer enough quality for our customers need so far.

We just would wanna see a more generic and much more simple theme management and maybe a login management system which is dockable into any part of a website not just static in the SMF.

SMF could easy evolve into a shell with login-, theme-, module-/plugin- and discussion forum system so it would be easy to attach more generic features like CMS (not just articles, but also wiki, blog).

[NoRad]

Well, sometimes a CMS (like etomite) can get the ball rolling on a new site without a lot of creative direction. At least the pages are up and menu is in place. Once a client knows what they want I can actually export the HTML site from etomite and then customize everything to suit their needs. This process has worked well for me.

SMF... Wow... Using SMF really makes me ask the question "WHY" anytime I look at a CMS. SMF is so powerful because of the SSI that I really don't see the need for a complex CMS (like mambo) that has plugins to emulate a lot of things that SMF already does rather well.

So that kind of points me in the direction that a CMS developed by simple machines should be rather simple and integrate nicely with SMF. Let me add on some pages easily and make them look like the rest of the SMF I'm already using. I'd be happy with that. No bridge. No wierdness. Just let me add some pages to my site.

[roxpace]

I agree for some clients it works fine to do that way also, but unfortunately not for me, been working most with government departments and most military to setup huge CMS solutions with many editors and high demands of security, stability and visibility of many from blind to normal people.

In real SMF have a lot of potential if you take a close look, like the discussion forum system is in real small articles or blogs so it would be so easy to extend SMF to just manage viewing information that has been classified as articles or blogs so it looks right and instead of replies on a post in a blog it will show up as comments.  And that should be able to turn on and off for both of that. It would be so easy to extend it with this great platform.

Ooh, was looking at your site and I liked your integration with SSI, and said it is not so easy to purchase your records here in Sweden, it was good music, keep up that good work

[ltabdiel]

All looks good I just wish to reinerate the fact that a major feature would be to continue the download & auto-edit mods.  That is a major issue with most other cms's, is that you have to do all kinds of coding edits, and I am certainly capable, but as part of the support team for the largest package of phpnuke, except standalone of course, I know that this will cause great problems and will cause a whole lot of support issues to arise.  Can't wait to see the fruit of this seed.