Hello to all! In my search to find the best CMS, I've stumbled across this site. I'm in a quandry right now. My friends and I have started a political site that is going to be growing bigger than what normal HTML pages will allow. I've come to the conclusion that I should really have a database backend to it.

For a frame of reference, here is the current (and pathetically layed out) site.
http://www.dogwoodpapers.com/
Also, here is the new design I'm rolling out on the 18th, albiet without the backend.
http://www.dogwoodpapers.com/adam_temp_design/

What I would like, is to have something similar to that new temp design front end, but with a backend to the whole process. Has anyone ever been to Slate? This is what I'm looking for, much simplified naturally: http://slate.msn.com/

As far as sections are concerned, I have 10 sections.
1. Editorials - My writers and I will each have individual sections branched off this. I want each of them to have their own page (that I will maintain, but they will update content)
2. Hammerwatch - Blog-like run by one person
3. Staggering Stats - Blog-like run by one person
4. DogForum - a public forum for any person to contribute to
5. DogBlog (archived) - Blog on the first page (its the crux of our site), also archived
6. Good Reads - Listing of external news articles and political editorials
7. The Wire - business news and stock quotes run by one person
8. The Progressive - Listing of external politcal organizations and their latest causes
9. Friends of Dogwood - Just links to my friends sites
10. Campaign Petition - we're submitting a petition to both presidential candidates this summer.


OK, the reason I gave you all that is I want to know,
a.) Will OpenPHPNuke work for me and if not, can you recommend a different package? Is a "portal" really what I'm looking for? I don't want normal readers who come to my site to have to login unless posting in the forums or responding to a blog entry.
b.) How much custom coding will I need to do. Realize that some of the above sections are similar in nature, they'll just have differently categorized content. I'm an assembly language programmer, but only 2 years out of school for Computer Science in higher level concepts and languages. I did take a Perl/CGI/HTML course 3 years ago.

I'm at my wit's end. I don't have thousands of dollars to buy a package or hire a programmer. My friends and I are 2-3 years out of college and working stiffs like the rest of us. If it comes down to it, I'll continue to do what I'm doing now, which is just boatloads of HTML pages. But I fear in the future, this could come to bite me in the ass. If ANYONE has any suggestions for me, I would appreciate them immensely.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Nuggs

Hi Nuggs,

thanks for your detailed question. I'll try to give you some answers.

But first: have you ever "played" a little bit with a CMS, to see what happen with some content ?I? deliver to a module? Because its a bit hard to explain the whole concept - all those pro's and con's - of a CMS in direct compare to a "real html coded" web-page.

Using a CMS like will require some kind of compromise. From the point of view "Data handling" opn will do the job (I think). From the point of view "displaying those data" opn will perhaps get close, but not 100%.

So "why?":
All output has to be calculated. From calling a page, opn runs through its code an decides what has to be displayed and "how". opn has a so called "box management" so you can place a box (and with the content of this box). After the "position" is calculated those content is arranged by a so called "theme". A theme fills the to be shown html with its structure tags: table, div, etc and of course has its "css file". Within this css you can define colours, font size, padding and so on. This will be a place where you'll have to spend some hours to get what you are looking for .

So, a theme has the main emphasis on having "a website like i want". But a theme can only those data that get's through it. That?s why i mentioned this "box management". One advantage of opn is its box arrangement possibilities. Depending of what it should look alike its sometimes a bit "tricky" to get the desired result. opn has also a so called "tpl" system, so you can bind some boxes appearance on some "events". A event could be, that every time when this "forum box" is shown, on top of this box the "latest discussion box also should appear (and this should show the latest x posting)". Not enough this can also be group to so called "themegroups". For example on this site go to the "home" page. click on "development" and see a new side-box appear. Its still the same "home" page, but while calculation the output opn noticed that "you, the user" wanted also to display some development stuff. Another place to spend some hours .

So, that should introduce you to some features of opn, how output is "controllable" by the webmaster.

I said "From the point of view "displaying those data" opn will perhaps get close, but not 100%.". After having adjusted the way the things has to be shown, the data itself (text, images, etc) is controlled by the module who is the "management tool" for this data. This can not be 100% controlled by you, the webmaster - because there is some hard-coded stuff. opn has tons of "settings" so you have some control of what should be displayed and how. So one opn-site may be look different from a second site running opn also. right now opn has a lot of those settings but i don?t know if they are enough for you to have the complete output the way you want. If you are missing something lets talk about and may be we add some more settings so you'll have it the way you want. This depends on "does it make sense also for other sites".

If its possible for you download it and make a local installation of it. So its very easy to "play" a little with opn's power and restrictions. Don?t worry about installing a local web-server. There are some real good packages out there making this almost run "right of the box". I can give you a link to such a package i am also using for my own - if you want it.

Alex

Sorry for the late reply, I've been on vacation all weekend. And thank you for the response Alex.

Most of the packages I've seen are more for multiple public people to register and log in and become members of the site with access to post in certain areas. I only want the end user to have access to read every page, but only be able to reply in both the blogs and the forums. I don't even want to give them a chance to post in any other section (i.e. no even display the posting inferface unless they are a dogwood writer) I want it to look and feel like the NYTimes or Slate with user being able to respond to the author, respond to a blog entry and post in the forum only. I would also prefer users to be registered to perform those functions to avoid spam and flaming.

With the layout, I'm not married to what I'm doing, but what I know I don;t want is what I've seen in things like PHPNuke (without the Open ) where the "modules" are always listed on the side. I want MY modules to be listed (the 10 sections indicated) and be a little more fancy than PHP Nuke (something like the horizontal navbar on this page, but with a little DHTML or javascript for good measure.) The thing is, there are likely 3 or more of MY modules that will be blogs, but 3 seperate blogs.

I think I'm going to install it and play around with it. This would be the 3rd or 4th open source package I've tried so far. None of the others I was very happy with. I've been unhappy with the control over the layout in those as well as the control over the navigation. What I really want is to define a table or layer (lets say in dreamweaver) and make a call to essentially suck in content from the database. We'll see, but if I do choose openPHPnuke, I'll be sure to post here for all to review.

Thanks again for your help.