Which CMS for School Website?

[Ric_]

OK, I need a PHP-based CMS that I can bang onto an Apache webserver with MySQL.

 

The CMS must be quickly configured, since I can't really be arsed with it, and uable by teachers without any input from me, again because I can't really be arsed.

 

Oh yeah, it must look nice too

[tarquel]

If you can, use TYPO3 - it is amazingly powerful and once you work your way aronud it, you'll see there isn't anything you cant do with it

 

We, some schools in Powys, are planning on using the custom version that Powys uses for its website - http://www.powys.gov.uk/

 

I was gonna try it outside of school but be warned, it is a big CMS system and with my personal hosting company - fasthosts - I couldn't get it to work on account of the restricted settings of the webserver

 

[anyone who uses fasthosts and has got it, pls PM me ]

 

I like the look of Mambo, tho in trying it, it fell over itself - probably something I wasn't setting up properly, but that was a while ago and maybe a known issue at the time.

 

phpnuke & postnuke are quite good ones too - tho it takes me longer to set them up than it does for me just to make content from scratch lol

 

Pretty much all the CMS's have different theme's you can get or custom-make so that "shouldn't" be a problem - its just time that you need to manage/build/create it i guess.

 

Dunno whether you intend having a forum on the site but SMF is a great forum - and free too - formerly the YaBB team (although some YaBB things are continuing I believe). I use it for the (unused) Tech site I run for powys secondary techies

 

http://www.simplemachines.org/

 

My two cents (as they say)

 

Regards,

N.

[Diello]

Mambo is excellent, occationally a little fiddley, but get it the way you want it, and you can forget about it. I've never been impressed by PHP-Nuke.

 

There is another good, rather unknown, one around... but going to have to look at home for what it's called as I haven't got a clue off the top of my head!!

[MkII]

You can't beat Wordpress for ease/speed of installation - but then again it isn't a CMS! LOL! - although it's going that way - and you may be able to configure it for your needs - I'd really like to use it myself for a CMS - it has user permissions so you could have admin staff set up to upload stuff no worries.

 

It's very easy to use and configure - once you'd set it up, added the modules needed - usually something to handle picture uploads, chosen your theme - you're done.

[Ric_]

I'm glad to see Mambo is being mentioned since I have dabbled with that in the past so I'm not starting from scratch - I left my last job before finishing setting it up.

 

Ideally, I want nothing to do with the site. The only reason that I have got involved is because we had our DNS and web hosting with RM and I refused to pay £150/year for something that I could have for free - especially when RM were the people we were paying!

[Geoff]

Had pleasant experiences with Geeklog

 

http://www.geeklog.net/

 

and XOOPS

 

http://www.xoops.org/

[linuxgirlie]

I use PHPNuke at the moment, and that is what is in the Karoshi setup, but am looking into Mambo, as phpnuke is not very teaching staff friendly, if you want to give them access to write their own bits as they need to know a little html IMG/BR/P etc etc

 

[Guest]

http://www.joomla.org

 

From the core developers of Mambo who have recenlty broken away.

 

Paul H

[adamyoung]

Mambo or Joumla is worth looking at. We use mambo and it gives us all the features we need and is very staff friendly.

 

A word of caution however: We had a web server which ran for years serving our website but when we used mambo and 30 kids hit it, it struggled (which impacted all net access!)- we have a new webserver comming on tuesday so hopefully this will improve the situtation!

[tarquel]

I really liked mambo a while back when i tried it - looked great.

 

However....

 

I change one bit of it i.e. removed some demo content, and it just died. No matter how many times i installed it and tried it again, i got the same thing happening.

 

That was nearer the begining of the year though - i decided to hardcode my site instead. In a way, more satisfying [TYPO3 i would have used but fasthosts give it a no no - tho i didnt ask but the requirements arent there lol]

 

Regards

Nath

[Guest]

I found that when i first started using MAMBO. Now i always make copies of any core files im playing with. If it causes probs, just restore the old file.

 

Touch wood I have converted 3 school MAMBO sites accross to Joomla with no problems at all. I think having a good host helps.

 

Once the time is taken to set it up its a god send.

 

Paul H

[Rozzer]

I had a play around with mambo but found it had to much to work with and complex. Maybe if i spent a little more time with it i might of got somewhere.

 

I am currently playing around with xoops.

 

Ross

[tarquel]

I'm gonna have to set another up to play with - not in the school of course lol on my personal website to try stuff out with again

 

....if i had time lmao

 

Nath

[Sirbendy]

We looked at Mambo, and are set to roll with it. However, the authority has a product that it insists we use that integrates nicely with our CMIS systems. I've forgotten the title...no, scratch that, it's a VLE, by Serco systems.

 

The challenge for us is to get it working with our online curriculum...

[Guest metalmonkey]

I use mambo on our school site (http://www.westlands.org.uk) Very customisable but can be very annoying sometimes.

 

For example, if you want to paste some HTML in, which is fine, beware of some tags (SPAN STYLE being one of them) that not only locks mambo up, but also your browser. I learnt the hard way and took me ages to work out what was happening. Word Docs converted to HTML use this Tag a lot.

 

Once you learn mambo, it's fantastic. But be prepared to make mistakes to begin with that mean to have to start again.

 

Oh, and moving the folders from the default can be a nightmare.

 

Getting it as a CMS for other staff to use is ok, but uploading images is a real pain. You need a good addon html editor like FCK editor 2 to cope with uploading.

 

Permissions don't allow for departments to not see other departments. So a certain level of trust is needed.

[Guest metalmonkey]

I use mambo on our school site (http://www.westlands.org.uk) Very customisable but can be very annoying sometimes.

 

For example, if you want to paste some HTML in, which is fine, beware of some tags (SPAN STYLE being one of them) that not only locks mambo up, but also your browser. I learnt the hard way and took me ages to work out what was happening. Word Docs converted to HTML use this Tag a lot.

 

Once you learn mambo, it's fantastic. But be prepared to make mistakes to begin with that mean to have to start again.

 

Oh, and moving the folders from the default can be a nightmare.

 

Getting it as a CMS for other staff to use is ok, but uploading images is a real pain. You need a good addon html editor like FCK editor 2 to cope with uploading.

 

Permissions don't allow for departments to not see other departments. So a certain level of trust is needed.

[Dos_Box]

We give all schools in Lancashire a freely hosted installation of Moodle.

[MkII]

Nice looking site there metalmonkey! Is that a freebie template I can steal :twisted:

 

I found the wysiwyg editor a little strange - I found myself hitting the 'remove formatting buton a lot! Not like the one in Moodle then that the speaker as the conference said - especially regarding the wysiwyg editor being easy to use.

 

I'm currently trying Moodle, Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress, plus zoomgallery and Gallery2 in Joomla.

 

I don't think of Moodle as a CMS that could be used on it's own, does anyone do that anyway? Drupal is nice if a little simplistic compared with Joomla.

 

Our Bearded, sandal wearing guy [bless 'im! ] has asked us [LEA High Schools] to come up with some requirements before choosing a system...

 

Ease of use for all staff

Seperated user permissions

Easily manageable updates/ patches

 

Standards/Legal compliance:

- Welsh Langauge Act (ie support for multiple languages and tools to assist in keeping different language versions of pages in sync)

- eGIF compliance (effectively W3C validation on XHTML, CSS)

- Accessibility (probably means WAI compliance and maybe Bobby AAA)

 

Plus the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act which has legal implications for your web site - see http://www.accessibility101.org.uk/senda.htm

[russdev]

We looked at Mambo, and are set to roll with it. However, the authority has a product that it insists we use that integrates nicely with our CMIS systems. I've forgotten the title...no, scratch that, it's a VLE, by Serco systems.

 

The challenge for us is to get it working with our online curriculum...

 

dont worry all vles for education will use shibboleth as that is going to be bectas requirments so as asson as that happens can write a hack for mambo to use it..

 

russ

[pshuttle]

Another vote here for Joomla! (the results of the original Mambo development team refusing to be part of the Mambo foundation due to future open source/licensing issues).

 

I use Joomla! for my personal site and have used Mambo for some primary school websites in our local area.

 

Pete