Re: [tlug] recommendations for new CMS?

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

Scott, Jason, Erin,

I'm actually in the process of writing my own Object Oriented CMS 
system, in PHP/MySQL. It's my first shot at using OO with PHP.

I don't think the first version would be of help to you, as it will be a 
little raw, and most likely not usable for another month. But when it is 
done, I intend to make it completely open-source and available for 
anyone who wants it.

But since this is something I'm working on, I was just wondering if you 
could be more specific about the things that made Joomla unsatisfying, 
and maybe what it is you like to see in a CMS system.

Answers to that question would help me in shaping my system, even though 
I'm not aspiring for it to be a widely adopted system. I have no hubris 
that makes me want to build a Joomla or Wikipedia competitor.

The reason I decided to roll my own was that I've found that using CMS 
systems (Joomla, WikiMedia), and other products for various web features 
(right now only SMF for forums comes to mind, but there are others) had 
two significant problems:

1. The installation, set up, and customization process is always, no 
matter what they say about ease of use, is always a steep enough 
learning curve that it leaves me wondering if I could have just built my 
own in the time it takes to figure it all out.

2. There is always some feature or another that I want that is not 
available in a plug in or base package that would require such low level 
modifications that again I end up with a situation where I might as well 
end up making my own.

There's also a third problem, which is harder to describe, but has to do 
with creating a look and feel. Most CMS systems, in order to make 
themselves widely used by people of all levels of web design ability, 
have templates and skins and stuff of that nature. But again, wrestling 
with the learning curve makes it so that I wish they would just write 
consistent XML that can be modified straight, and exclusively, with CSS, 
a la csszengarden.com.

So my goals are:
1. Complete object oriented code for better extensibility.
2. Strictly valid XHTML that is ready for simple but effective CSS 
manipulation (again, csszengarden is my model)
3. No installation scripts, templates, or other beginner-friendly 
"features" that obstruct access to code.
4. Very explicit naming conventions and heavily commented code.

That last one has to do with the fact that I HATE having to wind my way 
through other peoples obscure conventions for writing code. As far as 
I'm concerned, If people are serious about making code efficient for 
execution times, use software that streamlines it better than a human 
could anyway. Otherwise, I see no advantage in naming a variable "upwd" 
instead of "userPassword" or something like that. All that abbreviating 
does is make is hard for me, the next guy, to figure out what's going 
on. And don't get me started about a lack of comments in code.

Anyway, opinions about what worked and didn't work for you guys in using 
other CMS systems would be much appreciated.

--
Dave M G