Drupal? Joomla? Stone knives and bear skins!?

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 14:22 — L_Jonte

Ok, I'm developing a new website (more on that later) and am looking at Drupal.Â It's making my eyes cross.Â I was told about Joomla, but I haven't had time to fully investigate it yet.Â Here's what I really want:

A small, site-specific gallery with the capacity for individual accounts and the potential for marketing of artwork from said accounts.Â I'm not talking about anything for use by the public, just a small, select group of people.

I'm using Dreamweaver MX.Â I need software that is at least as easy to dope out as that.Â

Any suggestions, people?

Comments

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 14:45 — Iain

Joomla is pretty good

I like Joomla overall, but like most pre-packaged solutions like this you'll likely have to bang on it a bit to get it to act precisely like you want.Â The control panel is quite intuitive compared to most packages like this, I think.Â Things are named what they ought to be, rather than someÂ ancient naming convention you need to hire a historian and a couple of druids to decipher.

It has been a while since I have used Joomla, but back in â€œthe dayâ€ (a year or so ago), they hadnâ€™t really worked out a true solution for making it Search Engine Friendly, at least as much as I prefer to control things.Â But that may have changed.

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 15:15 — L_Jonte

Thanks Ian!Â Â Joomla itself

Thanks Ian!Â

Â Joomla itself doesn't have to be search engine friendly for my purposes.Â The site itself will be and that's enough.Â If people can find that then they can get to the gallery I want to make.

And it's a good thing I won't need to hire a historian and a couple of druids.Â Historians are expensive and fiddly to keep alive.Â And the Druids UnionÂ refuses to speakÂ me ever since that unfortunate incident with the platypus and the sacred grove.Â Touchy bastards.

Â Joomla it is then.

-Lisa JontÃ©
___________________________
Artist, Writer, Flibbertigibbet, Editor
http://www.Girlamatic.com

—

-Lisa JontÃ©
___________________________
Artist, Writer, Flibbertigibbet, Editor
http://www.Girlamatic.com

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 15:57 — xerexes

Choosing A CMS

Choosing a CMS can be tricky - the main thing is to identify exactly what you want your site to do and then find one that does pretty much that out of the box.

This site is a handy tool for that:

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/Â

Drupal can be intimidating - it is also very bare bones when you install b/c most functions need to be added (you download and install modules for the tasks you need).Â There is a simpler version of Drupal called Civicspace though that might be worth checking out.

I've never used Joomla but what I've heard is roughly what Iain said.Â You might also check out Postnuke which I used to use and seemed to me to be very easy to figure out.Â Another option might be Wordpress which started as blog software but has had more and more functions written as add-ons to it.Â

____

Xaviar Xerexes

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.

—

Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 16:15 — Iain

I love Wordpress for

I love Wordpress for everything I have done with it (especially with the Comicpress theme), but have not used it for a gallery sort of thing.Â I'd be curious to see that sort of thing in action though, for a future project I've been toying with.

I thought Postnuke was extremely confusing.Â It's what I had in mind for themost part when mentioning druids and whatnot.Â it was easy to install, I just couldn't figure out what to do with it once I had it.Â Of course, that was three years ago I think, so things may have gotten better.

I also like Joomla and Wordpress because I can do one-click installs of them from my Dreamhost control panel.

Fri, 07/28/2006 - 16:09 — L_Jonte

Thanks Xaviar!Â I'm

Thanks Xaviar!Â I'm exerimenting with Joomla as we speak.Â Â Â

—