Ok so it is odd that I am actually writing this here and now using WordPress and yes I am discussing installing and testing a new content management system. Odd of course because WordPress is a content management system. Odd therefore that I would need another. Well I do and well I can not have potential important people reading the rubbish I have written here whilst on route to my CV now can I? Well can I?

But then it gets even more odd. My website as it stands is a mixture of css, php and html. I like the fact I can write and do what I want with the code it takes time but it works. However the downside is I need to have access to certain areas to work on different things. So that is no good. Time for a change, time for a CMS. So why not just port the blog over the root space? Well I want to keep the blog separate from the root.** Why?** Well this is more a place I dump my rubbish, my dirty washing and often in the most badly written and poorly conceived ways.

But you’ve started to write actual things here again?

Yes this is true and this actual post is no different. The whole thing you could say has come out of a need to market myself better, the hunt for a job, the selling of my research, the public engagement. This isn’t the place for that at all.

So what have you tried?

Good question and the answer is not very much. I wanted to try a load but then I realised that was going to waste time. Perhaps a list would be good about here:

TangoCMS

I tried TangoCMS and it seems nice but it just doesn’t fit with what I am after. Plus I think I am too stupid to make it work - I couldn’t actually figure out how to alter the pages! But it was PHP and MySQL which I like a lot.

Drupal

I’ve tried Drupal quite a long time ago and it seemed ok. But really, really slow and horrible at the same time. Hmmm that is not too clear now is it. Well I will explain. I setup a website called: transformativematerials.org. I did this because I had just started on a new research grant wanted a strong public presence for the grant and a multiuser content management system. In reality the grant was kept behind locked doors so to speak and I let the domain expire but not after spending considerable time fighting and loosing with Drupal. It just seemed to become slower and more and more difficult to operate with every page access. So No I am not going back there to find out if it is ok agian.

Plone

No no no

Around this point I was loosing the will to carry-on and after I had spent the morning sorting out a new phone company and ISP for my parents due to Sky significantly increasing their bill because they had exceeded the “free” 2 GB usage plan (not free cost £6/m) I was starting to think I just could not be bothered. Then inspiration struck me Google “cms fedora” you see what I did there I used a happy word “fedora” with the thing I wanted. It is like a special search technique - caution happy word choice is important do not use the common term “gay” as your happy word and then say a fun past time such as rubbing (the art of taking rubbings of objects using chalk or charcoal). So “gay rubbing” on Google would be BAD as in you would not find the droids you were looking for.

Zikula

The fedora website had a cms page which is cool where they were trying to decide on a good cms to use. They had a list:

and below that list was another list

Nice, things were looking up, someone had done the work for me. For the record there are now 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 CMS agents out there. That is a lot and in the para-words of Prof. Brian Cox “if you were to scale that many CMS to the size of this 10p then I would be the size of the entire universe”

Ok so I went to the Zikula website and thought hmmm this looks nice lets download and try, Ooooo an online demo lets try that as well. Now if it is so easy why are the pages on its own site broken with 404s. So time to move on with a big COMPUTER SAYS NO.

Of the CMS in the Fedora list I also looked at APLAWS and got all excited when I found a “science” APLAWS version but it looked rubbish so I left that well alone. Same for midgard I just couldn’t actually figure out what I was looking at or where to go with it.

SilverStripe looked interesting but their demo was as slow and drupal and that made me a bit cautious.

Did I mention XOOPs? This again looked exciting and like a possible candidate but I was already spending more time looking for a CMS than making a website and all along I have Wordpress sat right there saying “Use me, Use me”.

So where am I? Well right now the Joomla files have finished uploading. I’ve not mentioned concrete5 or any of the others I quickly passed an eye over and I want to go and play with Joomla so that is it from me.

Joomla

I’ve downloaded it and the reason I am doing this blog right now is/was I am waiting for it to upload to my server to test. So I guess we can come back later to this may be but at this present moment it is the CMS I am going to use.

90 minutes later

What a mistake. Is it me but it is so complicated to theme or template to create menu items and make them go where you want. It took me nearly an hour of moving through their horrible wiki manual before I could figure out how to push my logo up to the site. Result is deleted. Stupid me or stupid them I don’t know it is suppose to make life simple not more complicated.

So now where am I going to go. Wordpress is calling still like the drums it keeps banging (do you hear the beat of the drums?). No, no, no - one more CMS to try, tonight I will try one more and I will not think about the cold or the darkness or what typing in the dark is doing to my eye sight. I will remember that I actually have RSA qualifications and was taught to touch type. So  long ago now though.

Now I will mention concrete5 it looked like a good possibility but then I noticed all the plugins cost money and not £1 some are $95 so NO WAY MAN.

Silverlight - NOPE

Ok so when are you going to admit you have downloaded wordpress to your computer and are about to upload a clean install. Yes TWO wordpress sites. REALLY.