CMS vs. Bloggers: Trying to comprehend

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  • VibrantLife
    Junior Member
    • May 2006
    • 6

    CMS vs. Bloggers: Trying to comprehend

    Hi everyone,

    I began reading about the various options in Fantastico for bloggers (b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress) and I noticed that out in the world, these are sometimes referenced as CMS tools. Previously, my conception of CMS has included Joomla! and the like, but not these. Would someone be willing to describe the similarities and differences between the two categories, or between the two groups of applications?

    Thanks,
    Elchanan
  • VibrantLife
    Junior Member
    • May 2006
    • 6

    #2
    Choosing a Blogger

    As my previous post suggests, I would like to choose one of the bloggers (b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress). So I've looked around the Web, read many comments, etc. Difficult to conclude anything, if for no other reason than that the quality of the comments seems all over the board. So, since Dathorn/Andrew is so darn good, I thought to assume that the users are, too!

    I welcome input on choosing from among these three (or any other alternative that might seem better than these three.) Here are some of my goals for our congregation:

    I would llike for congregants, once logged in, to be able to create and manage their own multiple blogs, add photos and perhaps other files, have the option to receive or not to receive replies/comments ... pretty flexible, multiuser project. I'd like support for categories/subcategories. I've read about trackbacks, but I'm not entirely certain yet what these are.

    There may be other capabilities I'd like of which I'm not yet aware ... just beginning to learn. I welcome your input with great appreciation.

    Elchanan

    Comment

    • Frank Hagan
      Senior Member
      • Mar 2004
      • 724

      #3
      You can have a multi-user version of WordPress that uses subdomains for the users; I set one up once, but then decided I didn't have time to manage it. It did require Andrew's assistance to set one thing up that allowed auto-creation of subdomains based on the username.

      But it sounds like you are really looking for a social networking site, a la Facebook or MySpace. That's kind of an extension of the CMS family of products. I don't know them all but I'm playing with Joomla right now, and it has several extensions that enable social networking features. "Community Builder" enables expanded user profiles (GNU GPL license). UHP2 (User Home Pages 2) enables user-built pages (commercial license; the free version allows 50 users and limits them to 5 web pages each, restrictions that are lifted with purchase). GroupJive allows users to self-administer relationships and "groups" within the community.

      What I've decided on all of these is that if you do not have the time and patience to peek under the hood and do some modification and programming yourself, you can't find an inexpensive option to do what you need to do. So if you REALLY want to social networking site, hire a programmer or buy one of the expensive packages.

      Comment

      • mystic
        Member
        • Nov 2006
        • 59

        #4
        Wordpress by itself does not support multiple blogs for a single install. But people have used Wordpress to write scripts around it to get these functionalities. One such is http://lyceum.ibiblio.org/

        Utilizing the fantastic, intuitive WordPress blogging engine at its core, Lyceum enables stand-alone, multi-user blog services for small and high-volume environments.
        Of course there is Wordpress Mu, which powers wordpress.com: http://mu.wordpress.org/


        Though I have never used this before and don't really really know how it works (since I just came across it yesterday), you might also want to look at Collablog - http://www.collablog.com/

        Hope that helps!

        Comment

        • russellg
          Junior Member
          • Mar 2006
          • 28

          #5
          Try Drupal

          I use Drupal and it works out of the box.
          When you are logged in and click the My Blog on the menu it allows you to create your own blog.
          After that each user that clicks that link goes to his blog.
          users can configure the theme, if it is setup that way, and choose what blocks appear on that page or on a specific page.
          Other users will see your blog in the order that the nodes were created...they see all blogs.
          Multisites can be used to run separate sites or blogs from one code base and can share or not shate common content or users.

          Comment

          • pwolanin
            Junior Member
            • May 2006
            • 9

            #6
            Drupal is indeed the best CMS (a biased opinion) and very well-oriented to community features.

            However, you must be aware that since it's very powerful, it also takes time to learn and configure as you want it.

            In particular - NEVER install via Fantastico (I don't even know if that's an option now):
            Fantastico De Luxe by Netenberg is an add-on for the popular cPanel web management software, available on many web hosting providers. It promises an easy, turn-key installation of dozens of web applications, including the Drupal CMS. Unfortunately, while it may appear to fulfill those promises, the only thing Fantastico really gives you is a broken, insecure install that is hard to update. That's why we strongly advise the Drupal community not to use Fantastico to install and run a production Drupal site.



            If you are conservative, use the 5.x series (latest as of today is 5.7):
            The 7th maintenance release of the Drupal 5 series. Only fixes for bugs have been committed. New features are only added to in-development versions of Drupal. The following bugs have been fixed since the 5.6 release: #208700 by pwolanin. Fix bad backport of #194579. Modified to use Form API. #118569 by bevan: document how should one set RewriteBase, if under a VirtualDocumentRoot. Backport by Bart Jansens. - Patch #115606 by Junyor, thesaint_02: added support for PHP 5.2's 'recoverable fatal errors'. #209409 by Heine, webernet, dww: more accurate register globals value checking


            Otherwise, try the just-released 6.0:
            After one year of development we are ready to release Drupal 6.0 to the world. Thanks to the tireless work of the Drupal community, over 1,600 issues have been resolved during the Drupal 6.0 release cycle. These changes are evident in Drupal 6's major usability improvements, security and maintainability advancements, friendlier installer, and expanded development framework. Further, from bug fix to feature request, these issues follow-through on the Drupal project's continued commitment to deliver flexibility and power to themers and developers.

            Comment

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