Thread

First, I’d like to say EE Rocks. I’m fairly new to it, but enjoy it so far. But, I’m looking for recommendations (since I hold EllisLab, EE and CodeIgniter in such high esteem) for another CMS up to snuff with EE (hopefully php based and open source). Any recommendations (not looking for joomla, drupal recommendations) Thanks!

—Eric—

I think it’d help if you talked about the requirements that are driving you to look past EE.  There’s a ton of CMS out there, but trying to make any recommendations w/o requirements is about impossible.

In all honesty, your question is best asked elsewhere. The people on this forum have obviously found expression engine to be the best for their needs. Can you imagine asking AT&T;® to recommend a long distance provider other than themselves?

Well, not entirely. We’ve been known to recommend other systems when its clear that EE isn’t appropriate for the project. We take the position that no CMS can be perfect in every situation. That’s why Mike asked about the requirements needed. Obviously there is going to be a bias, but most people on these forums are web professionals and use a variety of tools depending on the situation.

I’ll second what Leslie said. While I do tend to lean to EE for contracts that have the money I will use other CMSs when budgets are tight or when the needs are specific enough that it is warranted. Wordpress, Joomla, SquareSpace? I think we all work with them all…

Textpattern is in a similar vein to EE, I’ve had good experiences working with it. The terminology is a little jenky (forms, WTF?), but it’s a good system.

Wordpress can be quickly re-purposed as a simple CMS for smaller projects.

If you can figure out how to theme or work with Joomla or Drupal without wanting to jump off a bridge then let me know how you did it.

It’s always the indian and not the arrow, I’ve seen some good hand-rolled systems too.

i have used Joomla - and the template system to me is more than easy and logical… Particularly the new one. You create your default index as your layout with areas for content to be placed. Then should you want to override a components or modules template you create that too. By default the system looks in the your template folder, and if not in the components folder.

To be honest i barely use anything other than EE and Joomla… But a few of the others i have flagged that seem pretty good are:

http://www.modxcms.com/
http://matrix.squiz.net/  (i think a paid version was developed for the AUS government systems - http://www.squiz.co.uk/)
http://silverstripe.com/
http://textpattern.com/

i did have plenty more, but the links get pushed away and lost!!! Other than that dig your way through this site that has loads of working examples:
http://opensourcecms.com/

compare: http://www.cmsmatrix.org/
test drive: http://opensourcecms.com/

(hopefully php based and open source)

Only 2 come to mind: Textpattern and Wordpress. Silverstripe looks promising too.

I love EE and will use it absolutely every time i can, but alfresco looks decent if you’re on Java.

Given the requirements described by the poster,  the answer is: none. Period. Textpattern might have been an alternative, but it has stalled and never was a true CMS. MODx is powerful, but immature and its architecture is hopelessly baroque.

Wordpress, due to its astonishing plugin momentum, is a powerful tool for many purposes (not to mention a ton of fun), but it is not remotely a CMS, even when jazzed up with fairly relevant, stable plugins. Someone would have to fork its development - but why bother? It is becoming the loosely coupled hub for a range of CMS-like and social networking services, but will never be a CMS.

The ‘S’ in CMS is key.

EE is an integrated content management ..... system. As a CMS, it has no competitors at any price. That isn’t fanboy talk, but simple reality. The absence of vigorous competition is a bummer for us as developers/users, but is very nice for Ellis Labs. They have earned EE’s unique position.

Textpattern is my second CMS of choice. I’ve tried every CMS under the sun but EE and Textpattern are the two I use the most.

You know, I just recently went hunting around and seeing what was out there.  I keep a closed Apache server running to test things on, so its not hard for me to install and play around with about everything out there.  I tried the new versions of MoveableType (where I migrated from in the old days..lol), WordPress, ModX, and you name it.  Besides the sheer PITA-ness of most of the solutions out there (Joomla, ModX), none were as customizable or as simple to learn to use to design sites (have you seen MoveableType’s Tag system lately!  You need a Masters to decipher it!).  Even the de-facto blog platform WordPress forces users to learn php to really customize their templates.

In the end I decided that EE was the best solution.  Its actually pretty darned scalable so if you need something for simple blogging you can uninstall all the unneeded modules, but if you need the kitchen sink, well EE comes with everything but the faucet already in the package and the faucet can be purchased elsewhere.

FYI, My wife uses WordPress for her blog, so I am familiar with it and I manage her stuff pretty often, yet I still came back to EE as the best solution for about any users needs.

I think we all work with them all…

I for one work with EE only. If someone doesn’t want to use it then I pass them on. Standardizing on something helps enormously.

The absence of vigorous competition is a bummer for us as developers/users

I consistently run into problems with complex EE sites; people are wrong when people say you can do anything with it and Leslie is right to say there are things it’s not suited for.

When I build a site I want all the content related in various ways, as rich as a newspaper site, and in EE this invariably means a site that’s simply too slow. I’ve learned that I have to make an extensive second pass at a complex EE site to find ways to squeeze out performance (and may I say sometimes quite ingenious ways).

Caching could be more granular and powerful, the database could I think be more completely normalized.

But I’ve always had faith that EllisLab has the values, the brilliance and now the growing resources to gradually address all these issues and more.

(Feels a bit sad saying that though with reedmaniac gone.)

My votes would goes to textpattern as well. It’s just beautiful if you know what I mean. *wink*