CMS & frameworks evaluated

Edited tips from Mindy Wagner’s post at Viget Labs:

1. Get over the term “weblog.” In EE, a weblog is a container used to store information and organize your data. Don’t be afraid to make lots of weblogs for a single site. You can change your preferences to call it something else (like “section”), but the template tags will still call them weblogs, so you may find it easier to just adjust your thinking. (Note: Rumor has it this term is being dropped in the upgrade to 2.0, so in a few months you won’t have to worry about this!) read more »
   

An apparently thorough comparison of EE and MT by an experienced user of both for blogging-type applications concludes with the following (edited by me) support for EE: read more »

I’ve so far identified the following, which are somewhat underwhelming:

EEtemplates has a couple of free basic templates, posted late 08.

SimplyGold has half a dozen templates created in late 06.

Novacron has some templates dating from early 07.

EEdesign has quite a few templates but they seem to date from 04.

Some years back, I spent some time playing with TextPattern and the precursor of ExpressionEngine, pMachine. Since I’m now very interested in EE, I guess it makes sense also to take an interest in TP, and I have come upon a direct comparison between the two. read more »

As I have noted elsewhere, WordPress basically handles posts, pages and links. For the rest, you have to look to third-party plugins or separate scripts, which I’m not keen on. Expression Engine, on the other hand, has some built-in features attracting me to the system (despite the $250 price tag): read more »

After a few hours exploring the world of WordPress, I’ve identified a couple of pros and cons: read more »

The most comprehensive and robust solution here appears to be MailPress. But I have to say I am a bit wary of having to bolt on facilities of this kind, and I am beginning to veer back towards one-stop-shop solutions.

It appears that WordPress by default has three kinds of content: blog posts, static pages and links. My magazine site will need some other features, notably a forum and the ability to manage a mailing list. Let’s see what is involved in putting up a forum. read more »

I’ve started a links category to keep track of attractive magazine themes, but will also note any useful discussions or overviews here.

A good start is The Best WordPress Magazine Themes Available and the follow-up.

If I want to offer client websites quickly and cheaply, the ability to clone a base site would be very useful. Here is a piece of software that claims to be able to do it.