a Joomla! view from LUGOR territory in Western NY [WAS Re: CMS ]

[Carl Helmers]

Hi Ray... [and Lori and et al in GNHLUG ]

_*Regarding CMS's:*_   I've been thinking about and experimenting with 
/Joomla!/ for my personal
legacy site www.helmers.com <http://www.helmers.com/>  since last summer 
thanks to our former *_/BYTE/_* editorial colleague
Mark Dahmke (co-owner of the ISP firm /Information Analytics, Inc./ in 
Lincoln Nebraska.) 
Mark followed up his suggestion of /Joomla!/ with my access to his 
/Joomla!/ beta site on which
I started to experiment.  After diddling around to see what /Joomla! 
/could do for  the rest of
2008, I finally got serious about creating my new site at the end of 
December.

While not obvious to me when Mark suggested /Joomla!/ to me last July, 
WWW research and then
experimenting with a beta version of my now on line /Joomla! /site has 
shown this CMS to provide
a great way to create an editorial oriented site ala a personal 
magazine.  I am back in the meme of
self-publishing that led to my _*/BYTE/*_ magazine at the start of the 
last quarter of the last century.


With /Joomla!/, I use HTML output directories of articles created 
offline with /Open Office Writer/,
uploaded to my site with /FileZilla/'s FTP,  and then -- here is a 
/non-naive user/ part -- link each
article's one .html file in the site's directory tree to its menu item 
by hand "wiring" that article's one
/.html/ file name/address on the site to the corresponding /Joomla!/ 
menu item.  That's the one relatively
minor /naive user/ gotcha about /Joomla!/ as I use the system.  The 
results far outweigh learning that one
rote trick to use /Joomla!/ as presently implemented in the 1.5.9 version.

The neatest thing from the point of view of my site's WWW visitors is 
the advantage of using their browsers
when reading my articles.  My internal /OOWriter/ bookmarks in the 
source document automatically become
active hyperlinks once the HTML output reaches the WWW site.   For good 
examples of my bookmark
hyperlink technique presently posted, see my articles
          The Importance of (Emergency Backup) Power 
<http://www.helmers.com/images/stories/CH_Main_M/Imp_E_B_Pwr/Importance_of_%28Emergency_Backup%29_Power.html> 

or
          Compressor Time Box 
<http://www.helmers.com/images/stories/Projects/C_T_B/Compressor_Timer_Box.html> 

Both these articles use this technique for lists of sections and lists 
of images and occasional
random internal links in text.   /OOWriter/  external links to valid WWW 
addresses from an
article automatically become active valid hyperlinks when  the article 
is posted.  (While not written and posted
on my site yet,  this is key to re-creating my article on a list of 
favorite WWW sites.)

Use of a true WWW browser to read an otherwise static non-web article 
presentation is
the major innovation that I have created.  Unlike reading an article 
from /OOWriter /or even
from a .pdf Adobe Acrobat form,  the browser has a "back button" whose 
scope goes homogeneously
from the on-line posted article all the way back to originating place on 
the WWW site!  The article
thus integrated with the  whole WWW!

My offline editorial method was not obvious when I first started looking 
at /Joomla!/ last
summer.  By January I had perfected the technique so that it works 
smoothly, though it
is definitely not automatic and may be above the mythical /naive user/'s 
abilities. 

My /Joomla!/ beta site became the real www.helmers.com 
<http://www.helmers.com/>  on March 7 when I changed
DNS pointers in close e-mail cooperation with Mark.   For a while,  my 
site will keep evolving as
I add queued and new materials not yet posted.  I still have un-answered 
questions about
certain aspects of /Joomla!/ but at least I have base from which to ask 
questions...  Then there is
always the unknown of moving beyond the default site template :-)

Live long and prosper....

            Carl Helmers
            carl at helmers.com
            www.helmers.com <http://www.helmers.com/>           
            585 . 624 . 9841










Raymond Cote wrote:
> Lori Hitchcock wrote:
>   
>> Working with a company developing a website in a LAMP environment and
>> starting to look at CMS.  Hearing good and bad about both Joomla and
>> Drupal.  The needs to be very simple for non-techs to add content.
>>
>> Does anyone have any advice or experience with either of these? Does any one
>> have a positive experience with another CMS?
>>   
>>     
> Hi Lori:
> We've used both Drupal and Plone recently.
> Some thoughts:
> - both reasonably complete CMS systems.
> - Plone has a tough learning curve -- but can be pretty easy for the 
> non-techs once it is set up.
> - Drupal has less of a learning curve -- and also relatively easy to use 
> once set up.
> - Drupal seems to hit the wall with complex environments a bit earlier 
> than Plone does (e.g., Plone more complex but also more capable.)
> - Plone doesn't get security update alerts every week.
> - Plone community has a greater focus on web standards than Drupal 
> community (core products not bad, Drupal add-ons are all over the map).
> - Drupal has a much larger collection of half-done, partially 
> implemented, "done some time soon now" plug-ins.
> - Plone tends to have fewer plug-ins (and 1-3 of any particular 
> selection, like blogging), but they tend to be maintained (there are, of 
> course, always exceptions to this).
> - Drupal will deploy just about anywhere you can get PHP and MySQL.
> - Plone requires more specialized hosting (though places like 
> Webfaction.com provide excellent service).
> - Plone built on Zope which is probably the most complex environment in 
> the Python community.
> - Fairly active Plone community here in the northeast. 
> - Drupal built on PHP and you can find PHP programmers just about 
> everywhere.
>
> One big difference between the two is ecommerce.
> Drupal has a nice Ubercart system which is fairly flexible (long as you 
> don't need multi-language checkouts).
> Plone community working on their first eCommerce plug in which is doing 
> well, but nowhere near as functional as something like Drupal.
> If you need a heave e-commerce component, then a pure Plone solution is 
> probably out of the picture for the moment.
>
> Above are all my personal opinions to date.
> I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch in either of these.
> Your mileage may, as always, vary.
> --Ray
>
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