Evaluation of existing Content Management Systems

Goal:To evaluate exisiting CMSs and their use within a portfolio context.

Wordpress
Example portfolio: Cognitive Creative
Very simple layout and very easy to see what everything does. In its default state, it is very geared towards blogging and uploading text-based articles, so there isn’t much support for portfolios. The major feature of Wordpress isn’t its functionality however; it is the usability of its back-end system.

The 2-deep navigation system works well for a CMS, and is something that I will use. When viewing the list of articles you instantly get a choice to view, edit, or delete all on the same window, and this is something I would like to do too. I want to make sure that my CMS has as few pages as possible, and as simple to use as possible. Wordpress is a good example of a powerful CMS but with a very simple user interface.

While Wordpress has a simple user interface it is not very good for creating portfolio-style websites. As Wordpress is a blogging tool by default, it takes a lot of customisation to change its function to a more portfolio-based CMS. Its implementation and displaying of images is lacklustre at best, so I will need to find a better example of more portfolio-orientated CMS.

The idea of having a dashboard-style homepage with lots of relevant information is a good one, but its potential is underused in this CMS. Instead it serves as a marketing tool for Wordpress, but it is a good idea nonetheless. I will implement some kind of dashboard homepage too, but I will simply have custom information and buttons to perform popular tasks.

In summary, Wordpress provides an excellent example to showcase what a good CMS user interface should look like, but is less useful to provide an example of a good portfolio CMS, and the kind of features I should implement.

Indexhibit
Example portfolio: Eatock.com
Try out the CMS user interface
Very simple to use and upload new work, but is very limited at the same time. Indexhibit’s basic idea is when uploading work you create an “exhibition” (or several) of work that you then upload images of your work to. The idea is a nice approach, but the installation is clumsy and is its biggest downfall.

There isn’t much option to upload text, and the display of those exhibition images is basic. If I wanted to just upload images with small amounts of text then this would be a perfect example to take from, but I would like the option to be able to upload both.

I think the major downfall of Indexhibit is its lack of flexibility with text and images, and the ability to manipulate them in a more robust way. But used solely as a portfolio CMS, the effect can be powerful.

In summary, Indexhibit is a slightly more useful of an example to take away as a portfolio style CMS than Wordpress, but it is still lacking somewhat. The idea of making this as simple as possible has possibly been taken a step too far, but the idea of making a simple CMS is an extremely good one and worth noting for my CMS.

Textpattern
Example portfolio: Notfree
Textpattern is similar to Wordpress in its blogging features, but it is much more easily extendable due to it having its own simplistic Textpattern coding language. Whilst I don’t plan on implementing my own XML tags and language, Textpattern is a good example of a more flexible CMS. Since my CMS isn’t going to be a commercial product, I don’t have to worry about making my CMS flexible, but I do have to make sure I make my code modular like Textpattern so I can add and remove parts as it expands in the future.

The CMS interface is quite daunting, and its implementation of the 2 level navigation doesn’t work as well as Wordpress’. I like the idea of being able to create pages through the CMS, and everything being online, but this would be too difficult for me to implement in my first CMS. In general, Textpattern’s CMS user interface isn’t as user friendly as it probably should be, but its flexibility is worth noting.

In summary, whilst Textpattern is primarily used to upload more text-based articles, the functions are there to allow you to extend it into a portfolio context. The main good example I will take from Textpattern is its ability to produce accessible code, which is something that I must make sure I do too. I am going to experiment with the use of the Textile WYSIWYG editor in my own CMS early on to see if it would be conducive to what I am trying to achieve.

Expression Engine
Example portfolio: Mark Boulton Design
Try out the CMS user interface
Expression Engine has a very clean back-end system, but it seems to be a little more complicated than Wordpress. Due to the scope and possibilities that Expression Engine allows (such as multiple sites running on one CMS), the CMS feels cluttered in places and wouldn’t be very effective for me to use as a portfolio system, or even as an example.

The dashboard feature on Expression Engine is an area that it has improved over the Wordpress system, so I will take ideas from both of these two systems. The ability to add a new tab to the navigation is a very good feature, but seeing as though mine isn’t going to market I do not have to worry too much about such features. I could just change this in the root files.

In summary, Expression Engine reinforces my feelings about having a dashboard feature on my CMS, where important information and popular tasks are shown so they can be accessed straight away. EE also reinforces my feelings that a simple tab navigation is probably the best way to go with the user interface, as both of the CMSs with the best user interface designs (Wordpress and EE) have used a tabbed navigation system.

Joomla
Example portfolio: Freestyle Web Solutions
Joomla has an extremely complicated back-end that is very difficult for beginners and intermediate users to comprehend. Everything is on one very large navigation system, and overloads the user drastically. If I am to create a CMS, I must take the bad example of Joomla and make sure I do not repeat it.

Joomla would be a poor system to choose for a portfolio content management system as it is extremely complicated and too bulky for what I need.

In summary, I have researched into Joomla to find an example of exactly what I don’t want my own CMS and user interface to be like, and Joomla has provided the perfect example for this purpose.