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mkrdinfo
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Joined: Aug 10, 2010
Posts: 10

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:29 am Reply with quote

Hello to all

In evaluating CMSes, I have the following requirements: CMS selection criteria

Small CMSes may be attractive in the beginning, but users start bumping into limitations down the road.

List of other rejected CMSes. This list also contains specific notes on this CMS and what I noted the problems to be.


I would love to hear feedback on the selection criteria.




ADDITIONALLY, IT MAKES NO SENSE TO HAVE THE [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] WEBSITE AS A DEMO INSTALL WITHOUT A CLEAR WARNING THAT IT IS SO. YOU'RE CONFUSING MANY PEOPLE.
 
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Susann
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Joined: Dec 19, 2004
Posts: 3191
Location: Germany:Moderator German NukeSentinel Support

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:46 am Reply with quote

Well, your list is not really helpful in my opinion there are much better lists around. Anyway would really like to know whats your problem with RavenNuke(tm) because also negative feedbacks can help to make it better. I´m very happy with this CMS and many others around the globe too Smile
ravennuke.com is a demo and preview/ testsite and the most know this. You can find information directly at the main page and within the forums.


Last edited by Susann on Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:49 am; edited 1 time in total 
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mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:49 am Reply with quote

1) Show me a better list. I'm looking around for CMSes myself.

2) It is not clear that ravennuke is a test site. It's only a single sentence down the page. And I scrolled down to "the lounge" or the equivalent in the forums, so I had no idea and saw no stickies saying it's a test site.

And I'm guessing I am not the only nor the first one to think the same.
 
mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:51 am Reply with quote

As far as other critique, the website frontpage could sure use some cleanup. People have no idea what's going on. There are way too many boxes, and ads, and random things like that.

Would you like an example of a clean CMS website?
 
Susann







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:53 am Reply with quote

1. Use Google search. I don´t give my best links away.
2. Well, I´m sure Raven will think about to make soon a bigger sentence for people like you. This shouldn t be a serious problem.
3. Please tell us more why you rejected RavenNuke (tm).
 
mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:56 am Reply with quote

I'll download the cms again, and test it again, and post my notes.
 
Susann







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:03 am Reply with quote

Take the time and don´t forget to configure NukeSentinel to be protected. If you have issues don´t hestitate to open a new thread with your questions. You will get the best support here at ravenphpscripts.com like all other RavenNuke users. Smile
 
fkelly
Former Moderator in Good Standing



Joined: Aug 30, 2005
Posts: 3312
Location: near Albany NY

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:15 am Reply with quote

On Ravennuke.com there is an entire section on the home page titled: "
The Purpose of This Site And Forums" that explains what the site is about. Unless this was added after your original post, I don't see what the confusion is ... except maybe it should right at the top of the opening message. But really, people can scroll down just a little and read.

I applaud you for the ambition of your project and am looking forward to seeing more results. It can't be easy to install and test all of the CMS's you are looking at. It is a good thing, in my opinion, that you are not being "sucked in" by very simplistic CMS's that don't have the capabilities a user will need in the long run. At the same time, it is not easy to build a fully capable CMS that is very simple to install and operate. We are trying all the time with Ravennuke to move toward that objective but, as I say, it's not easy or quick.

Take a look at our Wiki also. http://rnwiki.ravennuke.com/wiki/RNWiki_Home

It is not perfect or fully realized yet but it's a good indication of the direction we are going.
 
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nuken
RavenNuke(tm) Development Team



Joined: Mar 11, 2007
Posts: 2024
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:41 am Reply with quote

I like the criteria list. Any good CMS should incorporate most of them.

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mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:44 am Reply with quote

Finally, some encouragement. Thanks.

One guy reviewing a hundred+ CMSes for free can't possibly write a ten page report on every single CMS.

So my strategy was to post on the forums of every "rejected" CMS. Those who respond - like this forum - will definately get an in-depth evaluation.

Many others - you have no idea how many other CMSes from that list don't even HAVE a forum.
 
jestrella
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Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 593
Location: Santiago, Dominican Republic

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:03 am Reply with quote

Great altruist labor what you're doing. I really appreciate it, and as Susann stated do not ever hesitate to post here both good and bad things about our beloved CMS, as that will hopefully help us create a better and greater product...

_________________
"For those whom have not reach the sky... Every mountain seems high"

Best Regards
Jonathan Estrella [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] 
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Raven
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Joined: Aug 27, 2002
Posts: 17088

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:20 am Reply with quote

Also, try different themes. And, I don't know how much clearer I can be than the paragraph on the front page??
 
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mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:25 am Reply with quote

Raven wrote:
Also, try different themes. And, I don't know how much clearer I can be than the paragraph on the front page??


I do see a huge picture on the front page. I don't readily see the paragraph mentioned however. You are vastly overestimating the amount of time people scan a new web page. It's less than a second.

If it was point 20 type in the header banner, then I could be blamed for blindness, however.
 
Raven







PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:37 am Reply with quote

Oh for mercy's sake! Scroll down.
 
jakec
Site Admin



Joined: Feb 06, 2006
Posts: 3048
Location: United Kingdom

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:14 am Reply with quote

There is also a post in the forums at RavenNuke.com under announcements which clearly explains the purpose of the site.

The title of the Comments forum where you posted also says "This forum is for Comments only. This forum is NOT for support! All support issues should be directed to [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]"

Anyway back on topic, we all look forward to your comments, good or bad. As you will see from the forums here RN has quite a large community and it is growing all the time.
 
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kguske
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Joined: Jun 04, 2004
Posts: 6432

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:07 pm Reply with quote

First, thank you for posting here in the support forum, which I hope you'll agree is very active.

Having reviewed, among many other things, a number of security tools for PHP-Nuke, I prefer objective criteria over the somewhat subjective criteria identified on mkrd.info. For example, support for dynamic title and META tag generation is important for SEO. The extent to which a CMS supports this is verifiable and not subject to personal views.

The mkrd.info criteria leave many questions about the selection and evaluation process. For example, did you only select PHP-based systems? If so, why isn't PHP-Nuke, arguably the original PHP-based CMS, even listed on the rejected list, or DragonFly CMS? If not, why aren't DotNetNuke, MovableType and Radiant included? How do you define "simple," "easy to use" and "bloated"? How do you define "small" in the contexts of development teams and websites? Yes, an error-free installation process can be verified, but what if you didn't follow the detailed instructions? What constitutes SEF / human friendly web addresses? If blog functionality isn't desired, what functionality is? What about the availability, cost and support of addons, themes / templates? Who is the target recipient of the review? If it's small businesses, paid support might be important. If it's personal / community websites, a more detailed analysis of security might be important. The impression I have is that this is an attempt to justify the final selection of CMS Made Simple, rather than an objective comparison. If so, that's fine - it's an entirely appropriate task (and probably a fine CMS, too). If not...

I like the detailed criteria on cmsmatrix.org. In addition to many objective criteria, it has a few subjective criteria, too, and allows people to vote on those since one person's subjective evaluation is rarely sufficient.

_________________
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nukeSEO - nukeFEED - nukePIE - nukeSPAM - nukeWYSIWYG


Last edited by kguske on Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:17 pm; edited 1 time in total 
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mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:10 pm Reply with quote

This forum is TOO active. I'll post a detailed response later today.
 
jakec







PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:27 pm Reply with quote

mkrdinfo wrote:
This forum is TOO active. I'll post a detailed response later today.


Laughing I've not heard that before, we can't win!
 
mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 3:53 pm Reply with quote

1) I would not have enough time to evaluate on objective criteria. I could lie, but I do not want to lie. All other review sites reveal that their reviews were as shallow as mine from statements that they make. Were you expecting a 10 man-hours review?

2) My selection and evaluation process? A CMS that's a tool which is easy and fun to use. And it never gets in your way. What else should matter?

3) That list was created from all CMSes which claimed to be simple, small, tiny, etc. I picked that criteria when I was looking for a CMS for myself some time ago. I have since picked one. Larger projects like you mentioned are really outside the scope of the criteria.

4) How do I define small? If the CMS has a forum, and I see a column of numbers with hundreds of topics posted, then I claim it satisfies the active support community requirement.

5) SEF - a "pretty URL", not ?page=342342342343

6) IMHO blogs should be left to hosted services. Just an opinion, I won't go further.

7) 50+ community developed modules required.

8) Target recipient - a beginning developer, or even someone who's just thinking they need a website done by someone else.

9) I do try not to mention cmsms, but I am very much in love with it... But who knows, another one might come across me and steal my heart.

10) Regarding other review sites: while they might have a five page review on individual cmses, I do suspect very much they only spend 10 minutes with a CMS. And their picks are VERY VERY weird. Sometimes they compare an enterprise level CMS with a 1000 lines of code CMS. At least I broke my eyes on those long lists of EVERY SINGLE CMS.


Thanks for preventing me from being lazy (...grumbles...)
 
kguske







PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:39 pm Reply with quote

1) 1 minute would be fine if you had at least a sentence about why it was rejected.

2) Lots of other things matter in addition to usability. Why have a website if no one can find it? (SEO matters) How fun is it to use a CMS that can be easily defaced? (security and support matter) You can have any color website you want, as long as it's black. (availability of addons, themes / templates matters) I could go on, but that wouldn't be easy or fun Smile

9) Not to belabor the point, but in my experience (and I'm not a young man), spending more time in the analysis and selection of software prevents expensive changes / conversion later. That said, many speak highly of CMSMS...

10) How much time are you spending with each CMS? Smile

When I did the comparison of Nuke security tools, I contacted the authors of each tool with the results of my analysis - before publicizing it - so they had an opportunity to correct anything that was wrong. PHP-Nuke security was pretty weak at that time, so that article became pretty popular (it was translated into about 8 other languages and read over 20,000 times in the first 6 months after it was published). Some of the developers enhanced their products to be more competitive, while others gave up. In the end, NukeSentinel practically eliminated the rampant defacement attacks that made using PHP-Nuke "not fun."

As I mentioned before, you may not be trying to change the world with your analysis - and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. I enjoy looking at other applications, too, as well as reading others' analysis of applications. We'd just like to get your feedback - positive and negative - so we can make RN better. That feedback really drives what we do.
 
AndyB
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Joined: Jun 03, 2004
Posts: 231
Location: Torrevieja, Spain

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 5:32 am Reply with quote

Good luck with your research; I'll add my 2p worth, if I may. (And I'll try to keep it brief)
I evaluated CMS' about 10 years ago.
Ended up with nuke.
Got hacked.
Found fixes.
Found security.
Things worked "happily"- I've "upgraded" a few times now (predominantly used various flavours of nuke with a few "add ons")- not necessarily through choice. (So you may want to look into the "upgrade" path for users- how "painful" will it be when the user needs to upgrade?)
Only recently have I migrated to RN.

The site started small, now regularly delivers 30,000+ page views per DAY. Why have I not changed/ gone to something more "polished" and less "blocky"? Simple. It does what I want, what I need, what my visitors want/ need and works.
If -for what ever reason- it stops working, the support ON THIS SITE is better than I have experienced elsewhere for other systems/ software (not just CMS.)
I've done another site using Joomla!- polished, but the interface takes some getting used to; easy to install "extras" and "tweak" the theme or upgrade, BUT a LOT of the "extras" are not free. Sure, they are only say $10 or so, BUT the support for these add ons, and the system itself, is, quite honestly, shameful. It's what lets it down as a package. Also a serious lack of group control (due to be fixed or rectified in 1.6)

Things like I mentioned above, you can't find from a quick "view" of a website/ demo site or review site (no disrespect, but you simply will not have the time to look into all aspects in depth with the time you have available). I'm also using phpbb3 for another site. In all instances of CMS OTHER than RN, my biggest concern is security, or lack of.

MY programming skill isn't that high- amateur-ish, I'd say, but it doesn't scare me looking at code and trying to work out how it works when I need to.

I hope this gives you a more objective view from a user, and someone that will quite probably be using your site as a reference in the future for anything else I may have planned.... Very Happy

Good luck Cool
 
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duck
Involved
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Joined: Jul 03, 2006
Posts: 273

PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 9:16 am Reply with quote

I haven't reviewed the mkrdinfo reviews yet but I noticed while reading this topic that it was mentioned about the demo site not being clearly a demo and many veteran RN users somewhat attacking him on this fact and I can't help jumping to his defense on this one. It is very unclear actually. I had been confused more than once in the past. Still occaisionally do considering the theme almost matches the regular site and there is regular news posted on the front page making it look like a real site at first glance and not a demo site. There should be no need to "Scroll Down" and read fine print to determine a site is a demo site and not a real site. It should be Large and Clear right at the top of the site. It should be the first thing you read, not a "congratulations you've just installed RN".

You guys are used to it so it is second nature to you but if you were new and looking at it again you'd probably get a little confused at first. This particualr critism of mkrdinfo is a good point I think and one thatis easily rectified. To respond with "Scroll Down for Christs Sake" is not a fair (or better yet "Client Focused") response.

That is my 2 cents. Smile
 
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Raven







PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 1:15 pm Reply with quote

Surprised
Duck wrote:
<snip> To respond with "Scroll Down for Christs Sake" is not a fair (or better yet "Client Focused") response. <snip>
Actually I said "Oh for mercy's sake! Scroll down." Wink

To be honest, I and others, have felt that mkrdinfo's methodology in general has led to a review that is flawed, as can be seen from the comments above. Duck, we have know each other quite a while and you know that we constantly try to improve RN. On only very rare occasions have we taken a defensive posture when critiqued. I am surprised that you haven't commented on this before. I know you aren't shy killing me

For example, in his opening volley Smile : Responses/Comments (at least mine), would have taken on a whole different "attitude" if he would have stated at the onset:
mkrdinfo wrote:
One guy reviewing a hundred+ CMSes for free can't possibly write a ten page report on every single CMS.

So my strategy was to post on the forums of every "rejected" CMS. Those who respond - like this forum - will definately get an in-depth evaluation.

And his use of CAPS when they weren't needed is/was not appreciated:
mkrdinfo wrote:
<snip> ADDITIONALLY, IT MAKES NO SENSE TO HAVE THE [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] WEBSITE AS A DEMO INSTALL WITHOUT A CLEAR WARNING THAT IT IS SO. YOU'RE CONFUSING MANY PEOPLE.

Just as he, you, and probably others, were/are unable to ascertain the exact purpose of the RN site (quickly), I was unable to ascertain his true intentions.

This one really threw me! If it was meant as humor then a simple smiley would have made that clear since none of us know him.
mkrdinfo wrote:
This forum is TOO active. I'll post a detailed response later today.


Now, having said all that Laughing, I will be making adjustments. This has shown/proven once again, at least to me, that it's so easy to assume things. Mkrdinfo, I/We do very much appreciate unbiased critiques. We all need to be careful, though, and remember that I/we can't see beyond the letters/words on the screen. That's always the precarious tightrope we walk on as we try to ascertain the intentions of a poster and our replies! Please continue to give feedback.

Raven
 
mkrdinfo







PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:26 pm Reply with quote

Yes, that was meant to be with the smiley face. Smile . Ok?
 
Dawg
RavenNuke(tm) Development Team



Joined: Nov 07, 2003
Posts: 928

PostPosted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 4:34 pm Reply with quote

mkrdinfo,

From an end user of RN...

I have installed and looked at about every CMS in your list. I even have some of them running sites for clients. I also have 22 RN sites. 2 of those push over 100,000 page views a day.

What makes RN special is the RN team. These guys run a top notch show. It is a well put together CMS that is secure and fairly easy for a noobie to operate. It can do just about anything you want it to do.

I too have been through the upgrade cycle now many times. I started with php-nuke 6.5 and went through 7.6 and then into the RN releases. It does not happen much easier that it is with RN. The best thing though is that IF you have a problem you KNOW that the RN team will be here to help you.

RN ROCKS IMHO!

Dawg
 
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