Can anyone recommend a good blog/cms tool? I'm looking for something that's closer to a cms with blog tools, rather than a blog with cms tools, which is how i see WP.
Have just found Expression Engine which is used on markboulton.co.uk and wonder if it's any good? Seems to be modular and offer plenty of scope for larger sites from what i've seen so far...
Some blog style categories, some static pages, and some way of creating sidebar components that you can slot into either of these... an easily skinnable backend... some way of inserting video content would be good as well for a site i'm working on....
You could do all that without too much drama with Wordpress, you just have to edit the PHP templates (my girlfriend happily does it with her blog and she has no programming experience) to do what you want instead of using a User Interface to arrange everything like with the likes of Drupal.
yeah i've done some basic stuff with wordpress before, it seems ok - i'm just not much of a coder so wondering if there's anything easier. that said your right it is pretty straightfoward in wp!
i still stick by wordpress as one of the best. but in addition to drupal you could take a look at mambo or any of the *nuke systems (phpnuke, postnuke, etc.), but i've never been a big fan of those.
You can't beat WPs wiki, it's just out of this world when it comes to information about a program. And the useful template system is second to none.
But if you want a powerhouse that can do it all, you should check Textpattern, many professionals wouldn't touch anything else.
And stay as far away as you can from Mambo, it may seem temptin as it is a modular system (one thing that drew me to it at the beginning) but editing the templates just takes insane amounts of work and it's not even valid Xhtml and you can't do the whole template by CSS since most of the modules use tables as basic method.
Yeah I had a brief fling with Mambo and was not a fan at all plus now the dev team has split so who knows what will happen. I'd say go with Drupal to see if it does what you want off the shelf if it doesn't then any custom work you need to do will be easier in Wordpress.
But if you want a powerhouse that can do it all, you should check Textpattern, many professionals wouldn't touch anything else.
really? once i saw wordpress i left textpattern in the dust. i hated all my templating being done in their admin interface. i'm much happier working with PHP than the textpattern pseudo-tags though, so that could just be me. (also i wanted to start working with podcasting and wordpress just had better built-in support for it.)
Well, basically when templating in WP you have to use those WP tags to "block" out the interface. Basically the same with Textpattern, not to be forgotten that both borrow alot from eachother but people usually like Textpatter as the more flexible of those two.
You can check out http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/ as one example how textpattern can look. Ofcourse there is no limit to what you can do with either of them.
More flexible in what way? You can do anything you want with WP, if TP made it easier through an interface (does it?) then I could see an argument there or if the tags were easier to understand.
Templating WP is just standard (X)HTML/CSS mixed with a PHP function here and there with all of the functions being nicely documented on the Codex. the fact most WP sites look similar is no faulr of WP itself.
Jaseone, I can't comment further about flexibility of Textpattern since I have very little experience with it. But usually when you ask some of these blogging gurus about their favourite bloggin engine they usually say WP for the simplicity and Textpattern for it's flexibility.
There was a lenghty discussion about this in Stylegala forums some months back.
Wordpres can be just as flexible as any other CMS out there. Case in point, I'm loving this wordpress design on [bombast.org](http://bombast.org). This guy is full of tricks. As long as you know CSS, the sky is the limit.
Now if only wordpress.com would allow users to tweak their pages with CSS.
"First of all, I truly despise Shaun for coming up with a better leaf logo than I have, but I’ll try not to hold that against him. He is one of those rare beasts, a combination of designer and developer, with neither skill lacking. I hate him for that too." -Jon Hicks
"Now if only wordpress.com would allow users to tweak their pages with CSS."
??? WP's themes are all CSS, what WP are you using? I use wordpress on my blog. I love it, its nice and simple. I did make my own but I found WP and started using it. just now getting into Ruby on Rails so maybe I will be using my own again soon. Never tried Textpattern. To tell the truth, never heard of it till a few days ago. I am gonna check it out though.
As for a really awesome design... check this out. (he uses TP)
I checked out Textpattern last night, and I really like it. Its awesome. My opinion...
If you want a simple straight forward blogging machine, go WP. Its easy, quick, and has easy to use themes.
If you want supreme command over everything, dont mind getting your hands dirty in code, and want a little more than just a blog, Textpattern might be the way to go.
I did only fiddle with it for about 30 minutes, but that was the impression I got. I liked it, but I dont think I will be switching from WP to TP. If I had to start over (or a new one) it would be a hard decision. But I am also a coder/designer. So stuff like "getting my hands dirty" dont bother me.
Wordpress is great for blogs, but Textpattern has been, and probably will be for some time, excellent at handling heterogenous content without any hacking of its source. I've always stuck to Textpattern.