I happen to know a bit of the history of PHPNuke and the several forks it has lead to.I'm looking for a *free*, pre-built CMS with PHP/MySQL.I've looked at ezpublish but I'm having trouble installing. Criteria: * Must have SE friendly urls (example.com/4/34/) * Must allow different 'sections' for articles * Must be easy to fix templates for the html/css
The basic idea of PHPNuke and its first generation forks is this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
HEADER OF THE PAGE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
LEFT | | RIGHT
| CENTER |
BLOCKS | | BLOCKS
| |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
FOOTER OF THE PAGE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Somehow limiting the creativity of the designer of a 'theme'.
The left and right blocks can be form the core team or from third parties and their queality varies wildly. They can contain a menu, weather, links to center modules, search engines, polls etc. In the center would show the current "module" which can also be taken from anywhere, and can be a news system, a forum, and many other things.
Xaraya and Envolution attempt to really change this strict setup.
In historical order, not claiming to be exact or complete:
PHPNuke
* has built in news articles in sections by default.
Optional planning of articles and optional feature to let visitors discuss articles (also in most other CMSses here)
* I'm not sure about the search engine friendly urls.
* AFAIK it has a separate directory file for the skins, called 'theme', where you can design the various CSS styles and the HTML code for basic features such as the side blocks.
But i cannot recommend it because the single project leader is hard to reach and tends to ignore security warnings.
www.phpnuke.org (often slow)
MyPHPNuke is a fork of PHPNuke, and seems to limit itself in layout and seems to have a limited functionality (no modules, i THINK).
www.myphpnuke.org (or .com)
xOOps
is also a fork of PHPNuke and tries to put it all in classes. I have no details, check their site. i think xoops.org
PostNuke
is also a PHPNuke fork, a very strong CMS with very strict rules for the modules. They are still working towards the 1.0 version but many people already used the 0.64 version on production sites.
Very strong system, uses Adodb to allow the use of different databases (MySQL now with people working hard on ?Postgress and ?Oracle), many modules were made for it but it is not always claear whether it will work in the version of Postnuke you are working on.
* There is a way to create search engine friendly URL's, i think it is a setting you can choose, you may need Apache to do it. If in doubt ask on one of the support areas
* I find the third party module 'ContentExpress' (http://pn.arising.net/ce/) the best way to edit articles.
I made a menu module for it (http://www.hieris.info/about/DynMenu).
* Like PHPNuke Postnuke has 'themes' of which you can download several.
http://www.postnuke.com
Xaraya
after a conflict in which some people kept on harrassing the developers, the central developers of Postnuke decided to fork to Xaraya, leaving Postnuke with just a handful of developers. I must say that Postnuke now is up and running again.
Anyway, Xaraya has some real high quality developers but.... they ain't finished yet and after the hectic at Postnuke they decided not to offer in between versions but to work steady on the 1.0 version.
When ready it will really kick ass.
The entire system will use templates, allowing you to build pages with all content bits just however you like best. Ready for the future: if you do not want to use HTMl but rather XML, it's entirely possible already. It will allow SE friendly URLs for sure and a rocking article system.
The one i hope to join.
www.Xaraya.org
Envolution
another fork of Postnuke, uses a templating system, to the joy of some and the horror of many. I did not check it as their template system will never allow the flexibility i need.
http://www.envolution.com/
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
