Another CMS Thread....

[mclark2112]

I have been doing a lot of research and have come up with two viable CMS options. Before I get to the options, let me tell you what I've tried and used.

• Miraserver. I have used this in the past, and really liked it, but it seems mostly dead now, so I am sorry to have to give up on it.
• Joomla! Again, I have tried to use it, but I just don't like it. Too jumbled, and way to complex for what I want. Also, I had to hack it to death to get a decent looking News site. And I bought the iJoomla News add-on. Still never went live with the site, as it is just too clunky for real life.
• vbDrupal. Sorry, I know some love it, but I hated drupal. Way too mush work to make it not look like a blog.
• vBAdvanced CMPS. Just not a professional News site, no matter what I do, it still looks too much like vB.
• vBFNews. (Formally made by Mary vBNews) Nice app, really nice. I think this is almost there, and for a new site, would be fine for a little while. But it is missing some standard logic, that just makes it a little less than professional.
• PHP Cow. I think I like the look of the script and the admin side of things, but the sites all seem the sam, and I have read a lot of questionable reports on the ownership of that script, so it is out.

So now I am looking at two paid scripts, SubDreamer ($99) and Vivvo ($199).

I have got to say, I am leaning heavily towards Vivvo. It seems to have all I want right out of the box, and I like the way the Admin side is set up, very easy to use. It also handles the front page display of news and articles exactly how I like. I have set up the 21 day demo, it is very cool. Templates are easy to work with, and the community is decent.

SubDreamer, however, seems to have a more robust hacking community, and seems to have more users. But without demo software that I can load on my server and play with, I can't be sure about the usability of it. Also the themes seem much more difficult to work with.

So, has anyone used these scripts? What did you think?

I didn't mention it, but my site is a news site, so I want to be able to emulate a top news organisation: Top Stories, Breaking News, Articles, Editorials, various other news categories. Both of these scripts can handle my needs as far as I can see. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

here is an example of my Joomla! site: www.champcarfanatics.com/frontpage/

here is Vivvo: www.champcarfanatics.com/vivvo/