Hi,

I have agreed to set up a server to run an existing website from a hosted solution. This is no problem I have setup Centos 5.5 64 bit, all running OK. The existing site is single directory HTML with a very small amount of Java script.

The user has no technical knowledge and would like to be able to go in and modify their site, sadly vim is not an option

Has anyone got any suggestion of single or multi site CMS solutions that are easy to set up and use. I would also need to import the existing site. I do not have weeks to spend learning a new product at the moment though I would love to do so.

Any suggestions ?

Many thanks,

Ady

How about Joomla, it's pretty easy to use and install? http://www.joomla.org/

Joomla, Drupal and Mamboo are good choices!

...Joomla is quite nice, and pretty (relatively) by default, but their security rep isn't the best. This can probably be managed, but do you have the time to do that, as your client won't be doing it?

Drupal is still good, but not so attractive by default (although that can be fixed) and probably a bit more of a learning curve (all CMSs are quite complex and to imagine one with no learning curve is unrealistic). security rep is better than Joomla! though.

Plone is probably a bit more professional still, but demands a lot of your hardware - ie, is slower on equivalent hardware (but again, this can probably be managed or 'architected' out of the way, at least for low usage sites)

And one outside bet...Wordpress is becoming more CMS-like; it used to be purely a blogging platform but is incorporating CMS features, so could be a possibility. it is probably a bit more difficult to make a Wordpress site not look like a generic Wordpress site, though. From what I understand, short learning curve, at least to get going, though.

A question for you: How will you install? If it is from repos, check the state of up-to-dateness of the versions in your repos. You do not want to be depending on a version with known exploits against it. If from a stack, some stacks are worse than others in security terms (and you have to do all of the updating/keeping up with status yourself).

Thanks for the info guys,

Looking into it pretty is not a major issue but must be usable, Security is always a major factor and as I had planned to manage packages with yum then Drupal looks like the most likely option.

Drupals latest versions are included in EPEL!

I have tried various ways of using Wordpress (should have mentioned that), though the html import option didn't work that well, and Salasli said its difficult to not look like a blogging site.

I'd say on balance I'll give Drupal a go, but without hurrying it in. I'll also have play with Mambo out of interest.

Thanks for all of your responses,

Ady

One disadvantage with Drupal that I should have mentioned earlier is that there is a major version change coming. If you want to go live soon, you should learn and develop on 6.xx now and understand that a transition to 7.xx will come along sometime soon and that is a relatively big change,.

If you have a looser schedule to go live, maybe you can get away with ignoring 6.xx.That is one fewer transition to make, but your timing becomes at the mercy of unpredictable external factors