Hello all,

Although I've referenced LQ for many years this is my first post, so hopefully I'm doing so in the right forum.

We have an old and outdated Intranet server. The server hardware itself is past its prime; it is running Windows 2000 with an outdated version of IIS. The people who maintain the content currently use MS FrontPage. We are now looking to move the "site" to a more up to date server. I'm the primary system admin, supporting both Windows and Linux servers. I definitely prefer the Linux-side and try to use it wherever and whenever possible. Instead of having to deal with all the MS junk I would love to just setup a LAMP server to host the Intranet site. However, I'm unsure of what software to suggest to the site maintainers (one primary, and a few other additional people). Beyond the real basics I know next to nothing about web-site design. Our intranet site is very, very basic. A home page with a few graphics (ie company logo) and links to various departments (Sales, Accounting, HR, etc.) Each department page generally just has links to various documents (product bulletins, expense report sheet, company handbook, etc.). There are no pages where users fill out on-line forms or links to our back-end order entry, or anything like that.

I was considering a CMS like Wordpress, but have no experience setting up and maintaining it. I don't mind a little work in getting it installed and up and running, but the learning curve for the people maintaining the content has to be next to nothing. These are not people who design web sites as their main responsibility; just users who fumble through the basics of FrontPage. If they can't *easily* push a document out to the web server and then be able to add a link to it on a page, and also be able to change / update / delete the links they simply won't buy into this setup. Oh, and I didn't specifically say it yet although the mention of FrontPage should have given it away, but the maintainers are all Windows desktop users. So whatever solution I give them has to work on Windows.

Any and all thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance,
John

Hi John,
As a long time developer and current systems administrator for a State University I am happy to read that you would like to move away from Windoze.
Virtually any current linux distro will outperform any windows OS on any box. And like the Everready Batteries they just keep running and running and running ... well, you get the picture.

With regards to administration I highly recommend Webmin, a free, written in perl, web administration tool that saves you the headache of having to know/learn where everything is. At work we run a mix of Unbuntu, SuSE Enterprise Server, Red Hat and Fedora, and I have Webmin installed on all of them. The beauty is that the interfaces are exactly the same for all the systems whereas their internal file systems and configuration methods are quite different.

With Linux you can run with a GUI management interface which is like Windows or as a "headless" server with nothing but a command prompt. You can use Webmin on either and it will work the same. So, if that's what you ultimately decide to do then stick with the Server version like Ubuntu Server LTS.

We additionally run a mix of standard Apache/MySQL/Php as well as XAMP and they both provide the exact same thing. But XAMP is easier to install and set up.

You can look at and download Webmin from its site (www.webmin.com) and even purchase published books about it if desired. And its mailing list is quite helpful.
Good luck and let us know what you end up with.

Bob

Oops, forgot about the CMS:

You might want to take a look at www.drupalgardens.com where you can establish a free site using Drupal, quite a sophisticated content management system. Drupal Gardens offers zillions of predefined templates for different looks and feel. If you ultimately end up staying with Drupal you can convert your free site to a hosted site or move it in-house where you can install Drupal (free) on your Linux (Free), manage everything with Webmin (Free) and purchase something nice with your savings.

Although I'm not a Linux expert (nor Windows expert ) I'd recommend ISPConfig.

You'll need to have PHP 5.1.x+ installed on your system. The authors provide "perfect setups" for many Linux distributions.

The software is based on PHP and MySQL and is very light weight. It is also difficult to hack because it runs its own Apache on a different port, which can be set to https access only if you desire.

Good Luck!

(I always wanted to reply to one of those threads with no replies, first time for everything!)

Bob and bpmee,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond; I really appreciate it. I guess I didn't really explain my situation properly. I am a long-time Linux system admin. I typically favor Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora, but have dabbled with Ubuntu and some of the other distros (although usually at the desktop level, not server). While I do occasionally use Webmin for certain administrative tasks I actually typically prefer the command line. I have setup all kinds of servers / services under Linux, including DHCP, DNS, Samba, etc. However, while I have installed and configured Apache, MySQL, and PHP as prerequisites for other software I have never actually put the full LAMP stack together in order to host a full web-site. I am confident that with my past experience I will be able to get the web server up and running without too much trouble.. (or if I do run into trouble I can look to places like LQ for help ).

But here's where my problem starts. Now that I've got the web server for our intranet up and running I need to hand this off to the Windows users who manage the current Windows 2000/IIS intranet site with MS FrontPage and give them, or at least suggest to them, some tools so that they can manage the content of the site. As I said in my initial post, these users are not web developers using Dreamweaver or the like to create pages. They have learned the very basics of FrontPage to cobble together the most rudimentary intranet site. I am looking for suggestions on something I can give them to create this basic content and publish it to the Linux server. I realize that I am asking about Windows software on a Linux forum, but I am hoping other LAMP administrators here might have run into a similar situation.

Since my first post I've started looking into both Wordpress and Drupal. Each seem to have their pluses and minuses, but I'm still not sure either of them (or another CMS) is even the right choice for my situation.

Thanks again,
John

John,

I use Mozilla ( currently called Seamonkey ) as a WYSIWYG web editor. It will run on Linux and Winders. It's free also has broswer and IRC chat interface.

I would also recommend setting up a test web server, which can be on the same box using Virtual Hosting or IP aliasing. It will save you some headaches.

I am very happy with the administration of my server using Virtualmin with CentOS. Basically a one click install with their install script when your OS is detected.

Take a look at opensourceCMS to look for what suits you. Personally, I use e107 and cmsMadeSimple and either are quite simple to install and publish pages after you select a theme.

Hope that helps.

Hello John,

You should try Kompozer. http://kompozer.net This is a great WYSIWYG web editor.
It provides the best open source alternative to frontpage, with the frontpage look & feel.
It runs on both Linux and Windows systems (it even runs on a MAC).

Please let us know if this programme meets with your requirements.

Borukusan

I use GetSimple http://get-simple.info for my CMS. Content is added/changed in the browser using a simple markup (similar to the markup when you write a post here on linuxquestions), or you can use no markup and most things still come out fine.

It converts to XML on the server, so no database to administer. Very simple and very quick. A full-blown LAMP stack sounds like overkill for your needs.

You mention WordPress-- I think you're on the right track. I have used it to create a couple of websites.

Adding a page-- which I think is what you want to do, from what you've said-- isn't difficult but you'll probably walk your users through it to get them started. You provide them with permissions to do it, they log in, go to "pages", "add new", and then begin typing. Or, for that matter, paste. There is a button to accept paste from Word-- which sounds like what you want?

WordPress has a huge community, with a lot of extensions that you can play with to role out additional functionality.

You sound pretty proficient with configuring and maintaining servers-- can't hurt to play with it. If you wanted external hosting, there are a bunch of places that do that fairly economically, too.

HTH-- D.

Thanks again to all those who have responded; definitely some very helpful ideas. I'm now a little torn between the CMS route and looking at WYSIWYG editors. Fortunately I'm not under the gun on this as of yet, so hopefully I will get a chance to check out a few of the recommendations to see what fits our environment best. Worst-case scenario I get some experience with more open source / Linux software.

Something like KompoZer looks like it might fit the bill nicely. My only concern with this particular piece of software is that there hasn't been a stable release in more than 4 years, and the latest beta is around a year and a half old. This doesn't in and of itself make it "bad" software, but I always get a little wary of using open source software that appears to have been abandoned or sliding that way.

Thanks again,
John

2 points:

1. Our club webmaster recommends WordPress for a situation like this.
   
   
2. I believe that you, or any of your users, could test drive WordPress w/ a free acct. at WordPress.com

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