Chris Curtis Web Site

What is a cms and why did I need to explore them?

A content management system is designed to allow users to create and edit content which is then displayed to other users. In simple terms, it is a way of making it easy for a group of people to create and maintain a web site, without needing to know html, ftp and the other usual tools. Usually, the content is created by filling in forms when you are attached to the “back end” of a site. Once this is done, the content appears in proper format from the “front end” (or publicly accessible face) of the same site. CMS also do such things as maintain details of publication dates, authorship etc.

We needed a cms for our school web site. Up till now, the site had been managed using dreamweaver. This was great for maintaining a common “Look and Feel” and for experts to produce some content. It does have a significant learning curve, however, which meant that very few people produced content. This meant that there was not a lot of content being produced. Updates were rare, content became stale and when the pressure went on, the site became out of date. We thought a cms should solve this. It would separate content from design and from the technology – lots more people could contribute. Ease of use would allow more content to be produced more quickly and more often. We started to explore.

Open Source
We decided early on that we would look for an open source cms. Firstly, commerical cms are extremely expensive and open source is free. Secondly, we have had very good experience of open source software on our servers, especially “moodle” which runs our learning environment and wordpress that runs this site. We like the lively community of people who mould software to do what they need it to do and the help that community gives when you need it. We had gained some confidence in moulding aspects of the software to our specific needs.

Nuke et al.
We soon discovered PHP-Nuke and all its related “cousins” (e.g. “post-Nuke“). These are very effective at creating highly interactive sites with forums, messaging and the like. This was not really what we wanted to do. A school web site has a place for interaction, but it must primarily be a means of publishing information. Nuke and its cousins were capable of this, but not primarily designed for it. The other thing we found off-putting was the appearance of a “holy war” going on between adherents of slightly different versions. Looking around various discussions for advice or hints as to which version was better, we found strong opinions, but very little clarity and an awful lot of nerdy jargon. We did not rule out a nuke-based system, but we decided to move on.

Wordpress
I like wordpress very much. It runs this site. I think it is by far the best software for running a “blog” or “web log” – a site in which articles are shown in date order but also categorised so people can find any article quickly. I was very tempted by it, but at the end of the day, it did not fit the “information architecture” we needed. A school site is primarily about publishing structured information, some of which changes frequently and quite a lot does not. Although a blog could be useful within a school site, it cannot be the complete site. We moved on.

“Publishing” CMSs
We began to focus on cms that were designed to produce the kinds of web site we wanted. We worked for a while with each of:

• PHPwebsite. This comes from the Appalachian State University and we liked it a great deal. In the end, we felt it was quite slow, it was less than convincingly reliable, especially on windows servers, and it was a little restricting in the way you worked with it.
• typo3. This is a very capable cms, so rather complicated. It does not help that the documentation and community is very full of jargon so trying something like creating a page and linking it to the home page took ages – most of which was discovering what the various buttons did and why. We could not see non-experts ever being comfortable with this.
• Plone and ez-publish. The comments about typo3 apply to both these systems, with knobs on! They are very highly capable but very complex. It was taking hours to read enough documentation to know how to do even very simple things. We felt it would take weeks to learn either of them well enough to use.
• spip I have a very soft spot for “spip”. It has a very clear and simple “metaphor” around which it is built. The system is designed to mimic a magazine, so you think in terms of sections, articles and authors – easy! I may well end up using spip for various projects but it had two problems. It was written in php3 – which required some adjustments to servers to get it to work – and the important documentation is in French. We managed this quite well, but it added an additional task and strain to finding out how to use it. We moved on.

In our exploration, we were greatly helped by the cms matrix. This site attempts to list and link to all available cms, with their features and with ratings by people who are using them. Invaluable and very helpful. Currently, it lists over 130 cms.

Finally (again) Mambo
We had looked at “mambo” briefly in the early stages of our project, but decided that it did not allow sufficient security levels (e.g. between editors and administrators) and it did not seem particularly intuitive. A new version prompted another look and we loved it. It is simple to use. It quickly allows you to create and edit content and it seems focused on a “publishing information” role. To cut a long story short, the site is now running on mambo. Multiple users, some of whom have no web-creation expertise at all, are busily using it. It does the job and does it very well.

For what it is worth, mambo is my recommendation. There are lots of people who swear by other cms, they might be right, but it has allowed us to set up the site we wanted very quickly and, we think, very well. It seems simple, fairly jargon free, and it works. It also has a lively and friendly community, and (usually a good sign) a number of independent web sites, who do not seem to be at war with each other. We like mambo.

I am really looking forward to doing some more orienteering again soon. I toyed with the idea of going down to the welsh for a day or two and trying the colour coded but it is a very long way and I had other things to do.

In fact, all being well, I shall have a go at the Southdowns Orienteers (SO) Park O in Hove Park a week tomorrow. Park-O is not the best for me as I am still fairly slow over the ground, but it will certainly show how far the summer fitness training has paid off and will be jolly good fun too. It will not be long before the SO local series of “SOGs” starts up. Final position in the club’s “gallopen” league depends on the best six so if I can turn out regularly and do a little better than before, a respectable position is within reach, especially as quite a few people only manage a few events. That sounds like a target! The SOGs are exactly what a local event should be. Laid back, very friendly with a bit of banter, but good enough to be a challenge for people much better than me and with a great range of interesting and often very beautiful terrain. Can’t wait!

I have been a customer of claranet for many years.

I have now ordered broadband from Telewest (Blueyonder) – once it is up and running I will cancel my clara account. Why?

Telewest will be 750K (clara is 512K) and I can go up to 3M at any time simply by phoning them. Clara have no plans to offer faster services to home users (or if they do they have not told anyone!)

Telewest is a 750K connection for £5 a month cheaper than clara’s 512K. If you include the BT line rental, which I only keep for adsl, the difference is over £15 per month. No installation fee (at the moment anyway) and no equipment costs for Telewest.

The basic web hosting provided free makes clara’s look like a joke – php, perl and all the whistles and bells except mysql, which is coming soon as a cheap add-on.

Telewest (Blueyonder) has its technical situation on view (check it here) – I can check the status of everything in a second, even as a non-subscriber. Contacting them recently to discuss the move, I always talked to a knowledgeable person, had quick and helpful responses and they were happy to talk very technical when they realised I knew what I was talking about (e.g. what the installation disk contains and what settings exactly it will alter)

I have been monitoring what people have been saying about them – blueyonder do get some criticisms, but mainly from the people you can never please (e.g. those who do not understand that the internet is a shared medium and will always have variable latency and response times). Generally, the service is regarded well by its users.

Clara used to be exceptional. Completely open and honest with its customers, very quick responses, excellent news and mail service and very high reliability. The only part of that I think is still in place is the reliability of the basic connection – mail and news are now notoriously unreliable and I simply do not feel any more that I know what is going on. I value a dependable connection, but not enough to pay a very high premium and when I know lots of cheaper companies provide dependable connections too.

Worst of all, is the sense that the service is going nowhere, and slowly. I get the clear message that clara would prefer home users to go away so it can get on with making lots of money out of bigger businesses. OK. I can take a hint.

I am not yet convinced by Blueyonder, time will tell, but I have posted my reasoning for moving isp here in case it is of any use to anyone.

I might be wrong. Claranet might be much better than I think. My experience is my experience. Their adsl works, all the time. That has been superb but that on its own is not enough, for me, to justify their high prices so I have decided to move – a simple business decision.

My training programme is working. I can now run 3km on the treadmill at a decent jogging speed with no pain and with quick recovery. My shins stand up well – there is no pain there now.
Despite this, I am still very stiff: hamstrings are extremely tight, calves are even tighter and when I first start to run I move like a puppet. Things do loosen up as I get warm. The area on my shins that was painful is now as stiff as a board.

I do stretch – that’s partly how I know how stiff I am – but I am not really seeing any increase in the range or ease of movement. I have noticed this even just walking around and it worries me. I even wonder if the shin problems might not be because everything in my legs is so tight and stiff. It must make me more prone to injury.

Is this old age, or do I have a problem? When I have some spare cash, I think I need a biomechanical assessment. I saw an excellent physio over a year ago – she just said I was stiff and got me moving. I have kept up the exercises but I feel like I need to go through it all again.

Nathan has been in the Falklands for one week. A few snippets.

“I was playing cricket last night” (Dad:but it’s midwinter there!) “They are very British.”
“It is not as small as the guidebook says – Stanley covers quite a large area. Also they are completely up to date with clothes, music, high-tech – the school and hospital are state of the art”.
“I went out to camp – we did a clinic in someone’s bedroom – the farm had 150,000 sheep!”
“The wind is like nothing on earth – incredible”
“Food is very expensive, I am going to starve”
“The people are great”

About now, Nathan is in the air on the way to the Falkland Islands.

The training programme continues and is definitely working, though it would be nice if it could work quicker!

Yesterday I was able to run for 15 minutes straight on the treadmill, doing just over 2Km in that time. I could have done more but want to avoid injury so I am building up gently. In all, I did 45 minutres very hard aerobic exercise – impossible even three weeks ago. What is even better, is that I have no after effects. There is no shin pain, just some tightness as I start to run and none at all today – excellent. So it is just a matter of continuing to build fitness and I will soon start to build speed too.

It is hard training in the summer – so hot!