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E107 … a CMS system with bells on it!

Great websites avoiding HTML

You’ll have already worked out that I’m a big user of Fantastico and PHP scripts, but a friend recently discovered a new php/CMS system which ist’t available via Fantastico … it’s called E107.

CMS means ‘Content Management System’ and is what you use if you have a big, growing website with loads of content on it.

Wikipedia  gives a full description of what CMS is, but basically it’s used to create, edit, manage, and publish website content in a consistently-organized and templated manner.

Whereas you’d use Dreamweaver or something similar to create a simple site like 80spoplover.co.uk you need something much more complex to manage a site like webcumbria.co.uk which will eventually have many pages and web links, all of which I’d like to be easily searchable.

Let’s Mambo!

As a Fantastico user, I’ve opted for Mambo which I get on extremely well with … and which I’ve used for  webcumbria.co.uk as well as my ‘of the shelf’ designs for the following websites:

scrap-yard.co.uk Mambo site

doorstep-delivery.co.uk Mambo site

big-group-cottages.co.uk Mambo site

your-local-shop.co.uk Mambo site

The other popular CMS system is called Joomla which is very similar to Mambo, just as easy to use and extremely popular and widely used.

Give both a try if you’re unfamiliar, and see which you prefer.

More than Mambo?

Most of the time, Mambo is absolutely fine, but you may have noticed that on many of my sites I’ve bolted in additional services like a forum or a photo gallery and to do this I’ve had to use a different bit of kit, like SMF for the forums and Coppermine or Flickr for the galleries.

The simple joy of E107 is that it incorporates a CMS system, photo gallery and forum all in the same bit of kit … so you can administrate the whole thing via one admin interface and from a useability point-of-view your users only need one login to access the lot.

In addition, it comes with a great list of addons which are incredibly easy to install … such as Skype widgets, Captcha authenication on logging in, a vast range of theme templates and so on.

If I’d known about E107 at the time, I’d have seriously considered using it for webcumbria.co.uk and I’m committed to use it on the so far little-mentioned 11th site which is currently parked and ‘in development’ until I get my act together with the first 10!

Taking a trip with E107

This site is called trips4kids.com and although it’s launched in the search engines already, I’ve done little more than instal and test E107 and make sure it’s what I want for this site.

It certainly is … it gives me a searchable news facilty, powerful gallery and extremely impressive forum.

I had to scratch around a bit for a template I was happy with - many E107 templates look too ‘boxy’ and ‘bitty’ for my tastes, but after a bit if code hacking I found one I like.

Why isn’t E107 part of the Fantastico suite of downloads? If you know, please contact me.

When ‘uh-oh’ become ‘ahhh’

This put me off at first, because it means you have to create your own MySQL database, then link it up with your E107 programme.

I’ve had previous bad experiences trying to manually install Apache servers, MySQL databases and PHP software - I just can’t find a book or training course that explains it simply and that works - so I was a bit nervous of this.

However, using Cpanel which comes with my hosting package, it was very simple to create the MySQL database and latch it on to my E107 installation … in fact, it helped me get to grips with what was happening and I feel more sure of doing manual MySQL installations these days.

I still don’t understand Apache servers however!

So, if you’re getting into CMS and you want a fully integrated system, so take E107 out for a whirl … it’s a very impressive bit of kit.

And for another example of it, take a look at a friend’s site at jemmarally.co.uk.