Topic: SME & CMS - which to choose?

[dave simmons]

I would like to offer a couple of friends (small local clubs) the ability to have web sites on our server, and I think that a CMS package would be the way to go.

We have been using SME on a fixed IP for our own web site for more than 10 years, without any problems.  My wife just makes very simple web pages which are enough for us, and we use the server for our e-mail.

I have a few questions, and I guess that there must be some people on here who have more experience than me (I have none!).

1.  What package to choose - I see several in the contribs section.  Priorities for us are ease of use, but also security.  I see sometimes that exploits of servers happen because of security holes in CMS packages. 

2. Security - will the packages from the Contribs also automatically be updated like the basic system, or will I have to do this as an extra job?

I'd like to be able to do this for my friends - I'll not be charging money for this, they're local sports clubs - but I don't want to expose our server to having problems.

[janet]

dave simmons

Joomla & Drupal are popular. The choice will depend on features you require. They will both do standard functions OK, both are very full featured and may be overkill for a small website.
Also look at basic website functionality of Wordpress.

Most of these you will have to upgrade manually from the support website, follow their instructions, unless they have built in upgrade functions, I think Wordpress does.

Unless a contributor releases contrib upgrades, then they will not be in smecontribs repo, and as far as I know there are no upgrade rpms in smecontribs (for CMs's), just the original "install first time" contrib, which is usually an older version, some are much older. It may be just as easy to install from tar.gz files and set them up manually to the latest version.

I suggest you lock into using only one CMS (eg Joomla is my personal choice), others opinions may vary, and use that for all your needs, that way you can apply the knowledge of how to use & upgrade that application and spread it across a few users. You will need to be on sme8 for compatibility with these nowadays, but I see a pre-release 8.0 final iso has been released for testing, so no problems there.

It is important to subscribe to email notification lists for these packages so you are aware of security issues immediately etc, and follow through and update your server.

An alternative approach is to have Joomla or whatever hosted externally, and there is less critical need to do updates, and the rest of your server is not at risk of cross hacking etc. I've seen Joomla hosting for $9.95 per month.

[dave simmons]

Just to bump this thread, I never did anything on this, but we've moved to VM's recently, so I could create a stand-alone SME server for my friends.

Is there a preferred CMS system now?  (Ideally also updated via the standard Yum update, or do they have to be updated manually?)

[stephdl]

Wordpress is your friend, it comes from epel

[TerryF]

If you are after a lightweight, basic CMS that uses a flatfile ie no MySQL db then I would recommend CMSimple and its branch CMSimpleXH have been using it now for a number of years personaly and in a couple of not for profit orgs.

Easy to use, has a number of addins to extend its functionality, plenty of templates about to get started, have had no issues re security or usage.

Added: This is not in a contrib however being flatfile it is very easy to install

[dave simmons]

Tried the Joomla install from the contribs. 

Install runs fine, but when you log in, the menu system throws up a load of errors, and is unusable.

I see that the contrib is made for SME 7 so I guess it's outdated.

Can I just download and install Joomla from their website without breaking anything/compromising security?

Thanks in advance. 

[DanB35]

My writeup on installing Joomla! 3.3.6 on SME 9.0 is in the wiki here: http://wiki.contribs.org/Joomla_3.  Once the software collections contrib reaches a more stable state, I'll probably update the wiki writeup to advise doing it that way.

I'd expect the same procedure would work for SME 8; the only issue would be the version of PHP.

[dave simmons]

My writeup on installing Joomla! 3.3.6 on SME 9.0 is in the wiki here: http://wiki.contribs.org/Joomla_3.  Once the software collections contrib reaches a more stable state, I'll probably update the wiki writeup to advise doing it that way.

I'd expect the same procedure would work for SME 8; the only issue would be the version of PHP.

That's great! 

We've got some spare public IP addresses so I'll install a SME9 machine to run it.

Thanks very much!