Cant decide on CMS

Nuke Soldier Joined: May 30, 2005 Posts: 23

I like nuke it has what i want, but ive also been looking into other CMS's like joomla. Perhaps Joomla and SMF might be my thing. I need something professional and secure. Im not really all to smart when it comes to this stuff. Ok maybe im just not all to smart all together lol, but hey i appreciate the help.... any advice? Ive been running in circles trying to decide between all these ( joomla, mambo, xoops, drupal, Dragonfly, Coranto, e107, ekinboard, jupiter, wordpress and php-fusion ) Also I installed about half of them set them up kinda how the site would be then decided i didnt like it lol so i tried another one. I think this round, ima install them all at once in different directories and set them all up and make a poll. Razz

erm maybe just different domains.

:going crazy:

j

Captain Joined: Apr 30, 2004 Posts: 566

You are wise to choose SMF as your forums..... Use that as a base and go from there.

Joomla.... Well, here is my take on it. Good program... poor integration with SMF. "Bridging" is not the way to go IMHO. Toooooo many issues. The way it is set up now, there is a SMF version, then a Joomla version, then there are bridges created for each combination. I think it is a mess...... We worked with their bridges, etc. for a couple of months solid, and it is just a coders mess.

Sooooo, since we like the PHP Nuke concept, but hated the security issues, we decided to merge SMF and Nuke, dropping all the Nuke authors/admin table and nuke users table, and instead, only using the SMF members table. And we took it upon ourselves to fix all the security issues.

Right now we are finishing up totally integrating the Nuke admin into SMF, and then we just need to validate some pages to XHTML Strict and it should be good to go.

We have taken the Nuke code a step ahead of the Patches, using a GPL code called InputFilter to filter and escape the SQL data for all inputs and outputs. We have also initialized all the data variables, which the combination of filtering and initializing should stop any SQL Injection and XSS hacking attempts. And we took one piece of code from Sentinel for redundant security. (that code snipet came from the 3.1 patch originally I think) Ohhhhh.... The .htaccess file is full of other redundant security measures along with bad bots, referrers, and spammers blocked, along with countless IP's and countries blocked that have attempted hacking attempts on the major Nuke sites, including us.

The themes available are all tableless layouts, being CSS warning and error free.

We have incorporated a cache system for block content, and also for module content, which should reduce server load. And we have deleted unnecessary SQL queries to also reduce server load.

Here is the one current drawback of our SMF-Nuke merge. You can only use modules and themes we have converted. Regular modules and themes need some modifications for them to work properly. All the modules we will have available will be XHTML compliant and have the InputFilter system built in. And all themes will be tableless layouts that are CSS warning and error free.

We will be putting together a tutorial on how to modify modules and themes to work, and we will be constantly modifying existing modules and themes and then putting them in the Downloads.

We should have this ready for the public by next weekend.

Nuke Soldier Joined: May 30, 2005 Posts: 23

I'm glad I got to talk to you! this sounds like its for me. From what I hear SMF is the way to go, from doing a few searches. I have not used it so I dont really know nor do I know whats inside. I just installed xoops and drupal just now, installing and setting up their forums as well. I have not did that yet with Joomla. If bridging SMF with Joomla is a mess then im def. gonna stay away from the headache. I dont think xoops or drupal has what I want. Although easier to set up and more simple than Joomla, I dont think either of them have what I want. My first installs were just to check the layouts and how easy it was to sort through the admin panel.

PHP-nuke has basically everything that I would like in a site. Although the themes... lol I tired making some, but I really didnt know where to begin. Im not sure what you are talking about when you say " The themes available are all tableless layouts, being CSS warning and error free. " Does this mean it will be easier for me or harder? From what I can gather on what you said. If its secure and runs smooth im def in the community.

j

let me know when it comes out please!

Off to search the forum to see if you have created a thread for smf-nuke.
:looks to see if spottedhog has site: yep derr
erm i guess i can check out your forums

Captain Joined: Apr 30, 2004 Posts: 566

The site has got a lot on it, however, we have taken forever to finish up the integration. (my fault...)

I decided to just make everything right coming out of the box instead of having update versions all the time.

By tableless I mean the themes are broken down into sections, and each section is contained in a div tag instead of a table cell. I have these sections:

-header
-navigational bar
-left blocks
-center content--including OpenTable
-right blocks
-footer

All of those are driven by the style.css file.

OHHHHHHH..... if you look at the site, take a look at the Forums Info Block, the News module, and the Survey block. These are all from using SMF. And SMF has a builtin calendaring module.

Nuke Soldier Joined: May 30, 2005 Posts: 23

spottedhog wrote:

I decided to just make everything right coming out of the box instead of having update versions all the time.

Nice this sounds like my kinda thing. I dont like donating for a version that updates to fix the prev. version lol. New versions imo should fix small issues (not dumb ones) and upgrade the current one. I dont mind a bug but having to fix them myself with no php experience. grrrr.

looking over the site now.

j

so being tableless and broken down into sections will this make it easier for me to create my own themes?

Captain Joined: Apr 30, 2004 Posts: 566

You could use the themes we will have available as templates and then just create same size graphics, etc.

The key here is to think Cascading Style Sheets. If you are not familiar, on our website is a link or 2 to get you started.

Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 9:29 pm

i tried joomla but my staff didnt find it as friendly to manage and seemed to do less of it. they found the admin panel almost over organised. i didnt mind it myself.

SMF is easier to keep secure and seems to have less hack atempts then phpbb however its not as feature rich its a trade off. If you want something fast and simple its good.

What I like best about nukes is the excellent tech support you can find here and on ravens site