SE-friendly Open Source CMS

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Does any of you know of any good Open Source CMS systems and how well they get indexed and how easy they are to optimize?

I know there are many Open Source CMS and dynamic web publishing systems but I have not good overview and not a clue wich ones might be less trublesome and wich ones that are easy to modify.

It would be great to get some tips on both NT (ASP and/or .NET) and Apache.

If you have some affiliation with the creaters of the software please be honest and say so

And remember, this thread is about Open Source CMS only

[Dodger]

You probably already know about OpenSourceCMS then? This is a site that has over 60 CMS software that you can demo, and complete access to their Admin panels.

Spiderability is becoming a big issue amongst a lot of these groups, and from what I have seen is that they are coming up with the solutions in the forms of Mods. Each group is different, and has a variety of ways to handle it.

Some do a pretty good job out of the box to some extent. Drupal for one (I think they are one of the hands-down top choice now--that is what I hear anyway). I think you will find that just about everyone of the titles at OpenSourceCMS as you check into them, are pretty well established and have a very large user base of support programmers...so it will not be hard to come up with something that is workable.

Some are pretty wicked though, like forum software and e-commerce software. The forum software is it's own worst enemy if it becomes popular and gets to hopping -- the topics can be fleeting then disappear off the side of the earth. The links are not 'stable' or stationary for long periods of time. Plus there are usually three or four links to any given topic readily available and all with different query parameters in the Url string (main thread, last post, page 2, page 3, link rotation, etc.)

[rustybrick]

Thanks for your feedback. I am currently about to build a CMS for a client and I am not thinking that I should use an open source application. I will be running this on an Apache server and mod_rewrite is available. Any more recommendations?

[Dodger]

RB - if you want to do it from the ground up, you might want to consider some of the CMS framework projects that are going on. I am not sure if you are going to be doing this in Perl or PHP, but there are projects for both.

Here is a list of some that I found just by searching for it:

http://www.icewalkers.com/search.php?m=exact&w=k&q=cms

One that I have seen before in that list is EZPublish. Basicly, the frameworks just supply you with the classes or modules for CMS and you can use them to build the functionality yourself.

I also am not sure what you are building, more to the point ... licensing issues. But the list has a mix of GPL and commercial application licensing too.

You also might want to look at this thread concerning mod_rewrite issues:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...read.php?t=110

[rustybrick]

Thanks. We are mostly a php shop, i will show this info to my guys.

thanks!

[Nick W]

Drupal CMS

* Clean urls and url aliasing from the CP
* Many modules to play with and add to the system
* Simple to customize, good for a large community or a small shops home page
* Active, helpful community should you get stuck

Seriously, this is the best CMS I've worked with, ever. I now write modules for Drupal and have contributed some patches for the core system. So im affilated in some small way.

That thing is an SEO Dream....

Nick

[Dodger]

Originally Posted by Nick W

* Clean urls and url aliasing from the CP
* Many modules to play with and add to the system
* Simple to customize, good for a large community or a small shops home page
* Active, helpful community should you get stuck

I am looking very hard at Drupal. You are right about everything you mentioned. It is pretty slick, extemely and easily customizable.

Couple of questions though. The "clean urls" require mod_rewrite, that is no problem (sort of). But where is the "url aliasing" in the control panel ??? I can see the toggle for clean urls, but nothing for aliasing. I could find "legacy filtering", but that is something entirely different.

[Nick W]

It's a module, it ships with the core download though, so you already have it. Go to /admin/system/modules and enable 'path', then you'll find the 'url aliases' link on your admin navigation ;-)

Nick

[Dodger]

Thanks. I overlooked it....it is the one that says path - Enables users to create custom URLs.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I've been trying to get to the OpenSourceCMS site a few timers over the last days but I can't seem to get in. Does anyone know if the site is gone?

Drupal looks very neat indeed. I will take a much closer look at that! Thanks for the info so far

[bakedjake]

I use plone with much success.

[Nick W]

Hi Jake!

Yeah, it looks great from (admited the little) what iv'e seen. Doesnt it kinda require you to own the server or have root though?

Nick

[bakedjake]

Hey Nick, long time no see.

That's correct. You will need administrative access to the server.

-- jake

[Dodger]

Originally Posted by Mikkel deMib Svendsen

I've been trying to get to the OpenSourceCMS site a few timers over the last days but I can't seem to get in. Does anyone know if the site is gone?

Mikkel ... they just recently set up shop on a sub-domain at http://test.opensourcecms.com. That is the link that I provided a few posts back. Have you been able to get thru to the root at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ ?

I check in there quite a bit and have not had any problems.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Maybe it's just from here - I haven't been able to get into either, but I'll give it try later. Just wanted to see if anyone else had the same problem ... They may just don't like me

[Dodger]

Try a direct line http://69.93.11.174 or http://69.93.11.174/test.

[Dodger]

Here is a site that compares features for many CMS, the CMS Matrix.

It will allow you to select any number of systems and then display a matrix of features side-by-side. Systems include OpenSource and Commercial applications.

They have Drupal, EZPublish, Geeklog, Mambo, Movable Type, Plone, Rainbow, Xoops included in the list, but there are still quite a few that are missing like WordPress. Still it is pretty extensive and they seem to have just doubled the list in the past couple of weeks.

They have the one line item "URL Rewriting" which is what we all must be looking for as a Standard Option now, eh?

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

> They have the one line item "URL Rewriting" which is what we all must be looking for as a Standard Option now, eh?

URL-rewrite is one way to go, but as other members have said it's a "fix" and a better solution would be to make a better site arcitechure to begin with. If you do not you do not have to use URL-rewrite.

But you are right, in the sense, that most of these CMS are probably using some kind of URL-rewrite rather than using a more simple (public) arcitechture.

[Nick W]

>>using a more simple (public) arcitechture.

Can you clarify what you mean there Mikkel? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say...

Nick

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

You could, and some do, build a dynamic website with only one parameter - throughout the site. The one parameter and value would be a unique identifier that then is used to look up properties for that object. So, instead of having to parse multiple parameters in the URL you just assign a new object ID with new parameter settings. With just one parameter you do not have to URL'rewrite in order to get indexed.

Now, off course you still end up with the same old problem of having multiple URLs for the same content if, for example, one of the properties is a sort order of table content. But that can be hanlded quite easy by either not giving the engines tose links or by dynamically add META-robots NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW on all "duplicte " URLs.