CMSMS = CMS Made Simple

This past week I've been on a search for a CMS that I could get my hands wet with, I looked at Drupal and CMSMS and ended up trying out CMSMS (CMS made Simple) - it was pretty easy to install and offers installation checks and tips along the way to make sure you get it installed right and points out pitfalls to you so you don't have to deal with them later. After downloading it I got it installed on my test Fedora box under Apache in less than 20 minutes. I had a nice test page looking at me that I could customize and am now left with the task of finding a good template for the client I'm setting up this CMS site for (as an Intranet) - so I looked around and while the template sites that exist for this software have some neat stuff, a Google search found even more interesting ways folks have setup templates and done their pages. Here are the top six I could find looking around. Each has common CMSMS signatures, but some have gone quite far with customizations and neat features. Check these screenshots and links to the actual sites:


http://www.fairgroundsessions.nl/ http://www.nectre.com/ http://feigin.us/

http://www.mchsband.com/ http://www.cnwcentral.com/neopets/ http://www.springfield-nj.us/

eZwysiwyg = true - yes it is.

It's not often that you find a piece of software that works really good, right out of the box. A few days ago I needed a wysiwyg HTML editor for one of my clients. they want to edit their own web pages and tweak them here and there. They had shown me a tool that permitted them to do this, but it was embedded on a custom website that they did not control. They wanted to be able to edit their own HTML the same way. I Googled up "wysiwyg html editor" and found a bunch; even a site that listed dozens of them. After trying several out I settled down on one called eZwysiwyg from http://www.ezwysiwyg.com/ - you can test out the editor right on their home page, there are an amazing row of tools on the toolbar that is placed on the web page you are editing, its all done on the fly and you can edit the page as it stands. Marking up your own HTML pages to be editable is as simple as adding a few tags, their CGI linked in with javascript includes does the rest. Once you are done with the page and like the way it looks, you can save a backup of the current page just incase you change your mind, publish the page and its instantly live on your website, no screwing around, no ftp, no nothing, it just works. Further, I am blown away at the reasonable price $25.00 for an initial software license and one-domain license thrown in for that price. Additional domains are $15.00. Check it out if you are looking for a WYSIWYG HTML editor, this one is simple, has loads of features, works very reliably, and is backed by excellent support. Once you are happy with the downloadable demo, log back into their website and instantly purchase a license, day or night. If you need a hand in installing on a pesky web server as I did, their tech support staff is top notch, and made the install almost turnkey. Can't say enough about this package, check it out, you will enjoy.