CMS Review Part 1
June 25th, 2006
I was talking to a friend about the state of publishing/CMS systems that are available on the internet now and though I never really thought about it before there really is an abundance of them! Anyway the result was that I'm now on a big testing spree of the numerous systems available and I've started with 2 popular ones, Textpattern and Wordpress and also my personal favourite, Symphony (I've tried not to be biased).
Wordpress
Wordpress is undoubtedly one of the most popular blogging/cms systems around today mostly due to it's ease of installation and extensibility through a multitude of plugins.
Installation
Installation is a cinch requiring you to simply upload some files, make a simple edit to your wp-config.php file with your database values and then hit a few buttons. It's a process that takes literally minutes and the only extra thing you may need to do is make your .htaccess write-able if you change your permalink handling.
Admin Interface
After the installation your met with a blue/white admin interface which shows the dashboard page. Personally I find a lot of the information presented on the page is quite useless. The latest activity panel is great and so is the development blog but do I really need to know the latest entries from a bunch of other blogs? No, not really.
Besides that the interface is generally okay and is a great improvement over the pre 2.x interface which I found was decidedly unfriendly. I do still have the odd niggle with it, especially when writing a new entry, there are blue bars all over the place with all of their options hidden by default which isn't overly helpful. The WYSIWYG editor isn't something I would use as I prefer writing the code by hand but for people new to blogging or with little knowledge of html it's certainly very helpful.
Extensibility
One feature that's very important to me is the extensibility of a cms or blogging system. I like to know that I can shape it to suit whatever needs I may have and in this respect Wordpress doesn't disappoint. The incredibly large community that wordpress has gathered means there are a multitude of different plug-ins that add or improve functionality of the system. Such as livearchives, improved comment spam detection, displaying RSS feeds and various others. If you can think of a feature you might need odds are it's already been done and is available as a plug-in somewhere.
Themes
Once again the huge Wordpress community means that themes are in abundance and they are also fairly easy to create as long as you know some xhtml, css and a bit of PHP (although you can get away without that if you're just changing images/colours etc).
Performance
Generally performance is very quick from wordpress and from 2.x onwards it's been noticeably better with less queries being made to the database etc etc. I must confess I don't have any actual numbers as clearly it varies from site to site (and also because I don't have a good test bed to run it on). Oddly enough the most sluggish part of Wordpress I'v often found is the admin interface!
Compatibility
Wordpress doesn't really need very much to run, PHP 4.2+ and MySQL 3.23.23+ are all that are required although you'll need mod-rewrite for clean URL's.
Overall
I think that Wordpress is a great system although I do have a number of niggles about it. But the huge online community means that absolute beginners who know next to nothing about blogging can easily get setup with themes and plug-ins all backed by community support. That's not to say a professional wouldn't use it as it's also quite flexible so a good all round system really.
Textpattern
I must admit when I first looked a Textpattern many months ago I didn't really like it. I just couldn't get a proper feel for it, it's very hard to explain but it just didn't feel quite right. However after being forced to develop a site using it by a friend I actually came to really like it.
Installation
Once again installation is quite simple, you upload the files, run the installer, it asks you to paste some code into a file and boom, you're done. All you need to do afterward is just chmod a couple of directories that textpattern uses for images and that kind of thing.
Admin Interface
The admin interface is certainly... different but it works and is easy enough to navigate around once you've studied it for a minute or two. There's very little bloat and it doesn't feel cluttered which is the way I think all admin interfaces should be! It should also be noted that out of the box Textpattern includes some great comment management and IP blocking functionality.
Extensibility
Once again there's a good community behind Textpattern although it has to be said that it's much smaller than that of Wordpress but it's growing all the time. As such there are numerous themes and plug-ins for Textpattern as well although they are somewhat harder to install when compared to Wordpress. But that's not to say it's hard because it's not but it could be handled slightly better I feel.
Themes
Textpattern themes are made up of regular xhtml and css but with the addition of Textpattern "tags" to provide the dynamic parts of the site. The way in which this is implemented is just fantastic, simply click the function your after specify a few parameters and then the code is inserted into your document. Superb.
There are a number of themes kicking around as well but once again they aren't as easy to install as in Wordpress.
Performance
Once again I don't have numbers but I can say that Textpattern is very streamlined and offers blistering performance. Queries are kept low and in high traffic scenarios (200+ simultaneous users) I've seen it perform excellently with consistently low page generation/query times.
Compatibility
Nearly the same as Wordpress you just need PHP 4.3+ and MySQL 3.23+
Overall
I have to say that Textpattern is one of my favourite systems but for beginners it's probably not quite user friendly enough although it's by no means out of reach. Although templating is much easier using the Txp syntax rather than PHP. It performs very well and it has an ever increasing, friendly community that always seem happy to help.
Symphony
Finally we have Symphony, the publishing system I use on this site. Since it's technically free (from the next beta of 1.2 onwards, due release anytime soon I believe) I think it's appropriate to include this in a similar category to the previous systems. I've actually been a Symphony user since it was in beta over a year ago and it's come a long way since then and now it's my preferred system to use when creating dynamic, content driven sites.
Installation
This is by far the easiest of the lot. You upload one file to the server, fill in a few details for your database and a few seconds later the system is ready to go. It's a similar process for upgrades except you don't even need to upload a file for that!
Admin Interface
Clean, simple, elegant. There's no clutter to be found here and everything you need is readily at hand with calendar, search and update widgets available in the top right corner at all times. there's no WYSIWYG editor when creating entries but with campfire services (I'll explain next) available for markdown and textile it's not really a problem.
Support, campfire sevices, petitions and even upgrades are all available from within the admin interface.
Extensibility
Symphony supports extensions through what are termed "Campfire Services" these add functionality to your site or to your admin interface. It has to be said that at the moment there are very few of these mostly due to the fact that the community is so small but as it grows campfire services will doubtless become more common. It's also possible to add custom events (written in PHP) to your pages which is yet another way you can extend the core functionality of the system.
It should be noted that anything you want to do involving xml (such as displaying Flickr pictures or RSS feeds) is already "built in" so to speak as the XSLT template engine allows for this.
Themes
Themes are made up of regular XHTML, CSS and crucially XSLT, the latter actually being it's own language which you can see on the W3C website. It's very powerful and allows you to manipulate XML in any way you wish. This has a lot of positives because XML is everywhere now in RSS feeds and also being used as a form of storage.
There are very few Themes available at the moment but once again as the community matures this will become less of an issue.
Performance
Performance is generally excellent but some of it is determined by the version PHP your using (PHP5 handles XSLT better than 4) and also how you construct your pages and data sources. In this respect this is part of what makes Symphony so powerful and flexible in that you have access to this sort of level of control.
Compatibility
Symphony is slightly more specific in it's requirements as it needs PHP to be compiled with support for XSL. If you're host doesn't support this (most do) you can contact them and they will probably enable it as it doesn't pose any sort of risk. It's worth noting that you will get much better performance running symphony on PHP5 rather than 4 as I mentioned earlier.
Overall
Symphony is probably one of the most flexible of the 3 I've looked at but it's harder to get to grips with than Wordpress or Textpattern unless you've had experience with XSLT before in which case you'll settle in comfortably. Definite pluses are being able to install campfire services, upgrade and request assistance without ever leaving your admin panel.
So which should I pick??
I'm biased so I shouldn't really say but in all honesty I feel that Symphony is a great choice, but it's not for everyone. Second to Symphony I would have to go with Textpattern. It's efficient, easy enough to use and making templates/pages with it is much easier than Wordpress which just feels a bit clunky to me now; even though it used to power this site for 4-5 months last year.
I was going to include MovableType in here as it's quite popular but after spending 20 minutes trying to install it I gave up. I'll almost certainly follow this entry up at a later date with some of the other systems available though to give a much more rounded view of things.
Update
I've continued this series of reviews with a brief look at Drupal here
