TNG and CMS Made Simple

[HeatherFeuer]

I am not a coder and know just enough PHP to get myself in all kinds of trouble!

Would someone more knowledgeable be willing to create whatever it takes to integrate TNG with CMS Made Simple? CMSMS has to be one of the easiest CMS apps to use both for coders/designers and end users.

I am ramping up a web-hosting "hobby" business into a true money-making business and I want to feature TNG in one of the hosting plans. I also want to offer CMSMS, so a way to integrate the two would be awesome. I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee if necessary, but it would be great if someone did it as open source and then I could post it over on the CMSMS forum. I think both apps could benefit.

Or has it been done already and I'm just blind?

Thanks!

[ca_drm1n]

I am not a coder and know just enough PHP to get myself in all kinds of trouble!

Would someone more knowledgeable be willing to create whatever it takes to integrate TNG with CMS Made Simple? CMSMS has to be one of the easiest CMS apps to use both for coders/designers and end users.

I am ramping up a web-hosting "hobby" business into a true money-making business and I want to feature TNG in one of the hosting plans. I also want to offer CMSMS, so a way to integrate the two would be awesome. I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee if necessary, but it would be great if someone did it as open source and then I could post it over on the CMSMS forum. I think both apps could benefit.

Or has it been done already and I'm just blind?

Thanks!

Heather,

I am not at all familiar with CMSMS, but as a fellow member of the "knows just enough to be dangerous" club, I'd like to throw in a vote for your consideration of TNG + e107 (including the freely available tngIL plugin, which integrates the login between the two). After dabbling with a standalone TNG implementation for awhile, over the past few weeks I've jumped into the TNG-e107 pool with both feet, and am not looking back. The e107 app is very easy to learn and modify, and the number of available themes and plugins is large and growing. Further, the e107 users on this forum (Rush, Dennis, theDude, and others) have been very helpful, and the e107 forums at e107.org are outstanding.

After experiencing e107 with my initial TNG efforts, I've been focusing most of my energy on a second e107 site (non-TNG, non-genealogy) for a club I'm affiliated with. My TNG site still needs some tweaking, so I won't post a URL just yet, but if you check out the e107 area you'll find several very nice TNG/e107 sites.

Just my two cents...

- Al

[Yves Bergeron]

I am a web developper and I'm living of it.

Even If I "know PHP just enough to get myself in all kind of troubles" I would like to get a e107+TNG+mediawiki bundle easy to install and operate just like WAMP for Apache+MySQL+PHP.

Concerning e107+TNG+mediawiki, I think the trouble begins when we want to get a uniform look and feel for three different products that has their own way to customize their look. I struggle with that myself right now. In a way, it limits the kind of themes that can be used for each of the products.

There is also some improvement to do regarding the multi-language, single-signon and cookies integration.

If we build such a package as CMSMS bundling e107+TNG+mediawiki , we must not forget that each product can (and will) evoluate apart of the others and there must be a way to upgrade each of them seperately.

WAMP exists because a vast majority of developer agree on the choice of Apache for a web server, MySQL for a simple web database and PHP for a web development language.

Is there such an agreement on e107+TNG+mediawiki or any other bundling ?

Another two cents...

Yves

[HeatherFeuer]

I took a quick look at e107 and I'll have to check it out when I have time. From the little I saw of both front and back end, CMS Made Simple may be even more intuitive and easy.

What sets CMSMS apart from most other CMS apps is that the structure is extremely simple and uses "template tags" very much the same way as WordPress and other blogging software. I guess you could consider it blogging software on steroids because it easily manages multiple types of content with making newbies feel overwhelmed.

Since I am primarily marketing to families, genealogists and other organizations/businesses who may not have much html acumen, the simpler I can keep it the better! So I'd still be interested in finding some help integrating with CMSMS -- or at the very least, creating a single login function.

[kpeirce]

I took a quick look at e107 and I'll have to check it out when I have time. From the little I saw of both front and back end, CMS Made Simple may be even more intuitive and easy.

What sets CMSMS apart from most other CMS apps is that the structure is extremely simple and uses "template tags" very much the same way as WordPress and other blogging software. I guess you could consider it blogging software on steroids because it easily manages multiple types of content with making newbies feel overwhelmed.

Since I am primarily marketing to families, genealogists and other organizations/businesses who may not have much html acumen, the simpler I can keep it the better! So I'd still be interested in finding some help integrating with CMSMS -- or at the very least, creating a single login function.

I'm a PHP hacker (pulls things apart, not to be confused with cracker) as well as coder. I've played with CMSMS and found that while intuitive and easy, it loaded funny. The CSS seemed to come last. On a slow link the page loaded in plain text and then it jumped to what it was supposed to look like. I gave up in trying to solve that issue.

I also played with e107 and found that it uses the php mailer. I couldn't find an option for using SMTP. The reason for this is that in Australia some web hosting companies are turning off the php mailer and making people authenticate via the SMTP server. Their reasoning is to stop spam.

My best option so far is phpBB forums with the CMS article add on and some other MODS. Single sign on is almost possible, however implementing a common scheme is giving me some headaches. phpBB uses a template system as well.

[HeatherFeuer]

How interesting. I haven't noticed any problems with pages loading, but then I'm also on cable broadband. How long ago was it that you were playing with CMSMS? They are up to 1.05 and have made a lot of improvements.

[kpeirce]

How interesting. I haven't noticed any problems with pages loading, but then I'm also on cable broadband. How long ago was it that you were playing with CMSMS? They are up to 1.05 and have made a lot of improvements.

Last week I was looking at it for another web site that I run.

I pulled down 1.0.6. last night as there is a security vulnerability and they have released a new version. I'm on broadband (australian fraudband ). The problem goes away on a local server. It could also be the Mac's web browser that it happens in. I've had a quick look at the code base. It looks possible but I'd hate to try and give it a common scheme if integrated with TNG. (schemes are not my forte).

They do however mention that it is easy to skin and someone can even use nested tables if they wish. That makes it easier to start with. I'll have a play with it over the weekend. I need to evaluate it anyway for another web site that I've been asked to make user friendly to update.

[HeatherFeuer]

I pulled down 1.0.6. last night as there is a security vulnerability and they have released a new version. I'm on broadband (australian fraudband ). The problem goes away on a local server. It could also be the Mac's web browser that it happens in. I've had a quick look at the code base. It looks possible but I'd hate to try and give it a common scheme if integrated with TNG. (schemes are not my forte).

They do however mention that it is easy to skin and someone can even use nested tables if they wish. That makes it easier to start with. I'll have a play with it over the weekend. I need to evaluate it anyway for another web site that I've been asked to make user friendly to update.

Hmm... It's been a few days since I checked. I'll have to get that update downloaded and installed. I can tell you from experience that CMSMS is even easier to "skin" than TNG is. I don't know if you are familiar with Blogger, Movable Type or WordPress. They all use what is called "template tags." CMSMS uses template tags based on the Smarty Template Engine. As a result, you can quite easily create nearly any layout and save it as a template, create all the CSS for the design and save it as a stylesheet in the database, attach stylesheet to template in the backend (all very similar to how WordPress works) and Bob's Yer Uncle!

The developers have gone to great lengths to ensure that all the code can be validated XHTML 1.0 Transitional at a minimum. The W3C standards call for tableless layouts (tables should be used for tabular data only) and all design elements contained in the CSS completely separate from the HTML and content. I have been challenged and stimulated in the process of designing sites that can validate as XHTML -- and I no longer use tables for any new websites.

A challenge I shall take up when I get the opportunity is to create a TNG wrapper that uses no tables. It's amazing how you can make divs do truly liquid and creative layouts without a table in sight!

[kpeirce]

Hmm... It's been a few days since I checked. I'll have to get that update downloaded and installed. I can tell you from experience that CMSMS is even easier to "skin" than TNG is. I don't know if you are familiar with Blogger, Movable Type or WordPress. They all use what is called "template tags." CMSMS uses template tags based on the Smarty Template Engine. As a result, you can quite easily create nearly any layout and save it as a template, create all the CSS for the design and save it as a stylesheet in the database, attach stylesheet to template in the backend (all very similar to how WordPress works) and Bob's Yer Uncle!

I know the templating system and it does have it's issues. I find TNG easy to skin because I work in HTML and PHP. It's easier to debug PHP code when CSS and other things are not in the way. Templating does have it's issues in some cases as it consumes large amounts of memory in generating pages.

Here in Australia, we have fraudband, but a lot of people are still on dial up as there is no fraudband available. The Customer Service Guarantee top speed for dial up is 20K. In my last house we could only push 8K. They eventually fixed it so I could get 19K.

So with TNG I was able to strip a lot of unnecessary images and other bits out from the pages. I have people in Australia accessing my TNG site on dial up at speeds of 20K. So I still practice the old ways of web programming - plain text, strip carriage returns and white space out of the html file and reduce images as much as possible. Hence the use of nested tables still.

I no longer use tables for any new websites.

I have another web site that is XHTML and CSS and validates correctly, yet in each browser it displays differenty. The worst offender is the most used one. The initial mock up was done in tables and rendered correctly in them all.

Anyway enough of my complaining. Integrating TNG and CMS Made Simple is possible, but I've just found out that I have to move out of my house, so I'm going to be slightly busy for 2 months, so I can't experiment with it any further at the moment. Then I still don't know if I can get fraudband in my new residence

I've had a look at the code, and ignoring the theme integration issues, the management of users would integrate quite easily. The other problem I foresee, is integrating an open source system with a closed source system. This would mean designing it so that there is minimal modification required to any of the TNG files.

My own personal first preference would be to write a CMS from scratch to integrate directly with TNG. The other option I have and which I am using, and is partially functioning, and partially integrated is to use phpBB forums with EZPortal installed. There are several mods for phpBB to have galleries and articles. I've already written the code that pulls the info from TNG (similiar to the Statistics page) and displays it in the modified EZPortal page in a style similiar to what EZPortal pulls from phpBB. User management is integrated to a degree. but needs some work to make it admin friendly.

I'm holding off on this any further due to the imminent release of phpBB3 as the user management code may change.

After I move and get re-established, I'll have another look as CMS Made Simple, as it doesn't appear to have excessive features like some other CMSs.

[HeatherFeuer]

kpierce,

Have you had a chance to look at CMS Made Simple lately? Hope your move went well. I know how messy it can get!

[Namloc]

kpierce,

Have you had a chance to look at CMS Made Simple lately? Hope your move went well. I know how messy it can get!

I know this is an old post , but I am now comming to this , and have the same Question , has there been any progress on an integrtaion with CMS Made simple

It woudl be nice to hear , as if not I am about to start on an integration

[HeatherFeuer]

I know this is an old post , but I am now comming to this , and have the same Question , has there been any progress on an integrtaion with CMS Made simple

It woudl be nice to hear , as if not I am about to start on an integration

Unfortunately there hasn't been any progress -- which rather surprises me since CMS Made Simple is even easier to use than Drupal. I just don't know enough PHP to be able to do that kind of integration. As it turned out, I was able to work with TNG as a standalone. If you do do an integration, please let me know. I'd be very interested in seeing a working example.

[Namloc]

Unfortunately there hasn't been any progress -- which rather surprises me since CMS Made Simple is even easier to use than Drupal. I just don't know enough PHP to be able to do that kind of integration. As it turned out, I was able to work with TNG as a standalone. If you do do an integration, please let me know. I'd be very interested in seeing a working example.

I agree with you the CMS made simple is much easier to use than most CMS , I will get on with doing an integrationg and will post the results back here when im done.