Best way to code web site? CMS? Outsourcing?

[minestrone]

Admittedly, the long term support for some of these open source CMS's must be in doubt once the small number of enthusiasts typically behind them loses interest. A look around many of the PHP Nuke "support" websites reveals many of the forums with few posts in the last few weeks/months/years and a closer look often reveals any number of unanswered bug reports and requests for help a lot of the time. I think unless you're prepared to roll your sleeves up and really learn the guts of the PHP behind these open source CMS's then there could be nasty surprises someway down the track with them. I'd not count on any support to speak of worth its name for the free CMS's out there.

I would agree with that, I used to use a PHP CMS package about 5 years ago called e107, it could have fought it out and had a decent market share but it just seemed to die and I think it is still on the same version.

I suppose these guys get so much hassle from people asking how to install PHP they just get pissed off and give it up.

[NickFitz]

I suppose these guys get so much hassle from people asking how to install PHP they just get pissed off and give it up.

Particularly as the people asking never seem to be satisfied with an answer like

$~/php ./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-mysql=/usr/bin/mysql_config --with-mysqli=/usr/bin/mysql_config --with-gd --with-xsl --with-zlib --with-curl --with-imap --enable-bcmath --with-bz2 --enable-inline-optimization --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --enable-sockets --enable-ftp --enable-exif --with-kerberos --with-imap-ssl --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/bin/
$~/php make
$~/php make install

[alantan]

I have done SharePoint implementations, but they require a license, and usually an investment in Visual Studio to do some custom web part coding.

If you don't have an aversion to .NET and SQL server, but don't really want to invest in Visual Studio and SharePoint, I would suggest going the DotNetNuke (DNN) way:
- It has been around for years (I think 6 or 7 years)
- It has a solid community and a wide user base
- Is now on major version 5
- Has many modules in the box
- Has a skinning framework
- Much of the same approach that SharePoint has

Once you get around the initial installation hiccups, it allows you to do a lot for a lot less effort than coding.

If you do go that way, then you can install an open source module called OpenWebStudio (used to be a proprietary product called ListX), and although it has a fair learning curve, it allows you to do a hell of a lot with DNN, making use only of scripts and commands instead of proper coding.

To be clear, I have no stake in any of the communities and companies behind these products, I merely use them myself for various projects.