Best opensource CMS

[bambua]

I actually hate developing on WordPress. It just seems so... complicated and scattered. I guess I'm still surprisingly not used to it after about 8 months in the job...

Weird I actually got used to it real quick...like all things in my line of work though I have to be willing to use about any framework...in the end it's about what I can sell to the client

 

[Tigratrus]

Having the content in the forum is better for SEO? Hmmm sounds interesting. Tell us more. Why not just use Wordpress and tack on XF?

Obviously there's a lot of different feelings about SEO best practices. And in my experience a well implemented Wordpress implementation ranks very well with Google indeed.

Personally though, I feel that a lot of that effectiveness is because WP (like many blogs) has an excellent basic presentation model for google and other search engines. Google likes seeing quality content on the home page that rotates through on a regular basis. Having a decent sized excerpt, that gives the search engine enough to get a good read on what the article is about with a link to the rest of a high quality, on topic writeup on the subject is exactly what the search engine needs. So well written articles in a competently setup WordPress blog tend to rank quite well. The pinging capabilities of WP helps a bit too, though that's not something that only blogs do .

The problem (IMO) is that by having topic areas in your article system that overlap the topic areas as your forums, which is obviously how it's generally (and quite correctly) implemented, you split the ranking of your content areas between the forums and the article system. A forum thread can rank just as well for a given topic, the problem (again IMO) is the default forum homepage setup of LOTS of links with very little changing text associated with them (VERY short excerpts). So forums do great at longtail SEO (assuming they are otherwise well setup and google spider friendly), but tend to not rank as well for the site wide core keywords that quality articles can deliver.

BUT if you can build your home page to present carefully selected member threads as well as threads that you have specifically written (essentially articles posted in the forums) in the same basic format as a "Blog" or "CMS" based site, you reap the same benefits. Instead of directing the Search engines into articles that are partitioned off and frequently have very few comments, you direct them to the same exact content, but it's likely to have much more commentary (in many cases) as well as being surrounded by other threads about the same general topic.

Put simply:

If your site is about cars, and you have a forum for each manufacturer, my contention is that it reduces your chance to engage new visitors (who may not even see that there IS a forum, or have a clue what a "forum" is) to have articles about Ford in one system and member discussions about Ford in a completely separate part of the site. Search engines will also see the site as two separate systems, and generally weight those two separate systems independantly (just as they do with subdomains).

If you're a blog, you should be a blog. If you're a forum, you should be first and foremost a forum... But that doesn't mean you can't leverage the lessons learned from blog design to help better establish your site as an "authority" site for your niche!

 

[Tigratrus]

Calling wordpress just a blog at this point in it's development is like calling well I can't think of a good comparison for that as I'm really tired but it's much more than that now. Are there products that do a better CMS job out of the box? Sure, but I think with their multiple post types that have been added and the ability to modify the taxonomy now you can use it as a fine CMS that's very user friendly for the folks managing it.

I totally agree with bambua btw, odd though that might seem given my post above. WordPress is way more than just a "Blog", it can fill an amazing array of other roles, it's a great platform. I don't happen to think that it's as good a platform for a commuity UGC site, simply because the style of conversation on a blog format site is so much more "Here's what *I* think, feel free to discuss" rather than an open, well, forum where everyone pretty much has an equal opportunity to speak their mind.

 

[Deepmartini]

Wow you have a lot of knowledge. I hope Xenforo is listening.

 

[Tigratrus]

Many people here have a lot more background and far more expertise than I do. And as I said, there's as many opinions about SEO best practices as there are people that think about SEO best practices it can be a murky field.

The main thing to keep in mind about SEO is that gaming the system is almost inevitably going to be a mistake in the long run. Focusing on quality content, in a logical site structure with lightweight, semantic html is the way to go. XF happens to be a pretty dang good platform for that purpose, so I fully expect an XF based site that focuses on good content to do very well. The main reason many Forum sites add a CMS is because it plays well to Google, or because they have seen other successful forum sites do so.

Personally, I think that "Must have a CMS" attitude is often a case of confusing the symptom with the underlying cause.

Good content, well presented. That's the secret IMO. Doesn't matter what form the content is in as well as it's well formed semantically presented well and most importantly contains unique, information that's highly relevant to the topic.

For me, it is pretty well established (based on my experience and my readings of Matt Cutt's blog etc) that dividing up your content into separate systems is not optimal.

 

[Bain]

I didn't say you can't use wordpress for a CMS but fundamentally it is and always will be a Blog at its core.
Whereas, Drupal and Joomla are at their core, fundamentally a CMS.

I am running wordpress for a Ghost Stories website which is also supplying my android ghost stories application with data.
I have no use for a CMS.

 

[tianwm]

Wordpress

 

[Deleted member 745]

I still like Dragonfly CMS, its still one of the best and its been around for years.

 

[hellreturn]

Drupal or Wordpress.

Joomla is mess in 1.6. Joomla released 1.6 without any upgrade migration tools.

 

[Deepmartini]

Any time frame on when true Xenforo CMS functionality is coming? I am hesitant to use any of the CMS plugins on this site, for fear of being outdated or having my content in limbo once the real CMS is built. The portal plugins look nice but what happens when I de-activate them and my content is all screwed up. Plus there is the fear of plugins being left to hang out and die without being updated. That's a big risk!

 

[Jeremy]

Weird I actually got used to it real quick...like all things in my line of work though I have to be willing to use about any framework...in the end it's about what I can sell to the client

I'm more or less trying to fix errors than develop, so it is still "new" to me. But its so random as to where things are, how they work, etc... I don't like how templating works, etc. I have a Tech Spec that I'm writing up for an improvement to the site that I'm thinking how to implement, and it seems like I will need to create new templates for it, just because of what I want it to do won't fit into the current template. XF's systems will spoil me to death...