What is a Content Management System? Here’s a little background. Lots of websites have dynamic content. Meaning, the content is located in a database, usually MySQL, and they are simply dumped into a web template when the page is viewed. That way, if you decide to change the structure or template of your website, the content need not be changed. You wouldn’t really have to mess with anything. Since you have one main template, a change in the template is propagated throughout all the pages because all the pages are created dynamically and use the same template.

A content management system or CMS allows a user to manage this content. Excellent description, I know. Basically the user simply edits the content of the web site and not the actual pages. They don’t need to know any HTML, they don’t need to deal with the structure of the website they simply edit content.

Xpert.com.au has a nice write up on CMS.

Advantages of a Content Management System:

• Decentralized maintenance.
• Designed with non-technical content editors in mind.
• Configurable access restrictions.
• Consistency of design is preserved.
• Navigation is automatically generated.
• Content is stored in a database.

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A blog entry at Ask MetaFilter stirs up an interesting comparison, one which I should have covered a long time ago since it directly affects the way I work.

I’m not trying to stir up a Windows vs. Unix type debate but am interested in your thoughts and experiences, either as an administrator or user.

Personally, I feel that both of these are very powerful forum packages, but let me just mention that vBulletin is and always will be the best and preferred forum software. However, we’re doing the whole free thing, so let’s not even go into the costs of vBulletin. Let’s focus on the two free packages, phpBB and Simple Machines SMF. I have

I have been doing a lot of advanced work on a phpBB forum for over a year now, but I recently stumbled upon SMF. I was setting up a new website in the Joomla CMS for which I needed to have a forum integrated. It was easy enough to integrate the template so that it looks seamless, but I was also looking for a way to integrate the user database of both phpBB and Joomla. At the time their were no components around to do so, but there was a component to integrate SMF with Joomla, therefore I decided to give SMF a try. These are my observations after using both and doing a little bit of research:

Popularity: 50%

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Asaf Sabag, a Hebrew webmaster finds success with Joomla.

Joomla! roadmap is what convinced me to stick with Joomla!, the next version of Joomla!, due to release very soon will have an improved RTL support and more important 100% UTF-8 compatible, and as you know these are great news for us Hebrew, right to left users.

I just love hearing these stories of people who have been struggling with other nukes and CMS’s and finally found Joomla/Mambo.

Popularity: 5%

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In February of 2006, we should expect the release of a new Joomla Book entitled Building Websites with Joomla!. I’m curious to see how much they pack into this one.

There is another book by the same author, Building Websites With Mambo : A fast paced introductory tutorial, which left much to be desired for me. If you’re looking for a quick, light, step by step procedure manual then I guess this will be enough for you. But if you’re looking for anything other than how to navigate through some of the menus you need to look somewhere else. This basically packages a small among for Mambo’s online documentation and sticks it in a paper back. But it is interesting to see anything about this CMS being published.

Popularity: 3%

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A new Joomla user over at Soho Cascade seems to be having a bad first impression of the Joomla CMS.

Basically, he’s been having some problems with the templates:

I sent an email to this company wondering what the problem might be and asking for a refund of my $50 subscription if the template required a lot of configuration, which I can’t do yet. In return I got a rude little email detailing the points of their terms and conditions.

I hate to hear these sorts of horror stories. It really does pain me, because Joomla is an incredible CMS with a wealth of power at your finger tips. Just as long as you follow a few basic rules, you’ll be fine. I’m not saying that Joomla does not have a significant learning curve; it does. But once you’re over that hump, it’s all down hill from there.

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Popularity: 3%

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In what can only be described as very embarrassing Mamboserver has been hacked.
The open source content management system that lost it’s entire development team and the vast majority of the community not so long ago has today had it’s web site defaced.

read more.

I really think this is it for Mambo. But my one problem is that people seemed to be getting the wrong idea. Joomla and Mambo had the same core as of a couple days ago. It’s not that Joomla is so much better than Mambo. Joomla has had some minor updates since the split, but there were essentially the same. So people saying that Mambo is vulnerable and not Joomla is not a viable statement.

The Joomla team, however, did take this as an opportunity to release Joomla! 1.0.4 [ Sundial ].

Popularity: 3%

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Joomla! 1.0.4 [ Sundial ] is out today. It covers a number of security issues:

Critical Level Threats

• Potentional XSS injection through GET and other variables
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.3
• Hardened SEF against XSS injection
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.3

Low Level Threats

• Potential SQL injection in Polls modules through the Itemid variable
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.x series
• Potential SQL injection in several methods in mosDBTable class
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.x series
• Potential misuse of Media component file management functions
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.x series
• Add search limit param (default of 50) to `Search` Mambots to prevent search flooding
  - Affects all previous versions of Joomla! and Mambo 4.5.2.x series

Since this is a security release, it is advised that you upgrade as soon as possible.

Popularity: 3%

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