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I need to build a site for my church with the following functionalities:

  • The main page listing all the updates from other pages if some content is added
  • Different content types on different pages that get updated very regularly - like podcasts, event schedules and stuff like that

Now the real catch is that I'd like a nice GUI front-end that allows the user to add new content like new event schedules, videos, podcasts, pics and announcements and other such stuff.

Is CMS the only way to go? If so can I customize my content that I want the CMS to manage? Like can I write my own webpages or does it have to be the CMS' themes? Also if this is the only way, which CMS should I choose that'll be easy to use - Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal or something else that you think is good? I have zero experience with CMS except that I use a free Wordpress account and use the Web UI to make posts.

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I think this might be off-topic; pop over to the webmasters' stack exchange. For preference if you can program, Ruby on Rails makes it easy to get something up and running to your specifications quickly. As for CMS I like drupal, but its quite complex, so maybe Wordpress is the best way to go if you can keep it simple. – thomas michael wallace Jun 5 '11 at 13:47
So RoR will allow me to build a front-end to add content and stuff? – nitstorm Jun 5 '11 at 13:51
RoR will, like Wordpress, give you a web-based GUI front end fairly quickly. RoR also supports responding to requests as XML, etc, which could theoretically be used with a non-wed-based application, but i can't think of a reason why you'd need one. – thomas michael wallace Jun 5 '11 at 14:01
Can you point me in the direction to learning RoR especially for the above functionalities? – nitstorm Jun 5 '11 at 14:06
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look through this: guides.rubyonrails.org - and see how comfortable you feel, just be aware that this method means essentially developing your own CMS. – thomas michael wallace Jun 5 '11 at 14:09

migrated from askubuntu.com Jun 5 '11 at 15:14

1 Answer

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If you have zero experience with CMSes and/or are not an experienced programmer then I highly recommend using Wordpress as your CMS. Wordpress is very capable as a CMS, is very easy to use, and you're already familiar with is as there is very little difference between the hosted version and the self-hosted version.

You can also choose from a plethora of free themes that make customizing it very easy to do.

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So is there is a possibility to put in my custom HTML, CSS3 stuff? Get my own look basically? – nitstorm Jun 5 '11 at 16:17
Definitely. You can create yur own theme or modify an exisiting one. – John Conde♦ Jun 5 '11 at 16:53
Could you please point me in the direction to creating and editing WP themes? – nitstorm Jun 5 '11 at 17:06
Here's the link to the page on WordPress theme development: <codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development>;. Try searching for something like "WordPress theme tutorial" on Google for more information. – user8059 Jun 5 '11 at 19:13
I agree with John. WordPress is a great way to get a site started. If you didn't want to to completely build a new theme, there are a handful of themes that allow customization from within WordPress. Atahualpa is an example that comes to mind. – Rob Jun 6 '11 at 0:05
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