What CMS do you use Aspen?

[snoopers]

I notice that it is very google-friendly. I'd like to use it for some of my new site ideas.

[Mike]

I think he made it himself, although I'm not fully certain.

[Chris]

I made it myself.

[Kings]

Have a look at MovableType (http://www.movabletype.org).

I'm using it for my site (ASPit (http://www.aspit.net)), and it's very powerful, and allows you to create search-friendly url's as well (like on this site).

It's originally a blogging tool, but it's powerful enough to function as a complete CMS. I've been using it for 3 months now, and I'm still discovering about new features.

[Mike]

If you know PHP or something along those lines, then you may as well make your own. It's easy depending on how advanced you want it.

[Kings]

Originally posted by Mike
If you know PHP or something along those lines, then you may as well make your own. It's easy depending on how advanced you want it. Well, it usually takes time to build a (good) CMS. I rather use an existing CMS (which I know is good) than take the time to make my own.

[Mike]

That's why I said that it would be easy (meaning quick as well) if you wanted a simple one. Well, I meant that anyway.

You could make a CMS which allowed you to add and search in an hour or so. Really it depends on how far you want to go.

[chromate]

I've never really made any real use of a pre-written CMS. I always bash out my own. I give clients a simple tool called HTMLEditBox, so they can easily change font / cut & paste from word etc and then that creates the HTML automatically. That's the written to a database. Simple.

[Mike]

Is that like Sitepoint's Editize chromate? Also is it free?

[snoopers]

Movable Type looks very interesting. It's very SE friendly (keywords in page title, h1 tags, URL)

I'm planning a cheats or lyrics site. It needs to be very easy and quick to add content. A lot of copy and pasting. Do you think MovableType would be good for this purpose.

[chromate]

Originally posted by Mike
Is that like Sitepoint's Editize chromate? Also is it free?

It's like SitePoint's Editize, yeah. But HTMLEditBox is much cheaper. When I first started using it, it was priced at $9 per licence compared with something like $250 for Editize. I remember when sitepoint released Editize I had big arguments with the sitepoint staff in their forums saying it was overpriced etc. Editize couldn't do a lot of the stuff that HTMLEditBox could do. A lot of my posts were deleted by the staff, not because they were rude or abusive, but because I was presenting alternative competition that they couldn't match.

There is one major drawback with HTMLEditBox though, it requires the use of IE. Not so much of a problem when you know your client uses IE though (as most do) :) Sitepoint also had to make Editize a java applet to make it totally cross browser friendly. Because of this it was slow to load and the user also had to have Java. HTMLEditBox just used straight forward PHP -- no problems at all for anyone.

It's been a long time since then though and a lot have changed. I know there's a new version of HTMLEditBox out, but I haven't used it for ages now (perhaps a year or so).

[Mike]

I wouldn't have thought sitepoint staff would do that, but I suppose they have got a product to offer.

I'll look into something like that if I develop a CMS ever.

[chromate]

Originally posted by Mike
I wouldn't have thought sitepoint staff would do that, but I suppose they have got a product to offer.

Yeah, this was when I started going off sitepoint. When they got all commercial. I can understand them censoring my posts though. A lot of people were agreeing with what I was saying and in a thread designed to promote their new product, it's not at all what they wanted. If it was my product I would have done the same. Probably what really got to them was I informed the author of HTMLEditBox of what was going on and got him involved in the discussion :) He made quite a few sales out of it. lol.

[Kings]

Originally posted by snoopers
Movable Type looks very interesting. It's very SE friendly (keywords in page title, h1 tags, URL)

I'm planning a cheats or lyrics site. It needs to be very easy and quick to add content. A lot of copy and pasting. Do you think MovableType would be good for this purpose. MovableType would be excellent for this, especially because you can use desktop programs (like Zempt (http://zempt.com)) to add new content. This means you won't have to wait for pages to load.

[Mike]

Originally posted by chromate
Yeah, this was when I started going off sitepoint. When they got all commercial. I can understand them censoring my posts though. A lot of people were agreeing with what I was saying and in a thread designed to promote their new product, it's not at all what they wanted. If it was my product I would have done the same. Probably what really got to them was I informed the author of HTMLEditBox of what was going on and got him involved in the discussion :) He made quite a few sales out of it. lol.

You should have asked for commision:)

[chromate]

I actually did get paid with a couple of licences :)

[Chris]

I have actually thought about selling this CMS before, but I don't have the time to flesh it out to a commercial level.

[Yoda]

Originally posted by Chris
I have actually thought about selling this CMS before, but I don't have the time to flesh it out to a commercial level.
Likewise, for my sites. It's much easier to design a system that you know will only be seen by your own eyes, ultimately. Shortcuts are more acceptable, and it becomes more about getting the job done than doing so elegantly.

My philosophy is generally that I'll code for myself, but if a notable number of people start asking about it (or if I have reason to believe it would be easily marketable or desirable to others), I'll consider a "public" version of some sort. vB Quiz 1.0, a rather popular hack I wrote for vBulletin 2, is probably the best example of this.

That's all entrepreneurism is, really. Keeping your eyes open, and pouncing when you see a demand for something.

[Mike]

Yeh I find it easier to use my own scripts.

[snoopers]

Kings, how do I create content pages (like http://www.aspit.net/articles/). All I can do is just create news (typical blog stuff)

[Kings]

For each section of my website, I've setup a blog (I've got 5 'main' sections, News, Articles, Tutorials, FAQ and Code so 5 blogs, plus 1 extra for templates).

In each blog I've heavily edited all the templates to match my site's layout.
If I want to add a new tutorial I add a new entry to the tutorials blog. The same can be done for all the other blogs.

To make it easier for myself, I'm using templates so I can change the layout from one point. For each new template (e.g. header, footer, top menu..etc) I created a new Index Template in the 'Templates' blog. I then use a simple php include() call to use these templates.

There's several other ways of doing it. If you want you can even use only one blog to do this all.

I suggest you have a look at http://www.movabletype.org/support/index.php?act=ST&f=14&t=32344. It contains some valuable information on how others have done it as well.

[snoopers]

Did you have to do anything like this?

http://www.bradchoate.com/past/001656.php

The problem is that my URLs are looking like

http://www. domain.com/archives/000002.html (instead of the 000002 I'd like the title of the article)

[Kings]

Originally posted by snoopers
Did you have to do anything like this?

http://www.bradchoate.com/past/001656.php

The problem is that my URLs are looking like

http://www. domain.com/archives/000002.html (instead of the 000002 I'd like the title of the article) No, I did it differently. But like I said, there's many different ways of doing it, because MT is so powerful.

To get the title in the url, you have to change the archive file name. To do this, follow these steps;
1. Go to 'Weblog Config'
2. Then go to 'Archiving'
3. There you can change the filenames for the archives. You most likely want to change the filename of the Indivual Entry Archive.

For my 'Article' weblog I have <$MTEntryCategory dirify="1"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.asp for my Individual Entry Archive, and <$MTCategoryLabel dirify="1"$>/index.asp for my Category Archive.

(ignore the .asp, it's actually just php files)

[snoopers]

Where do I change the filenames for the archives?

Is it the text areas under "Archive File Template"?

[Kings]

Originally posted by snoopers
Where do I change the filenames for the archives?

Is it the text areas under "Archive File Template"? Yes

[snoopers]

Thanks for the help, its working great :)