Monday, January 25, 2010

Trying out some CMS

Our team, Kukui Cup Tech is currently on its second stage of the production. We have looked at numerous CMS out there to determine which is well suited for our project. We so far came up with four different CMS: Joomla, Drupal, DotCMS, and SilverStripe.

After presenting our findings with Dr. Johnson, we determined that we should go ahead and create a mock-up page for each of the CMS that we chose. Thus far, we successfully created a mock-up page for Joomla and DotCMS. I would not say that any of the two systems were simple to work with.

Joomla was quite straighforward except that we had to design a template for it work correctly. The initial template design was quite confusing as we had to implement some php code with the html. Working with some of the administrative tools such as article, category, and section managers were quite confusing at first. Luckily, though, we got used to them fairly quickly.

Joomla seems fairly easy to work with and so far we can conclude that it provides all the functionalities necessary for the project. It does provide multiple social networking modules as well as a module for hosting a forum. My thoughts remain the same as those of my previous post's. I am still inclined towards the use of Joomla for the project.

We are still looking to research some other possibilities, including Drupal and SilverStripe. I hope to find the best suited CMS for this project soon.


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Starting ICS 414

I am now starting a whole new experience in ICS 414. This time we are not going to be learning new tools so much, but we are actually developing new and exciting web applications. I would like to state that this class would be a whole new experience for me as I only have a little experience building an actual web application for somebody else to use.

Our group was assigned to work on the Kukui Cup tech project. For this project, we will work on the functionality side of the project which includes setting up of CMS (Content Management System). This at first seems to be a rather complicated project, though I hope to learn a lot throughout the duration of the project.

This week's task is to figure out whether which CMS out on the web is well suited for this project. Thus far I looked at Drupal, Joomla, and some of Anahita. I have worked with Joomla before so at this point I am a little inclined towards using Joomla for the project. Drupal seems to work well too; however, I find its user interface unintuitive and difficult to use, although that maybe true only because I have just started using the system.

Through looking at other users' comments online leads me to believe that Drupal, while having a much higher learning curve, generally performs better and can be integrated very well with other tools. Joomla on the other hand, is great for simple tasks such as to manage pages and contents of a site. Joomla also has a much shallower learning curve which makes the system that much more attractive than Drupal.

I would still need to take social networking into consideration before deciding which CMS to use. This would not be an easy task, though I hope to figure out soon.