Learning Torque Web Site being Built

#21 @Ronny,
Which CMS would you recommend for someone new to web development?

Every Web framework or CMS I have seen will require all the things you mentioned. And yes, it is good to test the security by getting someone to attack your site before going live.

#22 Security is a great concern of mine, my Face Book account was Hacked just yesterday, Face Book sent me a suspicious activity Email, someone from Britten had Hacked my Face Book page.

I am Currently testing the NEW version of Joomla, 2.6 which according to them has been completely redone and updated with new security add on's and other fixes. So far I kind of like it, BUT it's defiantly a different type of Web Building tool.

I'll keep you guys up to date on how it's staking up, and where I am at in the build out.

Thanks, and more suggestion or comments are welcome!
Mike

#23 I choose depending on which is easiest to make modules for.

Joomla is extremely tricky; it doesn't have just one module type. It has several slightly different concepts, depending on whether you want to extend client-side, admin-side or make a hook to parse content. Drupal has one module format, so I find that less confusing. Hacking up an admin plugin and using the built-in permissions system was a piece of cake. Joomla modules can't be put in place an enabled, but must be installed in particular ways.

WordPress is also alright, although its system is more tangled up into singular files. They are still catching up with template-based systems. It's growing beyond a one-man CMS, so can be useful for a multi-blogging site. The plug-ins you get for it cover most types of use, and the selection is huge. Classically a system with security problems, but 3.x cleaned it up immensely, and a select few modules should keep you safe and spam-free.

All of the above are common enough that finding forum integration/login sharing is easy enough. Other common CMSes are Typo3 and Xoops (plus derivatives). Especially Xoops was very smooth making extensions to. It lives somewhere between framework and CMS, really, unlike Drupal, where the developers suddenly decided they also want to treat it as a framework. Xoops is doing better than Drupal in that respect.

These systems all have one slight flaw: They're based on PHP. None of those kind of scripting languages are great at scaling with concurrent users, and each connection can require a lot of memory to run. There's a 1-5MB overhead for web server connection depending on configuration before even considering the PHP cache, which can often be 32MB or 64MB (WordPress in particular puts some demands on it). The ultimate solution is something closer to an app than scripts running in a web server, so Java. PHP, Python, Ruby would all suffer overhead. PHP and Python are the slowest, usually. The creators may argue otherwise, but real-world tests don't always agree ;)

Fancypants Java CMSes include Alfresco (both an open source and "enterprise" version exist), dotCMS, OpenCMS, Liferay (licensed like Alfresco), Magnolia and tons of others. Java servers have the benefit that they run one app through Tomcat or Jetty (typically; how many use WebSphere for open stuff? ;), managing their own memory more cleanly. You have the overhead of Java itself, which is configurable, and then typically the webapp doesn't take more than 20-30MB and sits there. Threads just use shared memory plus its own stacks.

With PHP you you typically don't run plain mod_php on a multi-user system, and it can be beneficial to run it differently even when you control the whole server/VPS. Something like suPHP is often used as a security layer, which slows it down. But then you can speed it up a little with FastCGI, which preloads PHP instances. Of course that's going to cost a bit of RAM, but unlike caches per connection it can be shared (Linux 2.6.32+ servers are great at that). But now you're juggling minimum/maximum connections for the web server and FastCGI, which can be a bit of a headache.

If you're running on a typical web host you'll have no control over memory settings, min/max connections, timeouts of the web server and other important settings. I've often run into PHP tools or plug-ins which demand 64MB to run (usually admin-side things, fortunately), which is a bit of a nuisance on a busy site. Hardware requirements shoot up fast because each connection could potentially use that whole chunk.

tl;dr: This WAS the short version. Read more on each piece of software mentioned on the web :)

Look at the web site for each, have a peek at the issues on the first couple of issues in the forums, look at the list of known clients using each. The last thing is not for endorsement, but because any news articles about major failures would be common knowledge :)

#24 Hey Michael,

I deal in CMS and website programming everyday. I have looked over every major one and the ones i like most are listed below. i have also listed a few faults in my favorite.

1. My Fav Concrete5 It is so easy to use anyone can use once the templates are built, there is a lot o0f good free content and even more good paid content. The downside the only problem i found is forum support. I am having to link the forum login and site logins together manually as they do not support most forum software. The forum software they do support is vanilla forums and this does not look great as far as i am concerned.

2. Geeklog is pretty good no complaints its pretty secure but not very feature rich.

3. phpnuke is great they did have some hacking problems earlier but this has been remedied and now appears to be running smooth. There software is a little harder to learn than the others but works really well.

There are a few more but if you want a tutorial site with a great search and your thinking both written and video. I would go concrete 5 and pay someone like me (Not me I am very busy but someone like me) to add the forum capabilities to the system as it is possible. Just tell them you need to integrate the 2 logins the 2 templates and the databases so they don't need to register twice. Also remember to edit the register info so that its easy to do.

If you need some assistance let me know I can always try to help but i am very busy with both my websites www.awkwardmonkey.com (Using concrete5 and not quite finished yet) and my other site which does not have to do with My game im trying to make. As well as work building websites.

Edit:
Almost forgot if you want to test a tonne of cms's out just go to www.softaculous.com they have demo's on pretty much all of them

#25 @Manni,
I have C5 on my other test and dump site.
I liked C5 but as you pointed out it doesn't have any Forum support and as for adding Vanilla Forums I tried it, even got the creator of Vanilla Forums add-on in C5 to update and fix some error, and still couldn't get the log in to work right. :(

I gave up for now with it. I also tried to get some one hired to do some customer programming, hahaha, they all laugh at me cause I said low budget.
I think a budget of $500 was quit nice for something I could write in time. I am not dumb, I just haven't studied any of the Web programming stuff, but I did read the Tutorials on PHP and it's almost like Basic, lol.

Anyways I am kind of holding off on C5 for that reason, no good forums.
I need a forum where people can upload videos and have them embed on the Forum post when done. Right now I have to go in and attach a video myself in the Admin dashboard, so users wouldn't like that, and it makes me have to edit pages all the time.

I also couldn't find a Template I liked, yet. I just don't like the way you have to edit pages, your too restricted to where you can place things all dictated by the Template.

I'm playing with Joomla now, but it's not turning out too good, it's the most confusing setup ever......
:(

Oh well. Keep testing on.

Thanks for the Comments!
Mike

#26 Hey Michael as far as the forum goes I was able to get vanilla working and could probable help with that but as far as web videos are concerned you can create a customer system to allow users to upload and add video's thats easy enough in Concrete5.

I can probable walk you through a few things if you need as you see my site is comming along nicely. but if I were you maybe try geeklog. it is fairly easy to learn free and can do member's add video's with extra documentation if they wish via FCKeditor. Maybe we should talk feel free to email me (Its on my website listed above) and we can setup a chat session to go over things like I said im a busy man but i like to see websites succeed so I will take some time to discuss things.

#27 @Michael: You should probably hang out on IRC. No use making a community site if you don't see all aspects of the community ;)

#28 @ Manni, Thanks for the offer! I think I am going with Joomla mainly
because it has more Temples, easier to add on stuff, well kinda of easier than Concrete 5, and the Forums with Plug ins let you add Videos and Picture Files to your post which is what I wanted!

Well, I'm getting there..... Getting the Forums set up, and I got it to where you can add external Videos from just about every video hosting site on the Net! LOL.

I also am going to have a place where you can upload videos to my server if you don't want your stuff on a you tube type server.

The Forum also lets you upload a simple PDF instead of typing in all that text for a Written Tutorial! I have to check to see if you can include Images, but surely it does???

Let you know as more gets Built!

Thanks!

#29 @Michael,
Be careful with allowing any uploads. It should be highly supervised by the PHP scripts and .htaccess rules. Uploads are a bit security leak if done wrong.

Are you using prebuilt extensions to Joomla for this? If you are, and it is a highly rated extension then they may have already done due diligence on upload security issues. However, it does pay to be aware how uploads are performed and handled. What you don't want is someone attacking the site by uploading executable scripts, files, or even config files.

#30 Thanks,

I know what your saying about scripts running, That's why I am only using Joomla Add on's that have been security updated Lately.
A lot of them have fixed security hacks.

I'm just going to let users upload Images, as for Videos they will have to use YouTube or Vimeo or some other Video hosting site and link them to my Site that way they aren't eating up bandwidth and memory and CPU time.

I have unlimited storage and bandwidth so that wasn't a problem, but as you said Security is. I will provide a Downloadable Software Package (Free, Windows Software) for users to make be able to Record Tutorial Videos on their Computers to up load to YouTube, ETC.

Thanks,
Mike

#31 OK,

I'v got a few more things to do before Launching the site.
But now I need some Input!!

I need to create Forum Topics and Would Appreciate some Ideas on laying out the Topics. Of course they are going to be Two Primary sections, Written and Video.

But I need Sub sections to each like, Written Simple Scripts for NCP's or Videos on how to make great looking Water falls, or Cliffs, etc.

I'v talked to Jonathan Williamson over at www.CGCookie.Com and he has given me the OK to Link to some of the Videos on 3D Character modeling for Blender, Max, Maya!! So I hope to get some USER provide videos on anything Torque related to all 3 programs, so I need Ideas for sub categories/ Topics to put them in.

Any Ideas?? Comment??
Thanks!!!
Mike

#32 @Michael, in this day and age. Why allow uploads at all? Have users post them to youtube or one of many other video sites? You can easly have your users of jamoola submit the content and you can approve it as you need or see fit. You can really control user content with jamoola and it's not very hard at all.

Flickr
Youtube
Vimeo
photobucket

#33 Well, you could go with broad categories and then sub-categorize as needed. For instance, perhaps go with Art, Script and Design, then under Art you could use categories such as Environment, Architecture, Characters, etc....

I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard to rearrange forums even once the site is live if you feel you need more sections or want to move a forum into a different section.

#34 @Sean,
I'm not going to host files anymore, too much head ache to set up, Users can use almost every video hosting site like You Tube now in their post!

When you have a tutorial you can make it into a simple PDF you can upload that to post instead of typing it all out, so you can write your Tutorial on your computer, edit it add pictures n stuff make it "perfect" then just post it into the forums!!

@Richard,
The way the forums are setup I think it's pretty easy to shuffle them around. You just pick the parent topic to put it under.

I hope to have it up n going in another week and see how things go! There won't be much there but maybe it will start building out once the word gets around.

I'll post a new blog when it's is finished and ready!

But in the mean time any more comments or suggestions from anyone, maybe stuff you would like to see or topics?

Thanks,
Mike

#35 You can also host source code at places like xp-dev.com. Those include both private and public source archives.