In the past I’ve addresses RSS, CSS and all that stuff… now my latest interest in exploring both Blogging and Content Management applications. This site was originally set up on on MovableType, but the advent of a new model of charging for MT caused an uproar in the blogger community, so I, too, began looking at other programs. Wordpress has grown into more than just a blogging application, and that’s my platform of choice now.

Read on to discover my very limited evaluations and why this is something that FAMVIN webmasters should know about!

Why use Blogging software or a Content Management System (CMS)?

• Generally, a single template is applied to the entire site making maintenance much, much more simple. Want to change an entry in a menu that goes on every page of your site? Change it in one place, and the entire site changes.
• Separation of content and presentation. This is a biggy for me. For FAMVIN I handle “presentation” - the fundatmental look and feel of the site. I worry about the programming if there is any to be done. The Content folks (John Freund, Julio Suescun, Guiseppe Turati) use a web browser to enter the news articles and other information for the site. Sometimes we get together, but they really don’t have to worry me, and I don’t have to worry them.

Those 2 reasons alone are enough for me! But add to this the fact that the software that runs the site also creates the RSS news feed which any of you can use, and that’s even better. An example is the “What’s New on FAMVIN” email that John Freund distributes. It is created from the RSS feed for FAMVIN, formatted with a program (see the article on RSS on this site) and then emailed.

Now for the particulars:

FAMVIN.org has been a PHPNuke site since January 2000. PHPNuke and programs like it provide the content management, and some “blogging” type functions. A single template is in effect for the entire site. The data (read articles) are stored in a database (we use MySQL as the backend database for FAMVIN content. [The spanish, english and italian sites that is. French is a different story for a different article]

PHPNuke provides the News function, the functionality that creates “Special Collections”, the ability to allow readers to comment and rate articles. It keeps track of how many times an article has been viewed online. There are other modules that we don’t use, such as Journals, Reviews, the Encyclopedia, FAQ’s. We do use the “contact us” and submit news heavily.

PHPNuke is one of the most popular CMS’s, but there are others to consider: PostNuke ( a fork of PHPNuke), PHPWebsite (developed at Appalachian State University), Mambo (I’m just beginning to explore this one.

That’s Overkill! What about Blogging?

On a slightly different level you find Blogging software. OK, what’s a Blog? It’s an abbreviated word for WebLog, which started out as a sort of online public journalling craze. And it’s gone wild. Almost anybody can put up a Blog and expound on anything and everything. This site is a Blog. You can get free hosting at Blogger.com and be up and running in about 5 minutes. Check out FamvinNotes to see an example of a blogger.com blog. Granted, I use the option to move it to my own webspace so I don’t have to put up with the ads (nothing is truly free), but the layout is one of the ready made templates available at blogger.com, and the editing is done using a web browser.

That’s the simplest, cheapest one I know of right now. But, there are others. My newest venture is with Wordpress which rapidly becoming my top choice.

With MT and Wordpress you can actually extend the use so that you have a simple CMS using blogging software. In addition, if you visit the sites referenced here, you can usually find a place that offers webhosting with the application installed for you. That is true for the CMS software and the Blog software.

I’ll continue this in another article that will be more specific in how to do it. For now, just check out the software itself!