A Newspaper CMS?
I’ve been looking for an ideal CMS (content management system) for an online edition of a community newspaper. I’ll need this as a part of a proposal for a new job I’ll be taking in Charlotte.
I’ve looked at numerous options…
WordPress - Obviously, I know the most about this particular platform, which was originally made for blogging but can be turned into a wonderfully powerful CMS with the right coding. A theme from Brian Gardner (pictured right) is exactly the type of coding that makes WordPress an ideal CMS-type platform for a newspaper website. That particular theme costs $99.95 and, of course, the basic WordPress platform is free (I think if I used this, we would use WordPressMU which allows for multiple blogs housed within one platform - for newspaper staff blogs).- Joomla - Joomla is also a powerful CMS but quite clumsy to me (maybe because I haven’t messed with it much). iJoomla has a component/module add-on, the iJoomla NewsPortal, that turns the Joomla CMS into a powerful news website CMS. The outcome is a nice-looking news portal site similar to the familiar layouts of most large news-media companies. The iJoomla add-on is $69 or so and the basic Joomla CMS is open source (free). A couple of nice demos here and here.
- PacerCMS - This is the most simple and easy to use CMS for a newspaper website. It was originally built for college and high school student newspapers, hence the simplicity (maybe it is a bit too simple though).
I haven’t yet taken the time to figure out how I’d exactly go about changing the default web-design to a more customized one butI was able to play around with the design and add new sections through SQL editing (the template customization is about as easy as it is with WordPress or any other PHP driven site) and I have experimented with putting the CMS on my server and playing around with the posting features: testpaper.interstateq.com
I know I’ve got some tech-savvy readers out there… What are ya’ll’s take? Any suggestions?
About the Author: Matt
8 Responses to “A Newspaper CMS?”
http://www.ellingtoncms.com/ is your answer - by journalists, for journalists…
By Dave on Sep 18, 2007
I’m pretty fond of PHPBB, which although rarely is, can be very useful and scaleable if you have some php & sql knowledge.
By beth on Sep 18, 2007
Is PHPBB what you use Beth?
And Dave… thanks for the link to the EllingtonCMS. I’ll check it out.
By Matt on Sep 18, 2007
We use Movable Type - same thing the Huffington Post uses.
I use Drupal on another site - a cousin to Joomla (but better organized).
By Bil Browning on Sep 18, 2007
Great blog! I added you to my blogroll. I’d appreciate it if you’d consider linking back.
Most blogs allow you to enter your blog url in a special field in the comment section. If the blog doesn’t have that feature, then you will also need to put my url in the comment.
By Eric on Sep 23, 2007
Matt,
Our team was looking for something similar to what you’ve described. We are actually developing our own solution for newspapers, magazines, and journals. Please go to our website http://www.getzenger.com and sign up for the free beta version.
http://getzenger.com
Hope this helps!
Stanford
By Matt on Jun 2, 2008
We started out with Joomla but while it was certainly fully featured, it was extremely difficult to modify and tweak consistently across browsers. Turned into a nightmare. Currently, we are on WordPress but are looking for something a bit more robust. I wish there were something in between Joomla and WordPress.
By website designer on Jul 13, 2008
From open source and $100 templates to Ellingtoncms. I followed the link and liked what I saw, but there were no prices, so I called the number and was told roughly $5,000 setup and $1,500 to $2,500 per month for hosting.
By Bill on Jul 14, 2008