What is the Best Content Management System?

[ysdyoung]

I would like to redesign our church website http://www.galileembchurch.org. I want it to look more Web 2.0.

I wanted to use Joomla. I asked the hosting company we use Startlogic if we meet the requirements and they said yes. I have had the hardest time uploading the software to the server. I don't see anything and it's frustrating. I was wondering if you guys could give me some pointers as to what to do. Right now we have video and audio files on the site. I would like to make it classy and professional looking.

any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Sean

[LeAnn B]

I also use Joomla. What kind of problems are you having specifically? What FTP program are you using?

LeAnn

[ysdyoung]

Hi LeAnn,

At first I was going through the Control Panel at startlogic. Then I tried to upload it using Dreamweaver. That's what I edit the site in right now.

[LeAnn B]

Well I can only comment from what I've used. I just download the Joomla files to my hard drive and then use Filezilla to upload it to my server. Before you attempt to install it though you have to have a database set up at Startlogic. If you need help there I can tell you how I do it with my hosting company.

LeAnn

[ysdyoung]

I set up the database already. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. Thanks for your help though.

Sean

[Sysmom]

All right ... how about a basic tutorial in using an FTP client, then. I think it'll cut back on your frustration level.

I use CoreFTP - you can download it for free

Once that is installed, you need to make sure you have it working correctly:

1. double click to open it, or open from your Start menu.

2. Make an entry for your web site. You'll need this information from your web host (and you probably already have it)
A: Site Name - you fill in whatever you want there, that's literally the name Core FTP LE will display it to you in a list as.
B: Host / IP / URL: Just the main domain name. No http no ftp, usually not even a www. Just the domain name, in my case, it's southpointchurch.com
C: Username: Enter it exactly, case sensitive, like your web host gave it to you, this will be the master account, or the account that the web site 'lives' on
D: Password: Case sensitive password for the above account

Unless your host has changed the port number, leave the rest of it as it is. It saves as an entry in your FTP favorites list there on the startup window for Core FTP by default. So as long as you've entered it correctly, it will be waiting for you to click on and use again.

So ... after all that, click connect. Wait for a successful login. If there's something amiss, you'll want to check the Host name, the username and the password again.

Now that you've logged in to the default directory, you're ready to start learing about FTP!

1. There is a two paned screen in front of you.
2. The left side of the window pane is your local hard drive - navigate to it sort of like you'd use Windows Explorer, it's pretty intuitive
3. The right side of the window pane is your account at your site
4. NOTE: you will need to find out from your host which directory is the web-enabled directory. Many servers default to one called public_html - but just as many have a different name.

You must upload everything into this web-enabled directory. You can put new folders in there if you need, and nest them as deep as you can imagine. [There are some actual limits to nesting, but they're pretty out there....]

5. Double click on the folder icon on the right pane that holds your public web site

6. Navigate on the left pane to find where you have stored your files on your hard drive that you want to upload.

7. Make a new folder or two if you need to on the server side. Note that you can select a folder from your hard drive side and FTP will make the new folder for you.

8. Select the file(s) from your hard drive side that you want to upload to your site

9. Click on the blue arrow button at the end of the name of your local hard drive folder path ... the arrow is pointing towards the other side, indicating files will be transferred that way.

10. Let it work. It'll report it's progress.


BEFORE I upload a new set of install files for a scripted application, such as Joomla - I unzip them locally on my hard drive, and do the configuration that I need to (if at all) right there. Then I upload them as individual files, all in the directories they need to be in.

You could upload just the gz, tar, or zip (check on zips first) to your host, then telnet in and unzip it in place if you have shell access. But I think shell access is becoming more and more difficult to find these days.

I've never installed a Joomla, but I'm sure that once you get the files to the right place at your web site, you'll be able to follow the directions in it to get it installed.

I left the instructions here very simple and step by step so that if someone else comes along who might not know as much as you do, they'd be able to follow them, too.

Keep us posted how it goes!

deb

[ysdyoung]

Thanks for the help. I will definitely keep you posted.

Sean

[shayward]

Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) is amazing. Create (just create - don't make any tables or upload any data) the database on your server, upload the drupal files to your Unix/Apache based server, and go to your front page.

Drupal will prompt you for the database location, built the tables for you, etc.

If you want to add plugins, just FTP them into the Modules folder.

It's not much to look at yet, but I just built a software website at http://www.sanctussoft.com with a community/support feature at http://www.sanctussoft.com/community

The total time spent on this, including security and making my own content types (KBase and Change Request) took only a few hours.

It's themable too, so when I get around to wanting to make it pretty I can just "skin" it and make it look good instead of... Defaultish.