PHP Fusion Core Edition 7 Review
August 21, 2008 by CMS Critic
(22 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)
Loading ...Today we’re going to review PHP Fusions’ latest release: Core Edition 7. This is an interesting release and has been long awaited as version 6 has consistently been in the running for the PacktPub CMS awards that are held every year. I’m very eager to see what kind of improvements have been made. Let’s examine some of the changes since version 6.
- There is a new Smiley admin panel.
- The user group admin panel has been rewritten to be easier to use.
- Forums rewritten to include several new features such as forums polls, mass thread deletion, new admin interface, etc
This is just a teeny number of the changes, there is a nice feature comparison available here:
http://www.php-fusion.co.uk/infusions/features/index.php
Let’s take a look at this new offering shall we?
After copying the appropriate files to your host (local or otherwise) you start the install process by visiting http://myhostname/setup.php
You will be greeted with this screen:
Click to Enlarge
Once you’ve selected your locale (and do note that you can download additional ones from their website as well) you will proceed to this screen:
Click to Enlarge
On this screen if you notice anything not marked as green then you need to change permissions on the specified files. Be prepared to involve your hosting company if you do not have shell access or are unfamiliar with how to do this via ftp client. Once you’ve gone this far, proceed to the screen below:
Database Settings
Once you’ve completed these and if the installer can successfully access your database you should get the next screen:
Success
Once you’ve successfully done this stage, there’s not much left.. so let’s continue:
Admin Settings
The above screen is where you put in your admin settings. Note that it will not allow you to have the same password as both admin and login so you will have to differentiate the two (which is a good security move anyways and it’s nice that they enforced it).. You will also note specific password rules should you try to put something in that’s too easy.. which is another good feature.
We then proceed to:
Congratulations
As suggested, it’s a good idea to delete the setup.php file at this point so that a potential hacker cannot restart the setup process and potentially “pooch” (that’s a technical term btw) your existing setup.
Overall, i’d say their install process is quite simple compared to some other CMS installs i’ve witnessed and it’s a great improvement over previous versions. PHP Fusion has always been the best Portal based CMS i’ve ever used and continues to improve as they work hard to make it easier and more useful than ever.
Now you get to see the results of your actions.. What does your new homepage look like? Well here it is:
Default Home Page
Visually, it’s a very attractive new look for them and in my opinion, much nicer than the default look that they had in previous versions. Let’s examine a few more screens. Once you log into the system, either as an administrator or a user you’ll receive a menu in the right sidebar that will look similar to below. Note that if you are not an admin, you will not see the admin panel choice here. There is also a nice shoutbox setup ready to go for you as well.
Let’s see what the Admin Panel looks like:
Admin Panel Screen
With a very nice layout and easy to use tabs and icons to represent the various areas, this is one of the better admin panels and much improved over previous versions. I think the labelling of the icons is much improved and a lot easier to understand.
The newly re-designed user admin screen:
and the Sysadmin panel:
One of the main downfalls this CMS suffers from is it’s somewhat pidgeon holed into a portal type of CMS.. this isn’t necessarily a bad thing though as there are plenty of them out there and they are definitely needed. There are a few themes that have taken PHP Fusion beyond this look but it’s not as easy as some of the other platforms in this aspect.
Overall, this is a great new version of this already much touted CMS and i’m very pleased to say for a Portal, I can’t think of anything better. Theme wise, there are tons available through a number of sources and modules are a plenty as well.
Overall, my ratings are:
Community 8/10 (Good community with quick response to issues and plenty of frequent visitors)
Expandability 7/10 (Outside of a portal, it’s tough to use it for much else other than this type of site)
Themability 8/10 (Plenty of themes available and more coming daily)
Useability 9/10 (Pretty easy with a very low learning curve)
Thanks for this good review Mike :D
Thanks a lot for review. PHP-Fusion v7 DEV Team are gratefull for any opinions about our work :)
Thanks Mike, appreciate it. We’ll take your points in to consideration, Hopefully :)
Amazing review. You speak better about PHP-Fusion than I have ever done! I feel so much more proud after reading this! I was already in a joy ride because I am part of this awesome project (opinions may vary), but getting this kind of review from someone outside our immediate community is something else! Thanks for the great review Mr. Johnston!
Thanks for the Awesome Review! I have published it as a news item on main!
PHP-Fusion is the best!!!!
Mr. Johnston, this type of comments are those that truly help us to continue advancing and improving.
Thank you very much for this wonderful review.
Nice review! well done :)
Thanks for the Awesome Review!
PHP - Fusion and the team is the best !!
Thank you.
It would have given it 6 because this CMS includes a lot of bugs. Seen it in the v6 version. Why bring out updates instead of a steady systeem. A update you should not be able to see the changes but instead you get errors example if you update from v6 to v7 We have more then 2000 users and when we did the update it did’nt work it crashes all the time even after reading that poor help me file
greetings from Us all
Helle,
this is a very nice system but I have to agry with marky. They should give us more feedback when a update is released. updates should be very easy but in this systeem it is very very webmaster unfriendly
ciao
nice review of php-fusion. specially version 7 i really enjoyed… thanks to the co-founder and the team of php-fusion.
I really like PHP Fusion, very nice design, easy to use and there is plenty of themes (templates) freely available as well as “MODS” but I had to move to Joomla! as unfortunately PHP Fusion is not yet fully SEF (Search Engine Friendly) nor SEO (Search Engine Optimized) “acronyms definitions for the folks that don’t know. PHP Fusion is probably the best for CMS for Internet/Intranet web Portals that includes most needed resources (Forum, Downloads, Etc.) just right out of the box…
Great Job PHP Fusion team!
Kevin M,
Their are many CMS on the web available for downloads.. but very few cms come with the SEO friendly. as PHPfuison community is growing and now SEO friendly PHP fusion is available.. and its very simple to do even better …
OK I am getting square eyed, its 1:30AM and I have to work tomorrow…..
Really enjoyed reading your posts. I have learned alot here and now see I have some more options to simplify my Web development learning curve.
Php fuison looks very good and I look forward to checking it out further….but another night :)
Cheers,
Jeromy
Well, I’m amazed that people are so positive about version 7. What’s new ??
The only new feature I discovered was that older infusions don’t work anymore.
I use version 6 for several years an I like it very much, but is 7 better ?
Stil no good photo-album (with sub-categories).
Stil working with tables in stead of divs.
I’m stil positive about PHP-fusion, but not about the upgrade.
You mentioned the out-off-the-box installation. PHPfusion (and many other cms) has that for a long time
“but very few cms come with the SEO friendly. as PHPfuison community is growing and now SEO friendly PHP fusion is available.. and its very simple to do even better”
thx for good post, exactly how what are the new improvements to php-fusion in regards to seo?
- Anders
I found that PHP-Fusion definitly lacked in SEO support. A simple Google search gives very little info. I haven’t found any plugins either. Think I will consider looking at some other CMS.
A very good review. Nice job, and I will say that I have never used it as a portal site. I have used it for a corporate website, a restaurant review site, a political party’s site, and another corporate website. I find it the easiest Content Management System out there to customize to what I need.
I hadn’t heard of this software until I read this review, and I have to say, I am tempted to have a look for myself. It reminds me of moodle though. The theme just remind’s me of Windows XP’s Zune theme.
No SEF URL’s? If it’s there I can’t find it in the demo. Too bad looks nice otherwise.