Articles - Page 248

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Here's Why CMS Is Your 'Unsung Hero' in 2025

janus-boye

eZPublish has long been known as a major player in the open source market, especially when it comes to the publishing world. In order to both improve their products' ease of use and to provide an all encompassing solution, they have created an all in one eZ Publish installer.
This installer packages a Mysql database, an Apache web server instance with PHP and of course <a href="http://ez.no/download">eZ Publish</a>.
Walkthrough
You can download the installer from the <a href="http://ez.no/company/news/new_installer_released_ez_publish_is_only_a_few_clicks_away">eZ Publish website</a>, it is available for Windows and Mac systems. Once downloaded, simply double click on the executable and you'll be presented with the following screen (we have only tested the windows version so screens may vary slightly on the Mac).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installer1.jpg" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Simply clicking next will take you to the component selection screen. This screen should really just be a confirmation screen as there really is no option to select anything being that it's all greyed out.. but it's a new installer so we'll go easy on them ?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/elie-auvray-100x100_eucy5e.jpg" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Once you've chosen what options you can, proceeding you will be greeted with the screen below which identifies the versions to be installed and the necessary ports that will be used:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installer3.jpg" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
You are then provided with the opportunity to create your administrator account:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installer4.jpg" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
And now the installation process begins:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/knowledgetree-daniel-chalef-100x100_vvqzgp.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Once the install is complete, your default browser will automatically launch the page below which provides some additional information. It is important to keep in mind that this installer does not fully install eZPublish for you but rather installs and prepares the included applications and the ezPublish installer. What this means is that clicking finish will then take you through the ezPublish installation that we're used to without prompting for database details, etc.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installer6-575x400.jpg" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Once you've clicked on Finish installation, you will then be taken through a few ezPublish install screens:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installation1-575x399.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Normally, the installer will download a remote site package list and present you with options, but since our test machine is behind a secured network, firewall and proxy, it was not permitted to do so. What we do at this point is open the remote repository URL provided, download the necessary packages and then upload them via this page below.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installation2-575x488.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
You then have the option of submitting site details to eZ Systems which they will use to track the type of installs and other basic information.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installation3-575x563.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
Now the installation is complete and you can proceed to your administrator panel or the default website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installation4-575x395.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
And here is the default website (providing you selected the eZ Flow template set).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ezpublish-installation5-575x503.png" alt="eZ Publish installer" />
We won't be covering the administrative interface in this article as it is quite involved but this gives you a good idea as to how the system and the installer works. It's obvious they've done a lot of work on improving the comfort zones of their customers and they have indeed come a long way in recent years. We can only hope for more improvements and enhancements down the road.
You can read more about or download eZ Publish from their <a href="http://ez.no">website</a>.

eZ Publish Installer Overview

mike-johnston

Today we will highlight what we consider to be the best premium Drupal themes that were released in June of this year.
Drupal theming has come along way over the last few years with more and more players stepping into the marketplace.
Here are just a few of our favourites.
There have been quite a few to choose from but these are the ones we like the most.
Diver – Themeshark
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/diver_image.jpg" alt="diver_image" />
<ul>
<li>ThemeShark.com Easy Installer w/ Drupal 6.12: Setup within minutes!</li>
<li>Currently Compatible with 6.x</li>
<li>Support for CCK, Views, Imagecache, Collapsiblock and Dynamic Display Block modules</li>
<li>100% Tableless CSS Layout</li>
<li>W3C Valid XHTML Strict</li>
<li>Fixed or Fluid Width</li>
<li>Resizable Sidebars</li>
<li>Five Color Styles</li>
<li>Custom Typography</li>
<li>Suckerfish and Superfish Enchanced Menus</li>
<li>Tested with FF3, IE7, IE6, Safari and Opera</li>
</ul>
Website: <a href="http://themeshark.com">http://themeshark.com</a>
mpONE – Themeforest
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mpone-473x575.jpg" alt=" " />
<ul>
<li>Highly-customisable.</li>
<li>Available for both Drupal 5 &amp; 6.</li>
<li>20 regions.</li>
<li>5 colour schemes (Blue, teal, red, purple, and green).</li>
<li> RTL (Right to left) support.</li>
<li> W3C valid xHTMLCSS design.</li>
<li>Fully compatible with IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.</li>
<li>Suitable for news websites, e-zines, article websites, and such.</li>
</ul>
Website: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/mpone-astonishing-drupal-theme/46474">https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/mpone-astonishing-drupal-theme/46474</a>
NewMedia – All Drupal Themes
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/newmedia_fullsize.png" alt="newmedia_fullsize" />
With the NewMedia theme, a combination of magazine-style layout and top quality web graphics form a truly impressive design. This design was engineered with an eye for perfect proportions, elegant details and endless layout and coloring possibilities.
Website: <a href="http://www.alldrupalthemes.com/drupal-themes/newmedia">http://www.alldrupalthemes.com/drupal-themes/newmedia</a>

The Best Premium Drupal Theme Releases for June 2009

This is our list of Preferred Joomla Template Resources.
These are companies we've dealt with or have had positive experiences with and are willing to recommend.
Sometimes it can be tough weeding through the spam sites and the sites with repeat content so we thought we'd give our s up to a few.
<a href="http://www.joomlashack.com">Joomlashack</a>
Joomlashack is one of the most popular theme sites that provides  free and premium themes for various versions of Joomla.
They also have a number of extensions and learning resources available.
<a href="http://www.yootheme.com">YOOtheme</a>
YOOtheme is a premium theme provider, they offer a number of themes with monthly releases as well as some other tools such as Zoo (a catalog system for Joomla) and some extensions.
<a href="http://www.rockettheme.com">RocketTheme</a>
Another theme site that provides some great extensions, free and premium Joomla templates. Rockettheme does monthly releases typically on the first of each month.
<a href="http://www.gavick.com">Gavick</a>
Joomla template club featuring a number of unique templates. Also a few extensions available.
<a href="http://www.joomlart.com">Joomlart</a>
Joomla template site that offers both a template club and an extension club. They also have a pretty decent tutorials section.
<a href="http://www.youjoomla.com">YouJoomla</a>
YouJoomla is a provider of various templates and extensions via their template club.

Our Top Six Favourite Joomla Template Providers

For those of you who may be looking for something that's simple and easy to use and an effective alternative to traditional CMS or blog platforms, you'll be pleased to hear about TypePublish. Today we're sharing with your our TypePublish Review.
This is a great CMS that offers a very attractive and easy to use interface that is both intuitive and clean.
Installation is quite straight forward and simply involves uploading the downloaded gzip file, unzipping (if you are on windows, winrar and 7zip will handle these files fine) and uploading the contents to your hosts public_html directory.
You can then begin the install by visiting http://yourdomain.com/index.php which will present you with the following screen:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/typepublish2-575x197.png" alt="TypePublish Review" /> TypePublish reminds us of the super quick installs that WordPress is famous for. We continue and are prompted to enter our database details:
Once complete, we move on to setting the name and other info.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/typepublish4-575x541.png" alt="TypePublish Review" /> What we liked about this page is you can provide both copyright info as well as a link to the site's designer which is a nice touch.Next, we create the administrator account:
Now the install process begins and completes.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zykecms-3-580x304_nnsrvu.jpg" alt="TypePublish Review" /> The installation process this CMS provides is definitely quick and intuitive and runs smoothly. The interface is also visually appealing as well, they've done a good job keeping everything simple.Let's check out the default site.
TypePublish has a very nice default theme with nice use of typography that should be quite easy to adapt to your own. The default theme is simple but very nice visually and provides a great starting point for a site.
The administration system is very nice and clean as well:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/typepublish9-575x339.png" alt="TypePublish Review" /> Content editing is a snap with their well thought out editor:
As you can see, creating visually appealing pull quotes is easy as are box-outs and simple search engine optimization.. everything is right there and easy to get access to.
Adding logos and items to the navigation is equally simple with point and click editing as shown below.
Menu Editing:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/typepublish11-575x512.png" alt="TypePublish Review" /> Logo and website details editing:
There is also a nice and easy to use SEO section that lets you add custom meta tags:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/typepublish13-575x369.png" alt="TypePublish Review" />
Final Thoughts
We're definitely impressed with what the TypePublish team has done. This is an exceptional release that really does well for the community by providing something that is quick, easy and visually appealing. It's easy to install, well laid out and fits all of the needs that the average joe would expect from a content management system.
Check it out at <a href="http://www.typepublish.org" target="_blank">http://www.typepublish.org</a>

TypePublish Review - It Makes Publishing Content Easy

We came across a very interesting little CMS that we thought we'd share with you via a quick Perch CMS Review. When it says it's a really simple CMS it's not kidding.
If you've ever played with the likes of <a href="/cushycms-review/">CushyCMS</a> or other similar products that allow you to add tags to existing pages which in turn enables them to be editable by the interface, then you'll feel right at home with Perch.
The difference, however, is that Perch is available for download and can be hosted on your own network as opposed to being hosted on someone elses.
Perch is not free but is available for £35 and there are no other fees after this.
Here is a <a href="http://media.grabaperch.com/video/perch_intro.flv">video</a> that showcases the product.
It's quite easy to use and doesn't take much to set up. You can create your own demo install to try it out if you like. Here are some screenshots from a demo we created to help introduce you to the product.
You can filter your content by type using some handy menus on the left.
It's a nice small product for a reasonable price and if you are looking for something simple and effective to allow you clients to have an easy way to manage their sites, this might be a good option to consider.
You can learn more at<a href="http://grabaperch.com"> http://grabaperch.com</a>

A Quick Perch CMS Review

There aren't normally a large number of sites providing premium Drupal themes, but we felt that we should help showcase some on a monthly basis in hopes that the number of participating sites increases. We personally feel there is a strong market for them and we'd love to see more advanced themes than the normal ones released on Drupal.org daily.
Here are the three new theme releases for April that we know of. Let us know if you are aware of others.
#1 – Stingray by Themeshark
Description:
<blockquote>
It's a magazine theme similar to the customer favorite Galapagos and it's got everything you've come to expect from us and more: there's 11 custom regions, including two Feature blocks that are controlled by the Views module.   There's six different, vibrant color styles to choose from, and we've included support for CSS3 rounded corners that can be switched on and off in the theme settings (supported by Firefox and Safari).
And, of course, most noticably we've incorporated a shiny new Dynamic Display Block.
</blockquote>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/stingray.png" alt="stingray" />
Website: <a href="http://www.themeshark.com/" target="_blank">http://www.themeshark.com/</a>
#2 – Corporate Business by Jimmyme (Available at Themeforest)
Corporate Business is a nice slick Corporate theme (and one of the few available on Themeforest)
Features: – Valid XHTML and CSS – Tableless layout – Fluid Content Boxes – Works in all major browsers – PNG fixes for IE – Includes special styles to improve Drupal backend interface
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/corporatebusiness.png" alt="corporatebusiness" />
Website: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/corporate-business-drupal-theme/38601" target="_blank">https://www.cmscritic.comhttps://www.cmscritic.com/themeforestitem/corporate-business-drupal-theme/38601</a>
#3 – Platino by forDrupal
Nice theme from forDrupal. Unfortunately, we think it's incredibly overpriced but some people might be willing to pay for it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/platino.png" alt="platino" /> 
<ul>
<li>25 Regions</li>
<li>jQuery Menu (works without JS enabled)</li>
<li>Block Highlights</li>
<li>Drupal 6.x and Acquia</li>
<li>Workable as Administration theme</li>
<li>Professional Typography</li>
<li>Form Tooltips</li>
<li>Customize using Theme Settings</li>
<li>Tested in IE6/7/8, FF, Safari, Chrome, Opera</li>
<li>Fixed Layout</li>
<li>PSD file and Demo Site included</li>
</ul>
Website: <a href="http://fordrupal.com/premium/platino-drupal-theme" target="_blank">http://fordrupal.com/premium/platino-drupal-theme</a>

Premium Drupal Theme Releases for April 2009

With all of the buzz encircling Acquia lately, we thought it prudent to share our Acquia Drupal review with our readers since we've never truly delved in to see what Acquia's rendition of Drupal is made of.
To get started, we decided to test the Acquia Drupal Installer stack which is available from the Acquia website and is a packaged of Apache, PHP, MySQL, PHPMyadmin and the Acquia Drupal version. The stack installer installs them all and allows you to quickly get to the nitty gritty and start playing.
The Install Process
To start with, we downloaded the latest stack from the<a href="http://acquia.com/downloads" target="_blank"> Acquia website</a> and launched the install process:
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia1.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" /></dt>
</dl>
Here you can see the included modules for this installation. The release we are using is two days old so it's nice and fresh.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia2.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia4.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" />
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia7.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" />
Now it's time to launch the stack and see if everything works as expected.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia9.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" />
What the Acquia team have done here is include a large number of modules that integrate well and expand the functionality of Drupal which essentially gives you an almost complete Drupal installation with the most commonly used modules all preconfigured for your use. It also provides integration with the Acquia network which is not unlike the RHN that Redhat offers for it's linux distribution product line (well, same concept anyways).
The included modules are:
<h4>Standard Drupal 6.x Modules</h4>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Aggregator</td>
<td>Aggregates syndicated content (RSS, RDF, and Atom feeds).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blog</td>
<td>Enables keeping easily and regularly updated user web pages or blogs.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blog API</td>
<td>Allows users to post content using applications that support XML-RPC blog APIs.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Book</td>
<td>Allows users to structure site pages in a hierarchy or outline.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Comment</td>
<td>Allows users to comment on and discuss published content.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Contact</td>
<td>Enables the use of both personal and site-wide contact forms.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Content translation</td>
<td>Allows content to be translated into different languages.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Forum</td>
<td>Enables threaded discussions about general topics.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Menu</td>
<td>Allows administrators to customize the site navigation menu.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>OpenID</td>
<td>Allows users to log into your site using OpenID.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Path</td>
<td>Allows users to rename URLs for improved SEO.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Poll</td>
<td>Allows your site to capture votes on different topics in the form of multiple choice questions.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Profile</td>
<td>Supports configurable user profiles.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Search</td>
<td>Enables site-wide keyword searching.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Statistics</td>
<td>Logs access statistics for your site.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Taxonomy</td>
<td>Enables the categorization of content.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tracker</td>
<td>Enables tracking of recent posts for users.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Trigger</td>
<td>Enables actions to be fired on certain system events, such as when new content is created.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h4>Community Modules</h4>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Administration Menu</td>
<td>Renders a menu tree for administrative purposes as dropdown menu at the top of window.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Advanced Help</td>
<td>Provides context sensitive online help for modules, including Views.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Calendar</td>
<td>Displays any Views or CCK date fields in calendar formats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CCK (Content Construction Kit)</td>
<td>Enables the creation of custom content types without programming.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Content</td>
<td>Allows administrators to define new content types.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Content Copy</td>
<td>Enables ability to import/export field definitions.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Content Permissions</td>
<td>Set field-level permissions for CCK fields.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Date</td>
<td>Define date/time field type.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Fieldgroup</td>
<td>Create field groups for CCK fields.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Filefield</td>
<td>Defines a file field type.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>ImageField</td>
<td>Defines an image field type.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Link</td>
<td>Defines a URL field type.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Node Reference</td>
<td>Defines a field type for referencing one node from another.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Number</td>
<td>Defines numeric field types.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Option Widgets</td>
<td>Defines selection, check box and radio button widgets for text and numeric fields.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Text</td>
<td>Defines simple text field types.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>User Reference</td>
<td>Defines a field type for referencing a user from a node.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Comment notify</td>
<td>Sends notification e-mails to visitors about new comments on pages where they have commented.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Fivestar</td>
<td>A simple five-star voting widget for nodes.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Google Analytics</td>
<td>Adds Google Analytics javascript tracking code to all your site's pages.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Image</td>
<td>Allows uploading, resizing and viewing of images.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Image Attach</td>
<td>Allows easy attaching of image nodes to other content types.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Image Gallery</td>
<td>Allows sorting and displaying of image galleries based on categories.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Image Import</td>
<td>Allows batches of images to be imported from a directory on the server.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>ImageMagick Advanced Options</td>
<td>Adds advanced options to the ImageMagick image toolkit.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Image Assist</td>
<td>Enables users to upload and insert inline images into posts.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ImageAPI</td>
<td>Provides ImageAPI supporting multiple toolkits.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ImageCache</td>
<td>Allows you to dynamically manipulate and cache images.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lightbox</td>
<td>Used to overlay images on the current page.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Markdown filter</td>
<td>Allows content to be submitted using Markdown syntax.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mollom</td>
<td>Protects against comment and contact form spam.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Pathauto</td>
<td>Provides a mechanism for modules to automatically generate aliases for the content they manage.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Printer, e-mail and PDF versions</td>
<td>Generates printer-friendly and PDF versions of pages, and “send to a friend” email functionality.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tagadelic</td>
<td>Makes weighted tag clouds from your taxonomy terms.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Token</td>
<td>Provides a shared API for replacement of textual placeholders with actual data.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Views</td>
<td>Create customized lists and queries from your database.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Views Exporter</td>
<td>Allows exporting multiple views at once.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Views UI</td>
<td>Administrative interface to create and edit views.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Voting API</td>
<td>Provides a shared voting API for other modules.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Webform</td>
<td>Enables creation of questionnaires, contact or request/register forms, surveys, and polls.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h4>Acquia Network Modules</h4>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Acquia Agent</td>
<td>Allows Acquia Drupal to securely communicate with the Acquia Network and check for updates.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Acquia Site Information</td>
<td>Sends site profile including platform, module, and theme information to the Acquia Network to facilitate support and update notifications.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia11.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" /></dt>
</dl>
Acquia have also provided two great starter themes from TopNotchThemes that are included with their distribution.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia12.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" />
Acquia is really designed to make the best use of Drupal and the Acquia Network which monitors the site, incorporates spam protection functionality and incorporates Acquia Search functionality to the site. Rates are quite reasonable and range from $199/yr to $8000/yr depending on your requirements. More details on the pricing and what you get with each package is available here:<a href="https://acquia.com/product-matrix" target="_blank"> https://acquia.com/product-matrix</a>
There is also a free trial available at the same location that allows you to test out the Acquia Network fully for 30 days.
<div class="mceTemp">
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/acquia14.jpg" alt="Acquia Drupal Review" /></dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>
Acquia is a great step forward for Drupal and seems to fit in well with a common trend that open source projects are starting to lean towards. It's always a great idea to offer more than one option for people. WordPress has AutoMattic, Elgg has their commercial venture and Acquia has theirs. We're sure that we're bound to see more and more projects starting to follow suit as these types of ventures allow open source projects to offer additional income generating services to those interested while still staying true to the open source model.
For the cost that Acquia runs, it's really rather silly to not go this route if you are planning to run a site that expects to draw any reasonable amount of traffic. While it's true that you can make it happen on your own if you really want to, for the price Acquia charges, you get experts and the services the network offers really can't be beat.
Check out Acquia here: <a href="http://acquia.com" target="_blank">Acquia Website</a>

</div>

Acquia Drupal Review

In an effort to make things easier for those searching for resources for Drupal, we decided to put together a list of known resources broken down by category.
Hopefully this will provide a solid starting point for future Drupal users.
When it comes to Drupal Theme sites there are quite a few that haven't updated in ages and show the same themes that Drupal.org lists in hopes of gaining traffic. We will do our best to exclude those ones here in order to prevent you from having to waste your time seeing the same stuff over and over again.
<h4>Drupal Themes – Free</h4>
<a href="http://drupal.org/project/Themes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal.org Themes Section</a> This section is updated regularly with new theme submissions.
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/free-drupal-themes.php" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TemplateMonster</a> A small selection of free drupal offerings.
<a href="http://www.siteground.com/drupal-hosting/drupal-themes.htm" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Siteground – Drupal Themes</a> Siteground has a few original drupal themes for download.
<a href="http://www.freecmstemplates.com/drupal.php" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Free CMS Templates</a> Has 5 or 6 free drupal templates for download.
<a href="http://www.drupalmaster.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Master</a> A reasonable selection of around 10 or so drupal themes.
<a href="http://13jupiters.com/free-drupal-themes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">13jupiters</a> Two free Drupal 5.x themes
<h4>Drupal Themes – Commercial</h4>
<a href="http://TopNotchThemes.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TopNotchThemes.com – Commercial Drupal Themes </a>A nice collection of Drupal Themes. They are all commercial and a bit on the expensive side but still quite nice.
<a href="http://worthapost.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Worthapost </a>Has a nice selection of Commercial Drupal themes. Good for magazine/news sites.
<a href="http://themeshark.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Themeshark</a> Some commercial drupal themes. Some of the colors are pretty ghastly but hey, take what you can get right?
<a href="http://www.osskins.com/main/category/drupal/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OSSkins</a> 1 or 2 free themes mixed in with their collection of commercial offerings.
<a href="http://www.artisteer.com/?p=home" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Artisteer Drupal Theme Generator</a> A theme generator for Drupal
<a href="http://www.itemplater.com/drupalthemes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">iTemplater</a> A very nice collection of reasonably priced Drupal themes.
<a href="http://www.cmslounge.com/templates/drupal-6-themes.html" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CMS Lounge</a> Another nice collection of well priced Drupal themes.
<a href="http://fordrupal.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">forDrupal</a> Currently only has a single premium theme but it's a nice one. Here's hoping they expand and do more.
<h4>Drupal Resources</h4>
<a href="http://gotdrupal.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">GotDrupal</a> Tons of excellent Drupal Videos. One of the best resources out there.
<a href="http://lullabot.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lullabot</a> Probably the single most well known group of Drupal developers other than the core team themselves. Tons of great resources and articles on their site as well.
<a href="http://acquia.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Acquia</a> Home of the commercial distribution of Drupal and a number of resources and addons.
<a href="http://www.drupaldude.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Dude</a> A good site with a number of articles and videos.
<a href="http://drupaldojo.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Dojo</a> A number of screencasts to help Drupalers.
<a href="http://learnbythedrop.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Learn by the Drop</a> A place to learn Drupal
Do you have others that should be added? Let us know in the comments below and we ‘ll take a look.

Drupal Theme Sites and Drupal Resources List

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There are way too many extensions in the Joomla directory to truly make a Top 10 list since so many of them are excellent.
We do, however, have some favourite we thought we'd share in order to help them get some more exposure.
Here they are in no particular order or ranking:
#1 – JomSocial 
JomSocial is an excellent addon reminiscent of Community Builder in that it provides some very cool add on functionality that turns Joomla! into a more social environment. JomSocial has quite a few options and we find it a bit more attractive in that it seems to blend well into the system and provide for a more attractive look.
<img style="max-width:489px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/splash_image_2.png" alt="jomsocial" />

Our Top 10 Favourite Joomla Extensions

SocialEngine has been around for a few and we've enjoyed trying it out and seeing it develop into a more and more powerful system as the years go by. We decided to share the experience with our readers and show you the true power this system possesses. If you are looking for a system that's affordable and works well as a social networking product.. then this is definitely a very solid choice and one of the better options on the market today. It's also very reasonably priced at about $250 for a license. Let's examine it in today's SocialEngine Review
Here's how the install process looks for those interested:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine1.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Now that you have your login information, you can proceed to the control panel and get started by playing around with it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine4.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Above you can see the default look of the system before you do any modifications. Let's create an account and play a bit shall we?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine6.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
SocialEngine also has a number of plugins which can be installed and configured for use. Plugins are available for between $30 to $50  depending on the plugin. In this case, we have all of the plugins that are not third party.
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine8.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" /></dt>
</dl>
There is some pretty amazing functionality built into SocialEngine. Let's install some of the plugins and see how they work/look.
Here is the compose screen from the blog editor. once installed, it's fully functional and works very well. Looks like it uses TinyMCE by default.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-blog.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
Here is a screenshot of the classifieds section (once the module has been installed). This particular module is a great way to monetize your site as well should you choose.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-classified.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
This plugin is for music uploads. One comment on it would be that it lacks an effective admin entry and there doesn't appear to be an easy way to modify the number of files or file sizes (that I could find).
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-music.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" />
And finally, the last plugin we tested was the videos plugin. It works beautifully with Youtube and uploads.
<div class="mceTemp">
<dl>
<dt><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/socialengine-video.png" alt="SocialEngine Review" /></dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>
Overall, We'd say this is one heck of a great collection of modules and software that can be used to put together one heck of a killer social network.
It's easy to theme and easy to customize as well so you can create your own unique look without much effort. For the cost they are charging for this, you could put together an amazingly well equipped social network with very minimal effort.
The admin panel is incredibly straight forward and simple as well.
The SocialEngine team has done an outstanding job on this great product. It's no wonder it has such a large number of users.
<a href="/social-engine" target="_blank">Check out SocialEngine</a>

</div>

SocialEngine Review - Is it Good Enough for your Social Network?

Today we're going to expose you to a new and fast cms called SkyBlueCanvas in this SkyBlueCanvas Review. This little content management system has a lot of gusto and provides an easy to use interface. It is small, open source and best of all, free.
Let's take a look at the install.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb1.png" />
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb3.png" />
I wasn't too keen on seeing an advertisement on the end screen, but in the same aspect, I can understand that open source projects usually are running on the steam of a few developers who do not get paid. I suppose this is one method of trying to earn a few bucks.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb5.png" />
Above you can see the default look of the website once it's installed.
<img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb7.png" />
As you can see, the editor is pretty simple and straight forward.
<dl>
<dt><img alt="SkyBlueCanvas Review" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sb9.png" /></dt>
<dd> </dd>
</dl>
The included meta page is nice a well, and allows full control over SEO functions and RSS inclusion. (nice touch).
As you can see, this system is very easy to use and incredibly straight forward. We recommend this for anyone looking for a simple and easy management interface for their website.
You can find more about it here: <a href="http://www.skybluecanvas.com">SkyBlueCanvas</a>

SkyBlueCanvas Review - Point Click Publish.

SilverStripe, originally cofounded by Sigurd Magnusson is a small CMS with incredible potential. Despite the amount of competition in the Content Management market, they have managed to continue to maintain a steady flow of new projects such as the Democratic National Convention which chose their CMS as its choice to host its website, as well as having recently won the 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award. Today, we bring you our SilverStripe CMS Review!
In their latest release, they promise the addition of the increasingly popular Mollom (the SPAM fighting company founded by Drupals' Dries Buytaert) as well as some very nice improvements to its SEO functionality. We've been meaning to do a review of this system for quite some time, but chose to wait for this release.
<h3>The Installation</h3>
Ladies and Gentleman, be prepared for the worlds longest screenshot. Beginning the SilverStripe install, we are presented with the following ‘all-in-one' screen:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe1.png" alt=" " /> So we made our selections and clicked on the Install SilverStripe button and off went the installer:
And ladies and gentleman, thats all their is to the installation process. Amazingly, SilverStripe has managed to create the fastest installation we have ever seen of a CMS including that of the venerable WordPress. That is, indeed, something pretty remarkable. We can recall previous releases that we've tested being more involved but it's definitely nice to see that the SilverStripe team has put forth such a solid amount of effort towards making this an easy to install system.
<h3>Post Installation</h3>
There have been some other notable changes as well like the addition of the “click here to delete installation files” option, which is something we've been mentioning and asking for from all CMS' for quite some time. It would appear that SilverStripe has spent a good amount of time listening to people and their suggestions. Kudos to them for this simple, yet time saving addition:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe3.png" alt=" " /> Once we chose to delete our install files, we were offered the option to enter the CMS itself and take a look at the administrative interface.Upon choosing this option, we also made note that it appears SilverStripe has worked to improve the load times required by their admin engine as it seemed faster than previous versions.
I've always liked the SilverStripe admin engine, I find it very appealing and well organize:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe5.png" alt=" " /> SilverStripe is different from other CMS platforms we've used in that it separates themes and widgets completely from the CMS. Meaning, installation typically involves grabbing an extension from http://silverstripe.org/extending-silverstripe/ and uploading it to your site directory and flushing the database. This may sound more complicated than it is, but believe me, it's very simple.Each page also has a tab for Metadata which allows you to instantly edit page titles, keywords, url and descriptions directly. You can even create redirector pages with the click of a button, which is another nice addition.Media management is also very simple, just upload your files from the Files and Images tab and you can change and preview details on each of them directly from there with a few simple clicks.Comments can be managed from their own screen and viewed by Approved or Spam flags with minimal effort.Creating and editing Security groups and individual users is very very simple with this system. It gives you complete control over individual permissions:
And it doesn't stop there, you can tell they have put a lot of thought into security because they've even gone so far as to add  restriction of accounts based on IP address, as you can see here:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/silverstripe7.png" alt=" " />
There help system is also very good with a quick click you are on their help site with a fully searchable database of instructions. The forum is well administered and active with fast replies and they have a nice, close knit community of users who don't just use SilverStripe, but promote it and actively engage in the forums.
Overall, it's an exceptional system worthy of the attention its been getting. SilverStripe is not just a the little CMS from New Zealand, but a strong competitor and with their continuing efforts towards improvements, it wouldn't surprise us at all if in a few years they became a top contender in the Open Source market.
Homepage: <a href="http://silverstripe.org" target="_blank">http://silverstripe.org</a>
Corporate Presence: <a href="http://silverstripe.com" target="_blank">http://silverstripe.com</a>

SilverStripe CMS Review - The Open Source CMS from New Zealand

<a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Feed.Us</a> is new and unique way of pulling and publishing RSS feeds from various sources to anywhere. It functions on tons of platforms and essentially works by pre-caching the RSS feed to a local file and then displaying it as needed.
We took some time to sit down with <a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rick Stratton</a>, founder of the project and get into the nitty gritty details.
CC: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
RS: I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After college (1995), I worked for NBC and the USA Today in Washington DC on early web-related ventures. Eventually landed a job as a webmaster for a large outdoor company and started building some basic web publishing applications.
Which lead to a dotcom in 1999, Guitar.com.
We put together what could be called a social networking site for musicians. I helped create our own CMS, on the design side. When that company fell on hard times, we bought a copy of the software and started a company to do web projects for newspapers. That was called 1871 Media.
1871 Media sold in 2007 to a company called uxCast.com. 1871 was fine, but it wasn't great. Our main problem was that we were building, designing websites and then also building/managing a CMS for those sites. We realized we couldn't do either very well. That's how we started thinking about Feed.Us.
CC: Now, you mentioned that 1871 sold to uxCast.com in '07. What is your current role within that firm?
RS: Once we sold, I went on my own for Feed.Us. Our CTO of Feed.Us was also the CTO of 1871 Media.
CC: What was the initial idea behind the concept for Feed.Us? Something must have triggered you to purchase the domain.. what was your first idea for use?
RS: I'm not a developer and when we had projects at 1871 that were small and quick, I used to hack some stuff together using RSS feeds and javascript. It dawned on me that a very light weight CMS that created feeds could be used to make websites very quickly.
And again, we always thought that the CMS at 1871 Media limited the design and construction of the websites. We realized early on that the CMS could be and should be separated from the structure of the website. I was basically “feeding” content to websites. That was the main impetus of Feed.Us.
Plus the domain name was for resale for $300.
CC: In a previous interview of yours, you mentioned that your partner basically dreamed up the idea of the current Feed.Us Model.. perhaps you can take us through that?
RS: The first version of Feed.us basically used a javascript widget and some CSS to put content on “outside” (not hosted by us) websites. There are a number of problems with this, but the biggest is that google can't see content within a javascript. It's a dealbreaker. But John Welborn, our CTO, had a dream about using a caching system as a way to download content to a local file.
And our “FeedUs Grabber” system was born. It loads content into webpages via one local file and two lines of code.
CC: For the less technical, can you give us an example of how this may be used on a traditional website.
RS: Feed.Us is built to work with CSS and will work on PHP or ASP or ASP.net or even Ruby on Rails. So you don't need to download and install the CMS software. You build a site in CSS and then make it into PHP, for example. Then just upload one Feed.Us file on your server.
Then within Feed.Us, we have a series of drop downs that allow you to create two lines of code that can be copied/pasted into your php files. That code will then pull in the dynamic content.
CSS is great to work with. It's so easy to read. You don't need to learn a new process or a new system. Also there's nothing to download/unpack/install/update.
CC: Do you have a live example somewhere of an implementation?
RS: It works nicely as a CMS, but the customers that we're going to have are probably going to use us for syndication rather than CMS. One site in particular, <a href="http://www.winetweets.com/">www.winetweets.com</a> is a good example because it's a Twitter “bot” website and it's built in php and uses some custom code to download tweets from Twitter. But it uses Feed.Us just for one area of content management.
CC: How do you plan to make money from Feed.Us? What is your business model?
RS: We're about to launch. Feed.Us will have a free, simple component. Then we'll have three pay plans that will be signup and pay us monthly. Plans will depend on demand and storage and cost between $25-$100 per month. But we'll sell a customized version of Feed.Us that will be more expensive. With Feed.Us, someone could make their own private label niche CMS or someone could syndicate all their content to other websites via our system.
We're working on a few projects for large publishers where we import their content from RSS or XML and then they can provide that content to their partner websites via javascript widget or serverside widget. Then these publishers can publish and control content on 100s or 1000s of websites very easily, and put ads on those sites as well. I think that is where we will make a business, rather than trying to compete with all the other great CMSes.
CC: When is the launch date scheduled for ?
RS: We're past our deadline. Which is mainly my fault because I keep moving the goalposts. Our updated version is due to all of our current, beta customers next week. Then we need to finish all the help stuff we can and get the payment system finished.
Meanwhile we've been adding ‘beta' customers and working on projects… so we're like partially launched. I don't want people to sign up and be frustrated. I want it to work really well when people signup on their own. That's the key.
CC: Any major players on board yet or still working on that?
RS: Not officially. But we've got two large newspapers demoing right now. But if anyone is interested, they can contact me and we'll put them through a demo and help setup the project if they want/need it!
We have 12 paying customers. And Feed.Us is working on over 100 sites now.
CC: What separates feed.us from something like just importing rss feeds using wordpress plugins?
RS: There are plugins for Drupal and for WordPress that probably do similar stuff but you can't put that stuff anywhere – it has to installed, then setup and the site has to have wordpress. Feed.Us will work on any site. It'll work within other CMSes
CC: I assume speed wise it performs well?
RS: Speed wise, we think it's superior. My partner/CTO has built some huge sites, so we have a lot of experience. But the key is that it is completely cached and it's just CSS and a local text file. There's no database running locally, etc.
CC: If someone wants to get a hold of you or is interested in the project, how can they do so?
RS: email – rick@feed.us
CC: Thanks for your time, Rick. We look forward to talking again in the future.
RS: Thanks Mike.

Feed.Us - An Introduction and an Interview with Rick Stratton

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