What CMS do I need?

[Elihu5991]

My friends and I are building a site and are going to use Joomla. But before I delve into Joomla, I was wondering there are better alternatives. I would like Free and Commercial versions with comparisons and pricing (if it costs). The sort of site we're going to make are like CNet, Mashable, CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal - Any of the really big sites. I would also like it to be really be extensible if possible, as we have plans to grow our site.

Whilst I'm at it, what are the best hosts you recommend? One that sticks to their word(if they say unlimited space and space, IT IS unlimited), extremely fast (must be able to handle very large traffic - Facebook style).

Thankyou so much for your help.

[TaoistTotty]

I would suggest trying Umbraco.

It is very user, developer and designer friendly, can be easily expanded and the community support is second to none.

[Elihu5991]

How can I easily expand it? You have to pay to get anything decent/close to Joomla. I can't even rebrand it without paying and I see no community section; barely open-source. What developer section?

Look, I'm not trying to be rude at all, its just its completely different to what you described it as? This is what I was not hoping/expecting for.

Do have any others? Thankyou very much for your help though, I may be able to use it in the future XD

[TaoistTotty]

If you are looking for the compunity section try http://our.umbraco.org/forum

Have you had a look at any of the following:

DotNetNuke

Drupal

Perch

ExpressionEngine

[maxelcat]

I have used joomla for about 15 sites now. I think its great!
I haven't a lot of experience of any other cms, apart from proprietory designed ones (which in my expereince aren't as good as joomla) and wordpress (which maybe doesn't count).

I have yet to find anything that a client wants that I haven't been able to do in joomla. However, whichever you use make sure you follow the security advice carefully!!!

[Elihu5991]

So is it possible to create a site like CNet, Mashable, Ney York Times, Wall Street Journal? Can I create forums (probably need pulgins of some sort), what sort of themes? Thanks to all and maxelcat.

[zuchri]

well, FYI Mashable is using wordpress, it's good for fast paced sites, forum function in wordpress can be added with bbpress, there is even social layer extension called buddy press, eventually it depends on your need

[trustedweb]

Joomla is great, and there are 100s of plugins for it, however it really depends on what your website needs.

What you should do, is find ALL the plugins that you will initially need, and test them out, sometimes they may not work as promised which will lead to quite a bit of frustration.

I would also suggest looking at WordPress and plugins, I have worked with WordPress and Joomla extensively, and I can tell you my clients generally prefer WordPress.

Hosting companies - We love HostGator, their uptime is great.
and they do have various plans (if you are looking for facebook style traffic, you may need a dedicated server)

Visit http://php.opensourcecms.com/ to go through a few demos - there are always new applications coming out.

Good Luck.

[maxelcat]

I agree - it depends on your needs. For a couple of site we have have built them in joomla and then skinned a wordpress to look identical - we didn't feel that joomla had a satisfactory blog component.

Be careful with plugins - we had quite a hacking situation that was cuased by using a free, somewhat badly written pluing. My advice - is as far as possible buy plugins, and like I said -FOLLOW THE SECURITY ADVICE.

As to themes, I would never buy an off the shelf one - and having created themes for both I think WP is perhas easier. However, I have yet ot find anything that I couldn't do that I wanted to in joomla (apart from blog!) so have tended to stick with joomla.

[LucasAnderson]

It does depend on your needs but I have to throw in a vote for Concrete5. Bloated content management systems like Joomla or Drupal are terrible for the end-user experience and not very developer friendly. Concrete5 is a new powerful CMS that is easy for developers and even easier for end-users. It works on a in-context editing model so you make changes as you're browsing your site. Try a demo of it here: http://bit.ly/concrete5cms

[Elihu5991]

Yes, I would like to be an article/blogging style. Do ou know how I could skin the look and feel of WP yet the functionality of Joomla? How do I create themes? Because we need a certain look that I may not even find.

The link didn't take me to the demo, just the home page.

Thankyou all so much

[loolazoola]

I would recommend using Drupal

[Elihu5991]

Thankyou so much LucaAnderson. It looks good and all, but they rip you off with the addons, we don't have that sort of money to start off with. Thankyou though.

Please suggest more suggestions everyone

[ecmcircle]

hi,
By using joomla you don't care about server resources and dont need running (or planning to to run) only one or max a couple of sites you don't need user groups & permissions..

thanks..