Good Afternoon Everyone;
Let me first start by apologizing to the moderators in advance if this is in the wrong forum but it is php / mysql related and I cannot find a place suitable for this thread. A few weeks back I had a discussion on these forums about creating my own CMS system in php. It was suggested in that thread that I post my progress. To help keep Daniweb clean and clear of over abundant posts I'll keep my updates to this thread alone.
Now let me introduce myself; I am a hard working man from Canada - I have a family and a full time job. Since I was roughly 16-17 years old I have dabbled in web design(all self taught); creating webpages both spectacular and well not so spectacular. I am moddest so I'll tell you that I am alright at css and html; I have completed several programming courses on the basics of php, c++/c, and c#. Quite frankly every week I try and sit down at the computer and spend countless hours researching and playing in php as any good beginner should. Because I live in the country I am surrounded by tractors and cattle instead of libraries where I can easily look up answers to my problems. So with all of that said I would like to state my three purposes of this project:
1)To further my own knowledge of php and mySQL
2)To build a program that works for me
3)To hopefully help other newcomers to php learn from my mistakes and be able to themselves build better programs.
I would love constructive criticism, advice, and resources if you care.
Now I know a lot of people are probably saying to themselves: "Why doesn't this guy just use *insert cms system here* and modify it to his needs?".
I'm sure I'll be asking myself the same question in about a month, however there isn't any fun or anything to be gained by doing that. I have spent the last month and a half planning and ripping apart my idea, it is all pen to paper at this point and I have looked at every angle possible. Not to mention I have worked alot with Joomla, WP, Drupal and although they all had advantages they also came with disadvantages that limited what I want to do.
So what is my goal you ask? To build an advanced CMS, that covers multiple websites and as dynamically as possible outputs content for each site. I aim to make templating easy - using a system similar to Joomla 1.5 but the possibility to dynamically change the content layouts within each page (ie. somebody who doesn't even know how to text on their cellphone should be able to have their front page display a flash header with three columns below it while their next page can be a single column layout with a few clicks of a button). My biggest worry is not implementing features - features will come with time (months maybe even years), my biggest worry is security followed by quality, and lastly usability.