There's a new post on Lukas Smith's blog where he talks about frameworks, phpBB's decision and building "gold on top of crap".

See the various symfony CMS solutions are an example of how wrong things can go. We now have several solutions whose architectural differences are either cosmetic or simply bad design decisions probably a result of trying to invent things in the small ecosystem of a company project team. So I was very happy to hear then that phpBB will adopt Symfony 2 for their next version. Hopefully this will become a role model for others.

He talks about how several of the popular CMS systems these days have worked harder on their external functionality than on the base (where they need the most work). He also looks towards a future where there are good, solid CMS solutions and leaders will emerge from the pack and provide quality content management for the PHP masses.

There's also some great discussion in the comments of the post with people who both share and disagree with some of Lukas' thoughts.

Alex Netkachov has a new post for those using one of the popular content management systems out there and who might be looking for some resources to find some good extensions for them.

No matter how long you keep a web site, if you update it frequently, holding a community, or taking care of it in any other way, at any moment idea of changing or improve its functionality may come to your mind. If you are not a software developer then you have two options: find the developer that will do it for you or try to find extension for the CMS of your site that changes it in the way you want.

He offers a few tips on finding the right extension for your site and needs like looking out for extensions that aren't really extensions and checking the release date to make sure it's current. He also includes a few links to some of the larger CMS extension sites for Drupal, WordPress, Blogger, Joomla and DotNetNuke.

If you're new to the world of Drupal and want to get started quickly, consider reading up on these ten tips from Chris Free for a "Drupal 101" on using the highly popular content management system.

You often hear people say that the learning curve for Drupal is steep. They aren't kidding - it is. I remember when I first started Drupaling, I had so many questions [...] diving in to Drupal can be a bit daunting. In an effort to help remedy this, I've thrown together some quick-tips to steer all you beginners in the right direction.

The tips cover simple reminders like "don't forget to ask for help" or "Google it" and more detailed things like a list of basic modules it's usually good to use and to attend Drupal-related events to get out there and get to know fellow Drupal-ers.

PHPBuilder.com has posted what they consider to be the top five content management systems written in PHP including Drupal and Joomla.

With solutions such as the Zend Framework and CodeIgniter making it easier than ever to create complex web applications, it can be tempting to flex your developer muscles and create custom framework-based solutions whenever the opportunity arises. However, the PHP community has also made great strides with another type of web development solution, as the content management system (CMS).

He looks at some of the key features of each and points out some of the more popular sites using them as a backend. He wants to give you a starting point to look into:

• Drupal
• ExpressionEngine
• Joomla
• Silverstripe
• WordPress

New from OurBlogLog.com there's a new post that compares Joomla and Drupal based on their features, ease of use and extensibility.

I've had more than a few conversations recently about which CMS is better. From the Joomla camp I hear, "Joomla is easier. Joomla has a great user interface." From its competitor I hear, "Drupal is more flexible and it has tagging." It's the Pepsi versus Coke debate for open source CMSes.

For the two CMSes there's a list of the good and bad things about each - good on Joomla's side was the easy deployment and versioning of content, good for Drupal was its flexibility and the high profile sites that use it. On the bad side, Joomla has a limitation for one-site-one-install and limited permissions handling. Overall, though, the author found that they both had their strengths and weaknesses and that, if you're shopping around for a CMS, find what fits best for you and your organization.

On the PseudoCoder blog today Matt Curry has posted about his migration from WordPress over to the Croogo CMS.

Why Croogo? Because it's CakePHP based and it was released when I was at my most frustrated with WordPress. I'm really that easy. I wanted something Cake based so it would be easy to tweak. Plus it uses Cake's theme, which I already know, so I was able to convert the old WordPress theme (with a few updates) in about 5 minutes.

There's a simple three step process to make the switch that, fortunately, involves a plugin called Bye_Wordpress for Croogo that makes moving the contents of your blog a lot simpler. There are a few things to watch out for including database encodings, spam protection and there's a bit of code he includes to show how to map your old URLs to their new locations.

Vance Lucas has an opinion on WordPress being named the best Open Source CMS by Packt Publishing recently.

My knee-jerk "how sad is that?" reaction comes not because I don't think WordPress is worthy, but because of what it implies about the state of other open source CMS projects. The reaction comes from the fact that a blogging platform is kicking your CMS's ass in its own category.

He points out that WordPress is, first and foremost, a blogging platform and that it has bridged the gap between blogging tool and CMS so well that it's winning in that category too.

The fact that I can go through literally hundreds of open source content management systems and still end up settling on WordPress because I know it's the only one that won't totally confuse my client is what's sad. Usability and ease of use matter.

In this new post from the IBuildings blog today Ivo Jansch looks at content management systems and how you can start to find that right fit for your and your company/organization.

At the moment, Wikipedia's list of content management systems features 137 unique CMS products. 59 of these are written in PHP. And that's only the ones that Wikipedia finds 'notable', which means these are the ones that have significant usage or large enough communities to be mentioned. [...] The sheer size of the CMS market is interesting when you consider that one of the most frequent questions we get at Ibuildings is: "What CMS do you recommend we use?"

In an experiment in his recent talk (at the IMS conference) he asked the audience which car he should purchase from his list of four. Of course, their answers were wrong because of one fact - no one asked about his requirements.

This is a definite first step to anyone looking for a CMS to fit their needs (or really any kind of software). He also mentions other criteria to consider like cost of ownership, technology required, features and functional requirements.

In his latest post to his blog Lukas Smith looks at what things users and developers seem to hate about most of the content management systems available today (not just PHP-specific either).

This is just a quick start for a brainstorming of what we all hate in todays CMS (I am including portal/community software here as well and I guess most also applies to web shops) software out there. I have written a very small CMS application myself ages ago so I do not have experience in what its really like writing and maintaining a big one. All I know is that its insanely painful to deal with any of them, though if your site is all about having admins managing tons of static content or end users wanting to interact, there is little way around these ugly beasts.

Other "hated things" he mentions include the way that admin settings set stored in databases, the choices most of the software have made on their model layer and the lack of a quality API to extend the base functionality of the application.

As a part of his messy breakup with Drupal for his content management system for a local brewing club he's involved with, Sean Coates has been shopping around for new software. He thought he might have found a possibility in SilverStripe, but ended up disappointed.

The site looks pretty good, the demo - while minimal (which is totally fine by me)-seems to work decently. It made my "to test" list. The bottom line: FWIW, SilverStripe made my "do not recommend" list today. A bunch of people replied asking "why?" This is my response to those people. My intent is not to bash SilverStripe, but to explain how it fell short of my wants and needs, quickly.

He looks at two of the major reasons why he'd suggest avoiding SilverStripe - bad code and issues with the installer.

I could probably fix that problem, and none of the other problems on their own are insurmountable, but combined, they leave me with the impression that the code isn't what I'd like to commit to maintaining. The search continues...