Re: New CMS Forum

Hi Matthew,

It's a relief to get some positive feedback.  Thanks.

We are supporting this ourselves. It is part of a complex of websites on 
CMS topics.  All works in progress...

http://www.cmsreview.com
http://www.cmsml.org (a project to classify and evaluate CM systems. See 
http://www.cmsreview.com/Reviews/GilbaneReport1.pdf)
http://www.cms-forum.org
http://www.cmswiki.com

Matthew Clapp wrote:

>Bob -
>
>Thank you for putting this together. Are you paying for this out of your own
>pocket (domain name, time, etc)? It's quite a service you're providing.
>
>My 2 Cents: 
>
>1. Drupal is a nice open source CMS. It's pretty weak in the usability area
>and I think that cms-forum is a good example of that. In the current
>iteration it's too confusing. People will probably not keep visiting if it
>remains this way. I think that the site is suffering a little bit from a
>lack of direction. I can't tell what it wants to be when it grows up. It's
>not actually a forum, is it? It's more of a commenting system. I suggest an
>actual forum like phpBB or VBulletin or something like that to run
>discussions.
>
We will consider these criticisms seriously.  I suspect it is our first 
stumbling steps, and not Drupal's fault. We have started another 
experimental Wiki knowledge base for CMS at http://www.cmswiki.com, 
using Tiki.  It too has forum/bb features.  Would you recommend it?

>2. I also wouldn't start my high-level IA from a vendor list. It will
>continue to grow endlessly and it imposes that navigation on your users.
>Certainly a vendor list is a good thing to have, I just wouldn't begin with
>it as my primary nav.
>
I am the editor of the DMOZ catagory on CMS.  It is one of the biggest 
categories, and growing very fast.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Content_Management/.

The other DMOZ editors and I have been struggling with the 
categorization problem for some time.  I would greatly appreciate 
creative suggestions on how to categorize the various systems to make 
the navigation easy for users. (It would help if people making 
suggestions reviewed the state of our work at http://www.cmsreview.com)

But most suggestions so far have proved unworkable, and we may be forced 
to an alpha bar like these:

http://www.cmsreview.com/Proprietary/Directory.html
http://www.cmsreview.com/OpenSource/Directory.html
http://www.cmsreview.com/ASP/Directory.html

In any case, "growing endlessly" is what is now happening in the CMS 
market, and we need to keep up with the growth or we won't be of maximum 
value to those trying to follow the industry, will we?

So please help me design an easy to use interface (ultimately to nearly 
2000 CMS worldwide - at this moment).

>Thanks again for your time and effort.
>
Thanks much to you for the appreciation.

>Matthew Clapp
>[email protected]
>  
>
-- 

Bob Doyle, Editor In Chief
CMS Review
http://www.cmsreview.com
77 Huron Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-876-5678


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