Going through the forums as i tend to do on a fairly regular basis, i quite often come across people saying there should be a CodeIgniter CMS.

I don’t really understand why.

Surely a CI CMS is Expression Engine?

For me the whole point of this framework is to create applications that the creator can understand as they have written them themselves. If i wanted a CMS i would go to joomla or drupal or something.

I was looking at the Seagull framework yesterday just because i came across a link and saw there is some sort of CMS involved there. I wouldn’t go near it with a bargepole. Why build something on top of something i would have to trawl through to understand. I dont think a CI CMS will ever have a user guide as good as the framework itself.

I can understand if you want a basis to write your code onto but if you use a CMS it is someone else’s coding style.

I just dont understand. It seems to me like someone is trying to “put square pegs into round holes”. Cor, never thought i would see myself saying that expression. I dont know whether to be ashamed of myself or not.

Ok I use a CMS when I need a CMS (typo3). But if you want to extend the existing CMS you have to work with the CMS framework. I would rather work with a CMS based on CI, cause I like CI as a framework.
CI has nothing to do with a CMS actually. And should have nothing to do with a CMS. But it still would be very useful to have a CMS based on CI. I doubt that in the near future they will be mature CMS based on CI though.

I understand why people would like to be a CI CMS.
1. Many of them used or still use open-source CMS that comes with different functionality (user management, articles, image galleries).
2. They understand well how CI works.
A CI CMS would mean that they have a CMS they understand and with lots of pre-build feature. The need is understandable.

I have build a CMS on top of CI, but it’s not for general purpose.

I have build a CMS on top of CI, but it’s not for general purpose.

I would be very interested in that. Im planning to write a simple CMS right now and it would be a great learning resource.

Its not for me but for a client. Drupal etc. is too restrictive for the clients needs. this way the client gets exactly what they want and I get to use CI to build it.

miller - 24 November 2006 10:38 AM

2. They understand well how CI works.

are you sure?
i don’t think that there’s too many people in this community that REALLY understand the way CI’s working ...

anyway, is it really that difficult to come up with a CMS all by yourself?
don’t get me wrong but i think a CMS with basic functionality (articles, hierarchy) is not too difficult to code ...

mania - 29 November 2006 01:10 PM

Its not for me but for a client. Drupal etc. is too restrictive for the clients needs. this way the client gets exactly what they want and I get to use CI to build it.

Exactly. EE looks like a good product, but the admin interface is far too complicated for 100% of my clients to use. They pay me to develop custom site management tools that have extremely simple interfaces. If EE could develop an administration interface simple enough that ‘Barb the secretary’ can use it, then I’d use it because it would save me a lot of time and increase my production greatly. However my clients want sites they can manage themselves, and it is just easier for me to develop something that is extremely simple to use than to try to get them to use EE, Drupal, or even Wordpress interfaces.

Exactly. EE looks like a good product, but the admin interface is far too complicated for 100% of my clients to use. They pay me to develop custom site management tools that have extremely simple interfaces. If EE could develop an administration interface simple enough that ‘Barb the secretary’ can use it, then I’d use it because it would save me a lot of time and increase my production greatly.

You can design your own interface.  As a PHP developer you could do crazy things with EE as it is also a framework.  I have been working on some projects and I will show them to you when I am finished.  I think you would be suprised what you can accomplish with EE.

To the original purpose of the thread… I too was interested in an EE CMS when I first started hanging out here from like the beginning, I was the first person that was not a pMachine person to post here.  Since then I have lost my enthusiasm for a CI CMS.  If someone here were to create one I would bet that it wouldn’t do the things I need it to do.

To anyone reading this… if you are looking for a full-on CMS and haven’t had the chance to try out Expression Engine, do yourself a favour and try it.  EE is a brilliant piece of software.  It isn’t “everything to everyone, all the time”, but nothing is.  I’m obviously a big believer in CI, but if I need a CMS, I turn to EE.  I also second manofsteel’s assertion that EE is also a framework.  It comes with a bit more legacy code then CI (of course), but is remarkably robust.

Derek Allard - 29 November 2006 09:32 PM

To anyone reading this… if you are looking for a full-on CMS and haven’t had the chance to try out Expression Engine, do yourself a favour and try it.  EE is a brilliant piece of software.  It isn’t “everything to everyone, all the time”, but nothing is.  I’m obviously a big believer in CI, but if I need a CMS, I turn to EE.  I also second manofsteel’s assertion that EE is also a framework.  It comes with a bit more legacy code then CI (of course), but is remarkably robust.

EE 2.0 is on the way.  I am hoping it will look a lot more like CI from the developer perspective.  This would rock because our love and work in CI would be influencing the CMS that it was extracted from.

I’ve always used Website Baker or Exponent for CMSs, and very good they are too. Exponent is a little more customisable and takes a while to pick it up, and website baker is just straight-forward pages (but you can install lots of addons). It’s what I use for the school site (www.bishopbarrington.net).

audiopleb -

I think we need to clarify some terminology perhaps. I don’t really think so much that people are looking for CI to have a CMS. But rather having a CMS [components] built on top of (and for use with) CI.

CMS’s like EE, provide you with a great set of tools. And then they offer plugins and module to further enhance what you can do with your site. Take EE - you can Blog, do eCommerce, run a Gallery, manage Users and Groups even add a Forum.

Now reverse the logic. Assume you have a CI driven site. Now the client want’s the ability to edit content. Like Blogging. Or they want to add a forum. Yes, you do have the choice to vernagle something with phpBB and WordPress, etc. But you have little control of that code. And customization (templating) is [potentially] different among all those pieces. It can become a nightmare.

What goes into blog software? posts, comments, editors, pingbacks, trackbacks, archiving - what do I know? Forums? What’s needed in a good forum software today? Where do you start? Want to re-invent the wheel again? Or go to 3rd party stuff without support? Perhaps it’d be best to go EE or similar.

So consider that if someone wrote a group of controllers and models or even libraries that implement CMS features, or Blog features or ecommerce features as reusable CI framework components, we could add all this stuff to our apps as we need it, rather than having to decide between EE or CI for a given site.

If what MoS says is true and EE2 will be more like CI I’ll take a look again. I do some where specific work for my clients and I’ve ported all my libraries to CI and adapted the code so that it integrates smoothly with CI syntax in my applications. I’ve [tried] to go through the doco on EE for developing modules and plugins - but man! I’m not a novice but that stuff hard to read. The CI doco is like a 1st grade book by comparison. If I could have ported my libraries to EE plugins, I’d probably be using EE for 50% of my projects because it does have a lot of built in stuff I like. But alas - not at this time.

Another factor that I have personally discussed with other [CI] developers is cost. It’s not an issue for me personally. But EE is not free and many can’t seem to factor the cost into their projects.

My dream app would be EE written in CI so I can just use it when I need it and continue writing any custom stuff in CI. No I would love to pay more than the cost of a full blown EE for that! One MVC framework to know. Batteries included! Hey - I can dream, can’t I?

Drupal is only as restrictive as whom is developing it in my opinion.

Mirage, i think your idea of having CMS specific functionality in CI would be good for some people. I’m sure it would be very helpful. I do think that people are actually looking for a CMS though. They want buttons and wysiwig things.

Myself, i like it just the way it is. Nice and non-specific.

Having a CMS on wiki, or second download possibility could be a good thing, especially if this CMS was made by all of us.
But like most of us said, I prefer that CI keep his actual form. CI CMS in an other workline, good idea

Why would CI need to change at all?