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I'm currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. I need to identify a new CMS for my company but I am struggling (we're a digital agency and produce tens of websites a year of varying sizes for retained clients.)

We currently use MySource Matrix (which is a blackbox, no technical documentation) as our CMS and the Zend Framework for our applications.

My requirements are that templates are available via FTP only so they can be stored in an external VCS and edited in an IDE. Templates should have a templating language like smarty so pure PHP cannot be misused in them. It would be good if we could continue to develop in a 90% ZF way. If the CMS comes with a reasonable framework then we would embrace it to drive synergies between CMS projects and other bespoke applications projects.

I'm not satisfied that either Drupal or EE solve my first point. Drupal enforces FTP templates but allows PHP to be entered in templates. I don't know how compatable the smarty engine module is (it hasn't been updated since 2007). EE has a reasonable template syntax but doesn't enforce maintenance via FTP (you can easily edit the template via the browser and break external version control.) My second point is not ideal either. Drupal and ZF 2 are at polar opposites of the programming spectrum. EE has CodeIgniter but on initial inspection it's very light and we'd largely still use ZF to the extent that we may as well not use CI.

Other issues are that of functionality. Drupal looks superior on this front. It's core has most features that we require. To use EE we'd have to install a few paid for add-ons before we start (templating, wysiwyg and taxonomy.)

Noting my two requirements (coming from a ZF background and wanting synergies and forcing FTP for templates that don't allow PHP) can anyone help me make a decision between the two and or suggest another CMS that might be better suited.

In terms of suggesting another CMS, it must have a strong community, documentation, be pretty much be open-source and have a number of high-profile websites built upon it.

Simon
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  • Smarty allows PHP, too. `{php} echo "PHP'ed"; {/php}`. – Shef Jul 22 '11 at 14:40
  • True but you can disable that in the config, likewise with EE's engine. – Simon Jul 22 '11 at 14:49
  • Smarty was updated Jun 3 las time, version 3.0.8, Anyway it sounds like you should be looking at Django, is not PHP but it has what you are asking for. – ramono Jul 22 '11 at 14:50
  • @ramono I was talking about the Drupal Theme Engine that implements Smarty, not the core project... See http://drupal.org/project/smarty – Simon Jul 22 '11 at 15:00
  • As far as FTP templates go in EE, I say this: You could create member groups that don't allow access to the control panel's Template Manager, thereby forcing all users (besides your superadmin account) to edit via FTP. – Ray Brown Jul 22 '11 at 20:38
  • Also, regarding EE's commercial add-on market: while it may seem too expensive to purchase add-ons for what may seem like core features, these add-ons help keep EE's core lightweight. They can also help increase the quality of EE's add-ons, since those sales drive additional development and product support. – Ray Brown Jul 22 '11 at 20:42
  • @Bitmanic thanks for both comments. EE certainly has the edge for me at the moment. – Simon Jul 24 '11 at 16:00

2 Answers2

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We ended up going for EE. Thanks @Bitmanic for your advice.

Simon
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how about tomatoCMS: http://www.tomatocms.com ? it is coded in ZF and uses 960gs. it is very complete and very simple at the same time, lots of features and easily to extend, it gave us excellent results here :)

marcelog
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  • Thanks for the link. I had stumbled across this one before but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have a large enough community and user base. Technically it looks very promising though. – Simon Jul 22 '11 at 17:06
  • That's right. This was an issue for us as well. We decided to take the risk anyway, because no other CMS fit our requirements (just like in your case, our needs were very similar). So far, so good, though. We haven't had any issues at all, and since we use ZF here for some stuff, it was trivial to extend it with new widgets (note that i'm not talking about patches, but just extending its widgets and adding some very specific new modules, otherwise, its shipped with a lot of common features you'd expect in a top quality cms). just my 2 cents :) – marcelog Jul 22 '11 at 17:12