Hi Elle

> I just wanted to learn from your experiences. There are so many CMSs
around, and I know it depends on what your project's requirements are
but wanted to ask how do you select a cms for your project?
> And what are your top three best/favourite/most used CMSs? and if you
feel like it, why?

I've used WordPress and Drupal (mainly Drupal, http://drupal.org).

I'm very impressed by Drupal, particularly from a PHP developer's point of
view. It is very modular and has powerful mechanisms available to modify
the look (via templating) and behaviour (via configuration, 'hooks',
custom modules etc.) so that sites on Drupal can appear radically
different and span a range of functions (blogs, community sites,
ecommerce, intranets, etc.)

Aspects of Drupal that really appeal to me are the taxonomy system,
'clean' URLs, Content Construction Kit and as a developer, the
form-handling and module system are powerful. Drupal has adopted JQuery,
so there's some great AJAX functionality emerging.

> For example: I have one client that would like to:
> 1. Have a members login section where they can order products from a
catalouge

Drupal with ecommerce functionality would be a candidate, but you should
have a good look around. Drupal shines when you want more than just
ecommerce (e.g. community functions), but there are stronger
pure-ecommerce options around.

> 2. Control 3 sites from one interface (if possible)

Drupal can run in multisite mode where one instance of Drupal core can
drive multiple websites (each with their own look and feel, using one
database per site). There would be seperate admin sections for each site
(but they would behave the same). There are various options for sharing
databases, tables etc. between sites, or syndicating content.

> or another example: I have a client that would like to create an online
magazine using a CMS. Which CMS would be ideal for magazine publishing
online (with navigation by article subject, issue or writer)?

Drupal is very strong in publishing and definitely deserves evaluation.
Some resources at http://groups.drupal.org/newspapers-on-drupal
Examples include http://www.snowboard-mag.com/ and http://www.observer.com/

> And then my requirement for the sites to be web standards compliant
(preferably xHTML strict)?

Drupal 5.x's default template (Garland) is XHTML Strict. Most module
output is XHTML. Using the templates you can alter output to suit a
particular doctype, add accessibility etc.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your quest...

Jonathan
http://egressive.com





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