I've registered a domain name and found a host where I have a choice of xoops, nukes, mambo and a few others. I have a personal site (http://www.mydandelionpatch.com) that I hand coded. I've never used any of these content managers before.

My co-worker uses phpnuke so I know I can go to him for help with that. However, he has admitted security issues with it so I am hesitant to use it. XOOPS looks like it might be a good alternative which is why I'm here.

What is the learning curve with xoops? Will I be able to do a forum and multiple blogs? Is there a lot of help available here? I'd hang out here to monitor the forum but I'd like to get up and running with the site asap.

Also, what about themes and layout? Will I be able to download free ones? The site I'm doing is for addicts. My son and one of his friends just returned from rehab and they got the idea to form an online community for addicts and co-dependants. There is virtually nothing in our area for addicts yet we have a heroin problem that spans every age group and economic level. (Politicians have taken an oath of denial regarding our drug problem here.) Sorry to ramble but I'm quite passionate about this. My son just turned 16 and started using at 13. Scary.

Anyway, are there free themes available for xoops? Will a custom theme cost about the same as a php nuke theme? I'm doing this out of my own pocket.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks bunches!

Marisa

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The learning curve of XOOPS is extremely mild. Unless you're on a T3 line, it takes less time to install XOOPS than it takes to upload it. There are several Wiki/Blog modules available for Xoops, and through the use of a little bit of php, you can wrap many conventional Blogs with the XOOPS look. Help??? Ther's a ton of it here. The XOOPS community is large, and responsive. If you can't get help here, there's several other sites dedicated to helping XOOPS users, just check the links section. Usually though, most questions are answered promply righ here on the XOOPS forum.

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I certainly understand your passion. To answer your question, there are well over 200 freely downloadable themes available for Xoops. Just check out the Sourceforge links to the right. Furthermore, XOOPS uses very basic html with only a little php mixed in its themes. If you are familiar with coding, it shouldn't take long at all to pick up creating your own themes.

The best advise I can give you is for you to check out the downloads section, the links section and the direct links on the left and right side of this site. XOOPS can do virtually anything you want it to do.

In addition to the free templates, there are in excess of 200 free modules available as well. Trust me, I have all the themes and modules downloaded on my hard drive.

In a nutshell, you won't find a better CMS. The best part is that for most people, unless you want to pay for a custom theme or module, you'll never have to kick out one penny for your XOOPS site. Donations to XOOPS are always welcome, but not required.

Happy Xoopsing!

My advice, is download it and install it in a folder called /xoops or something else to your likeing and give it a test run. (We'll even help you move it to your site root when you feel ready to go live!) While your testing your site, you can still keep your hand coded site in the web root without people seeing what your doing in the background while you set up your XOOPS Powered site. You will find it the most user friendly and secure CMS to date. Take your time navigating through the admin controls. It may seem daunting at first, but in no time you will have a hang of the system enough to install and load up new modules from here on the site and abroad.

In time, you will also find the member base here at XOOPS to be one of the most dynamic group of people on the web. Everyone without exception is a great help to one another with support and feedback. Always feel free to come here and post your questions. Don't forget the search feature on the site here at XOOPS. You will find most if not all of your answers have been asked already. By all mean don't let that discourage you from posting your own questions!

You will find the codeing in XOOPS to be clean and very easy to modify. Overall, you can get themes from just about anywhere. For a site like yours, I would look for something warm and inviting. White may be too sterilised looking and black would be too depressing. Look for a neutral colored theme. My first recommendation is http://www.incama.nl. Dave does a very wonderfull job and also provides some 3rd party themes that are also very good. Also check out DCDezines in my signature, there are is one there that I really like a lot.

Since you are accustomed to coding in html, you will find the theme.html files to be very easy to edit to suit to your own need for logo's and such. All themes come with a .css file for fonts, colors and the like. Over time, you will learn how powerfull the theme system is. Once you get more comfortable, you will also learn how easy it is to modify the templates. Templates are like themes, they tell the system how to display a certain block through the use of tables and smarty. Don't worry if this confuses you right now, in time you will understand, I promise! Just be sure to check out JackJ's excellent tutorial on how to use XOOPS. Following that, you can also go http://docs.xoops.org for tons of help and informaion on the system as you grow more accustomed to the interface and the system features. I am confident that once you understand the system, you will never want to hand code html again, nor use another Content Management System.

Making the move from hand coding html to a powerful system like XOOPS is very easy. In time you will be glad you made the move as you gain more confidence in the system. Don't get rid of those old html files just yet though. Yes, there are even ways to wrap your own content into the system to make it appear seamless!

Remember, the entire community here at XOOPS, over 20,000 strong, are very helpful and supportive. No other community in my experience shares the sense of family like we all do here at XOOPS.

Let me be the first to welcome you to our corner of the internet globe!

Welcome aboard, and Happy XOOPSing!

I would most definatly reccomend XOOPS to you, at first I was a bit bewildered by it, but it took me know time at all to get my full site up and running with xoops, I dont know php or anything like that and I can get by fine with basic html(for custom blocks and stuff).

The forum that comes with Xoops, newBB is easy to set up and use and the news module is ideal for blogging to there are also blog modules available to.

There are tons of free thems available and they are all high qaulity and they are pretty easy to modify too, I sometimes modify the css for diffrent colors or mod the images a bit to suit my needs.

heres some links to free themes:
ww.7dana.com
http://www.xoopsit.net(tons of themes on there)
http://www.montisarts.com(excellent gamer styled themes but can be used for otehr type of sites to)

There is tons more links in the mylinks section.

And yes theres plenty of help here many people have helped me with my probs everyone is pretty friendly, good community, good help.

Enjoy Xoops, its an Awsome CMS.

Thank you all so much!

After reading your very welcoming words and enthusiastic responses, I'm convinced that this is the CMS for me! I feel much better now.

BTW, my original site that I linked will stay the same. I've registered a new domain, http://www.dontpickup.com. I'm hosting it at hosting-pp.com. I just have a test page up right now, so I could see when it went live. I'll be checking out the links to themes and layouts so I can find one that suits my son. I'm hoping that he gets very involved in this. (He picked out the domain name.) I've got 6 kids and not one of them does more than look for cars on ebay or play at barbie.com.

I'm very happy to hear that tweaking the themes is so easy. I'm pretty good with CSS so this should be a snap!

Thanks for welcoming me here. Once I get good at this and get my site up and running, I hope to be back to offer help, too.

Marisa