I've got pretty much experience installing CMS systems, all kinds of Wiki and Drupal. Xoops install is just about the same, except for a few confusing statements in the instructions (where to move xoops_libs, etc), but the site does work.

http://pj.freefaculty.org/x

I think this would be easier if the README files supplied with xoops pointed the reader more clearly to the pdf document here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/files/XOOPS Documentation_ Core

In particular, this one is excellent:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/files/XOOPS%20Documentation_%20Core/XOOPS%20Installation%20Guide/XU-002_XOOPS_Installation_Guide_2.5.2.pdf/download


But I can't make much happen in my new site. Your packaging has made it a bit difficult to figure out how to make this work after the installation.

There is a "Navigation" stripe across the top with a cool sideways "pops out" feature, it lists site options to choose like "News" and "Forums" and "Gallery" and "Movies". Awesome, I thought at first. Until I realized...

None of those features were installed. xoops is not provided with those modules. I don't have any news or forum module software installed. Why do those things I don't have show in that Navigation slide out thing?

OK, I get it. I have to go on a module hunt. What should I get? If I had not been through months of module hunting in the Drupal community, this would have spelled doom for me in xoops. Most of the modules on the xoops site say "may not work with current versions" and it appears many new, working versions of modules are not even listed in your site.

I want a wiki? I navigate through your site, see some posts saying simplyWiki is the best, so I install version 1.1 and get some errors in the resulting web pages, so I start googling and find that there is a fixed, mature (monthss old) version 1.2 on a different website, over here:

http://community.?????.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=565&keywords=simplywiki

I want a forum module. The default theme's Navigation points at a module called "newbb", but while looking for that, I find instead it is actually called "cbb" in the modules listing after installation.

Oh, well. I expect I'll make it work. Or keep trying. It seems to me xoops may have a feature I can't get anywhere else: more fine-grained user permission management. I've been really frustrated that MediaWiki won't let me assign pages to particular users, and Drupal's user management system (or, should I say, set of competing paradigms) is very frustrating. xoops looks better.

But I can't say for sure, until I can find the modules that people are supposed to use to create the pages in the first place :)

I feel your pain.
the slidey out thing comes with that particular theme. You will soon find there are a lot of themes with a horizontal menu in various forms, and you will soon find that you need to go to that theme and make a few adjustments to the xotpl/globalnav html file (found in the template section of admin). you will soon see where to make the changes to make it relevant to the modules that you have installed.

Like me , it seems you have used the latest version of xoops and struggling to find modules that work. Im still experimenting, but the content modules you mention you will have fun with (not).

Personally i use "publisher" and "fmcontent" but lots use "news" It took me a while to find out which versions of these actualy work, and some you wont find here, you have to go and do a bit of exploring and playing.

Its confusing, but here's the SourceForge link to the modules directory:
http://xoops.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xoops/XoopsModules/

I use quite a few modules on my 2.5.4 site.
Publisher
NewBB/CBB
Ajax Chat
Tags
TDMDownloads
XIM (instant messenger)
Smallworld (social app)
there's more content, a couple of flash games etc that all work pretty well under 2.5.4.

Quote:

Everyone got some experience with installing CMS such as Media Wiki, MODx etc. knows what is ROOT and outside ROOT. xoops-libs and xoops-data should be outside current installation folder of xoops. Eg. if you installing xoops into public_html/x - then X is root, and outside root is public_html/ or even "for better security" (and not allowed on some hosting providers) outside public_html/.

All working modules can be found here -https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=75
All modules for xoops which requires testing, playing and new maintainers -https://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/files/XOOPS%20Module%20Repository/XOOPS2/

From the 2nd link most modules published from 2012 works fine with current core 2.5.5 RC. Modules which are 2011 and bellow - need tests, corrections and some of them new maintainers.