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I don't even know how to begin creating a form, but I will by the end of the weekend.

I appreciate your help, and may ask you to install a module once I figure out what I might want to experiment with. Right now, I'm too ignorant of how XOOPS works to even know what to ask for.

I know I'm beating this into the ground, but I have a couple of other areas of curiosity.

*Does XOOPS easily generate individual item tags and tag clouds?

*Can it generate some sort of "title list," i.e. a table of contents of some sort, for all posts or items in a particular category for easy navigation by titles?

*Does it allow the admin to manage category navigation as desired -- i.e. no restrictions to ascending/descending, chronological, alphabetical, etc?

(As you might expect, all of these questions are answered by Wordpress with a resounding "no.")

I have to say, one reason why I'm moving closer to a decision to go with XOOPS is the friendly, helpful reception I've received on these forums. Thanks, people.

BlueStocking, a PDF version is something I have never thought of. Interesting idea. I was, and am, attracted to a CMS such as XOOPS or Wordpress (which didn't work -- check it out at Iraq Timeline Blog if you're curious, but it isn't anywhere near ready for release and probably never will be) to handle the content. One site I like, ePluribus Media, runs something fairly similar with Scoop and Drupal, but from what I read, I need far more PHP expertise than I have for Drupal or Joomla. Another site I like that's even closer to what I do, Center for Cooperative Research runs on some system I don't recognize. I've asked them which system they use to manage their content.

I asked my site host if he had MySQL and PHP available because I was thinking of migrating to a CMS like Wordpress, and his answer was to set me up with Wordpress -- wonderfully cooperative, but WP just didn't punch my ticket. I hope he won't have any problems scratching WP and installing XOOPS or something like it (I'm also looking at Etomite) instead.

No, you're right, the site I have is far too large for easy use, no matter how I tweak it. Before I started subdividing pages, some pages were over a meg (!) in content, and some are still around 500KB -- way too big for a static site. And I have 400 pages. Ack.

Are you hinting that XOOPS won't efficiently manage this amount of content?

If everything I'm reading here and elsewhere is true, then I may end up shifting to Xoops. Always assuming my site host is willing to make the change. If he will, I'll be back. Thanks for all the help. And if anyone else has anything to add, please do so. I would still love to see a Xoops-managed site with a ton of content to see how that site functions.

All right, now I have a LOT of reading to do. This is excellent.

Now, if someone would just tell me flat out that I don't have to know PHP or SQL to handle things on my end, I will be happy. Sorry to keep asking, but I am gunshy from handling WP. (WP seems to be relatively "idiot-proof" -- but only if you want to let the themes do your thinking for you, and only if you want to blog away without worrying too much about navigation and content. That is exactly what I don't want.)

Modules? I've got some reading to do. Thanks, and if anyone else has any guidance, please let me know. Once I change over from Wordpress, it's pretty much forever (as much as anything is forever in 'puterland), so I have to know it's the right move.

TA, thanks for your reply.

I've done a lot of preliminary research (i.e. Googling and reading) on a variety of CMS software. XOOPS comes recommended by some knowledgeable folks at Sitepoint, so that's a good thing right there. My two biggest problems with Wordpress is, one, the amount of PHP revisions I had to try to figure out to do almost anything that I wanted to do, and two, the blasted thing just isn't set up to manage content the way I want it. Ten thousand separate posts jammed together under fifty categories is tough for users to navigate and for me to manage.

I won't ask anyone to tell me chapter and verse about how XOOPS manages large amounts of subdivided content (unless they want to...), but does anyone have a link to a site managed by XOOPS that I can look at to see how it handles its content? I want to make sure that if I go with XOOPS or anything else, that will be the last time I have to ask my site host to change over programs. I don't want to take advantage of him.

I want to transfer a large amount of content from my static HTML pages at This Far and No Further to a CMS. (Warning: the site is highly political, and will not suit some people's tastes. I have no interest in converting anyone in here to my way of political thinking; this is all about programming needs.) Currently the site consists of around 400 individual pages, with each page ranging from around 13MB in size to around 500MB (I am still subdividing the individual pages to get them down to a manageable size). In other words, there's a lot of content. I know very little about PHP and MySQL, but am very comfortable with HTML and CSS.

My site host, who handles the setup on his end but is not involved in my site management, set up a Wordpress site for me, but I am finding that program unsuited for handling my content in the way I want it. Essentially, WP is a blogging program with some CMS attributes. What I'm most interested in is ease of navigation, excellent searchability, and ease of management on my end. I don't want to have to spend hours configuring the site to do the simplest tasks, or hours trying to figure out how to handle the configurations, and I don't want to have to hunt down and install endless plugins or modules. Blogging attributes such as commentary and tagging are nice, but not my prime interest. I am not interested in elaborate themes, just something simple, clean, and workable.

So my question is, is XOOPS the right program for me? If it isn't -- i.e. too much PHP or database knowledge required -- does anyone have another suggestion?

Thanks for any answers and guidance you can provide.