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.

It sounds like XOOPS is right up your alley. You can transfer all of your static content to a module within XOOPS called WFSections. It allows you to create pages that resemble static content within your site. I use it on BF2Online.com, and it works very very well. Its very easy to manage. I have found that XOOPS is the easiest CMS to operate. I've been using it for quite some time now.

Hope this helps....

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.

XOOPS is right for this task. Just choose the right module for htis task.

I have to say WF-Sections is not a good choice for this task, as it's development is officially stopped in favour of Smartsections. Your best choices are News, as it's good yet simple, SMartsection, complicated but full of features, and phppp' Article, that has multidimensional classification of documents but no file uploads, so think carefully.

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.

Quote:

http://www.xoops.net.br
I use html for the homepage.
Have an XOOPS installed that gives you access to all administration.
the user name is guest and the password is letmein

Just go in and see what you think
manuals are http://xoops-end-user.com
a media wiki is setup on the xoops03 subdirectory.

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.)

As a previous site owner dealing in video tapes with 2000+ html pages of movies with descriptions, I know where you are coming from.

The whole idea of XOOPS is that you do not need to know php or mysql.

I would install the new version XOOPS 2.0.16 in a subdirectory. Work with it a bit, and then move my html files into place on an as needed basis.

Always keeping the html as a backup.

personally, I would use whatever did the task at hand the best.

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.

Your pages and the general look of the site is very nice.
But I personally, don't think it is practical. People don't have the patience to plow through that volume in the format you presented. I think you would be better off with pdf files. Look at the difference the pdf presents compared to the html on my open page. Down at the bottom is a link to a pdf version. I have people request that because it allows for a cleaner easier read.

http://xoops-end-user.com

I would use XOOPS as an addon for all the additional features that come with the core alone. You might then decide to add a cbb module which is a bulletion board like this.

If you know how to ftp, then your site host won't have to do much except maybe lead you through the initial setup of the mysql.