Hi -- I have been looking for tools to manage the web site for a pottery studio. I'm a geek by day, potter by night.

I started out looking at the nukes, have tried postnuke and php-nuke so far. Haven't tried XOOPS yet, just looking at the site now. Would it be accurate to say that XOOPS is pretty much an evolved nuke? Cleaner but with the same basic intention: wrap a blank space with some useful goodies. In some cases maybe wrap a tool to fit in the blank space: calendar for instance, and of course news. Pretty much the only evolved tools in the nukes are those for handling news. Great if news is what you need to do!

What I am really missing is the ability to do something more structured in those blank sapces, even if it's just build xslt stylesheets for the content that goes in there. I love the tools in the frame, they're handy and configurable. But the blank spaces remain the same old html maintenance nightmare.

All insight appreciated!

Gary

i assume you mean evolved. i have tried a least 15 portal solutuions, including pre, post, and whatever nuke is out there. XOOPS is a portal system or cms as is nuke, but, in my opinion, thats where it ends.

so, for my part, it is not a question of evolution, but rather a workable solution for your needs and i stress workable. simply put, XOOPS is an excellent portal.

not sure what white spaces and nightmares you are referring to. one simply needs to be creative, and XOOPS provides all the tools to be the same.

I can't believe I typed that twice: yes, 'evolved' :)

You can try this site to give XOOPS and other CMS a try before you download and install:
http://www.opensourcecms.com

There are similarities to other CMS systems, since they all tend to provide a wrapper for content served from a database.

Having said that, XOOPS emphasizes ease of use, excellent developer and support community, and impressive performance.

Xoops utilizes the smarty template engine to further boost performance and separate content from presentation. Styles can be controlled by editing CSS files.

Once you have created your theme, you do not need to use HTML any more at all. In fact, if you want to use one of the existing themes, you can stop using HTML today. You can enter content as regular text.

It does not need to be just news, if you need to create articles, the WFSections module offers tremendous flexibility. You can create blocks, snippets, or articles... in addition to news and forum posts.

Here is a well developed XOOPS site with extensive articles and content.

http://gaining-mass.com/