I may be a big ignorant SOB, but I just looked over the various competitors in the PHP Open Source CMS world and frankly, from a module writer's perspective, I'm not impressed.

The following are the result of quick (less than 1 hour per CMS) glances at some of the more known PHP Open Source CMS's, I could find. It is NOT a full investigation of each CMS with all possibilities and advantages.

From the top:
Mambo : Is this CMS using a template engine? I couldn't figure out how it worked. Every item in the "Modules" directory is a php file with a specific page.

There are classes, but mixed in with regular functions and not easy to figure out, what they actually do.

MySQL is as far as I can see the only supported database and it is very hard-coded into the system.

PHP-NUKE
Okay - this looks more like XOOPS (no wonder, considering the history of XOOPS )

Modules are called from files in the root folder as querystring items - making links turn very very long if you have extra variables to give values.

Blocks seem to be controlled by the module writer, who can turn on or off right blocks.
The blocks themselves are not in the modules directory, but in a root/blocks directory.

Apart from loading config values, the mainfile has an impressive amount of functions.
The mainfile as we know it is the config.php file, which also holds the censor list and some other things.

Doesn't seem to use a template system. (Edit: There does seem to be a Template class with a sort of compiler method... doesn't look impressive to me )

Certain areas lack language constants.

There are classes for database interaction and emailing. Everything else is done by functions.
As a result, a lot of SQL sentences are just "thrown into the middle" of main files.

Themes have a lot of PHP code in them, defining e.g. table appearance with overloading functions.

POST-NUKE
Again, very few classes, mainly for database access.

ALL global variables are put into normal variables - effectively nullifying the effect of register globals (which I have always held is not a security issue with proper coding, but some people swear by having it set to 0... however, POST-NUKE will make their efforts worthless )

Modules are also here included in root files and thus given very long query strings.

Blocks are separate from modules.

Search features are totally separate from anything else.

Themes and templates are like in PHP-Nuke

Language constants also erratic

Typo-3
First of all, very confusing downloading. Didn't know which file to take so I just took the one without integrated webserver/db-server and with the highest version number.

Apparently the people behind it couldn't figure out how to make a .zip package without CVS directories.

I can't find any modules in this download. This is annoying, as it means that I cannot comment on the module aspect of it.

There are a lot of classes in this CMS, which of course makes e.g. the main index.php ok'ish to get an overview of. Unfortunately the classes are not named very well and are hard (at least for me) to figure out, what each of them does.

The good points in Typo-3 is the very modular core - at least as it is described on their website. It seems that anybody can make an extension of the backend or frontend alike and thus give further options to what we in XOOPS call the "core". This is a cool feature, which would make a lot of requested things easier in XOOPS. I'm thinking auto-login, extra fields to user registration and so on.

I seriously cannot figure this one out. Will take more than the 30 minutes, I have spent until now at least

Conclusion
So, what can I use my little hands-on survey? Weelll... not much, really. It's 3 AM and I'm a little bored... should go to bed, really.
I have learned that most CMS's are hard to figure out just by a quick glance. I remember, when I got into XOOPS; that wasn't easy either, until I found out, what each line of mainfile.php, header.php, footer.php and include/common.php did.

I have learned that themes in XOOPS are quite easy to make compared to several other CMS's. There may be some constraints, but on the whole, you can do an awful lot of appearance changes simply by changing the theme.html and theme.css files.

I have learned that the modules in XOOPS are more individual than in other CMS's. Blocks are better integrated in the modules, too.

XOOPS has a very good core - better than most others - but it is rather inflexible and requires that the XOOPS core dev team are continously working on improving it.

Grande Finale
So why should anyone use another CMS than XOOPS? I can see a few advantages:

Promises for the future: Mambo and Typo-3 have some very interesting roadmaps and seem to work very hard at making the core flexible and scalable to accomodate fast changes without breaking the running site. Cudos for that.

Modules: XOOPS may be easier to make modules for - but there ARE not that many modules out there. We have some doing more or less the same thing (HTML content and calendars, for example) and we have some quite specialised modules. But the large diversity, we lack.

Therefore my conclusion is that XOOPS is definitely worth fighting for and working on - but we need more qualified people working on modules and the core to withstand the developments in other CMS's. So join the mobile infantry today! ... erhm... sorry... bad influences, I guess I mean... join the module developers or core development team and help shape the future of XOOPS.

They are doing their part! Are you?
(damn... gotta stop watching so much TV )

Sorry for the long essay here Hope it was interesting to read and no, I am not looking for a flame thread about other CMS, but if there are people reading this, who have more experiences - good or bad - with Mambo and/or Typo-3, I am very willing to discuss it with them.

Nighty night

I've tried all the cms systems you've mentioned in the last 2 months. The reason I'm using XOOPS is because how easy it is to build my own modules.

I was pretty impressed with typo3 and considered using it, but at the end of the day it felt like it would have taken me forever to figure the thing out. Even with XOOPS lack of documentation. It's a pretty simple system to customize. imho.

Whoa Lots of interesting comments! I've also been playing around with some other CMSes; mostly just curiosity of what else is out there.

I'd have to say that so far, XOOPS is the easiest to understand. The code is very clear and it is relatively simple to figure out what does what and make any hacks you might desire. Also from a customization standpoint, it offers a lot of flexibility in controlling the 'look' of your site. While it is not as flexible as some others, it is definitely probably the easiest to customize which is very important.

Some other interesting CMSes to add to your list:

- xaraya - also a nuke derivative but seems to be heading towards a more integrated/unified way to do tasks which are common to many modules. I've had trouble installing it and getting it running though (haven't looked into it too much to figure out why). Also, IMHO, it appears somewhat slow.

- ez Publish - this is rather different than 'xoops'. You don't have 'blocks' etc to set up but rather you add certain types of content items to each page (or "container"). The system has a default way to show all the content items in a container, but each container can also be overridden with a template. This looks like a *very* powerful system, but it is also *very* complex and many things are not intuitive. In a sense, it seems to have *too much* flexibility and not limit things which won't make sense to most people.

- drupal - again this is rather different from 'xoops'. All 'content' is treated the same way. You assign content to 'categories' (called 'taxonomy terms'). There are special views for content based on what is most recent, what is in a particular 'taxonomy term', etc. You don't have individual block layout.

Anyways some of these are very different from XOOPS and will probably not suit certain types of websites or webmasters, but I mention them because I thought they had some interesting/advanced features.

I've tried most of the CMSs mentioned.

Typo3 - I really liked how Typo3 looked but I had a hell of a time trying to get it too install and function properly. Infact, if you do a search their mailing list my problem is still listed there, unanswered. It has it's own templating syntax that is confusing and not very intuative at all. From what I recall, it's just far to big and complex, and it runs very slow. Almost requires a dedicated box just to run it.

ezPublish - Same speed problems go for ezPublish too. They promised better perfomance with their v3 but it failed miserably. Also ezPublish is incredibly difficult to install and if I rememeber correctly even requires root access to the server. In the end not as flexable as XOOPS when it comes to appearance. One thing I do give them is they've done a great job on fucosing on publishing groups and version tracking of content (even includes roll backs).

I think these are all interesting usability/feature comments. But, I thought I would add one thing that has alway impressed me about Xoops... performance.

Before I picked Xoops, I tried visiting sites built on other CMS engines... the XOOPS sites seemed to consistently load faster. Had it been one or two, I could attribute it to the vagaries of different web hosts people used. But, the results were consistent... and on low bandwidth sites, I found the graphics might load slower (as you would expect) but, the pages still came fast.

Let me add my 2 cents to this thread.

As all of you, I also tried in the past not only the CMSs already mentioned, but many, many, others. I found most are poorly documented, and most build the front pages in a quite cumbersome way.

With Typo3, undoubtely a most impressive feat, I struggled a lot to make Image Magick work correctly in my WinXP machine (this was before the latest versions, so things may have changed), but found that the admin interface is too much like command-line syntax for my taste. Also, the creation of templates exceeded my capabilities at the time.

I played a lot with phpNuke and PostNuke, a little with ezPublish, some with Envolution, tried and failed with Xaraya, some more with phpWebSite, of course with Mambo (nice and well planned, though for a long while couldn't install it nor get an answer in the forums), DCP-Portal (for this turkish portal and for some other CMSs I even translated the strings to spanish), e107, openCMS (in Java!), LandDownUnder (promising but unnecessarily complex at some points), Ovidentia (as some european CMSs, a mixup of styles), ariadne (a real labyrinth, if you'll excuse the pun), GeekLog, Proxima (a cute italian face for phpNuke), and really many more.

I learned a lot from phpForge, a french CMS whose main developer left ranks for a while and could still offer something next year, and had my first approach to XOOPS not directly but through e-Xoops...

My general impression is that only about a few dozens or so CMSs are really implemented professionally with some viable future. Many more are exercises, hobbies and challenges for their devs, but not much more.

In some 10 days I'll complete my first year of using XOOPS. I should say that I began using it as a really green user, but along the months have learned to like it and also to dislike its quirks and lacks. That's one of the reasons why I accepted to embark in the always troublesome adventure of trying to help XOOPS grow.

As Mithrandir, I sometimes out of pure nostalgia take another look at other CMSs, see how little they have advanced in the separation of content from presentation, how sloppily they implement templating systems, and feel happy in the realization that XOOPS is a good place to stay, to learn, to grow, to share and to enjoy.

That's also why in my signature there's this wish that I repeat for you all: Happy Xoopsing!

Cheers.

Part II of the CMS breakdown:

Installed Typo-3 and Mambo locally and here's my verdict of them.

Typo-3
Boy... what an installation... a load of variables and settings to set.
There was no real flow in the installation and apparently it was not possible to have anything but MySQL databases and not on any other host than localhost.

The package, I got was absolutely bereft of any kind of content to display.

The administration panel is not entirely intuitive and I didn't really see the bigger picture in this administration.

Thumb down on this installer

Mambo
Now we are cooking with charcoal (yeah, Pratchett fan)
Mambo installation was fast and fine.
Layout of Mambo is excellent.

Administration menu is working very well and clearly, although I overlooked the save/edit/delete links below the categories first time.
I like that you can edit the theme as well as css from within the administration area.

I also like (very very much) the general configuration with multiple pages with panes and one single save button. Makes it easy to overview the various options. I'm also thinking that this could be a very nice thing in XOOPS, if you could have a similar interface in the module preferences, where you have module preferences in one pane, block preferences in another and access preferences in a third. I do like the overview from the system admin, but gathering everything regarding a module in that module's preferences may be more intuitive.

It seems most content is defined in the administration area - such as news, articles etc.

Debugger looks like it is popping up a page with all defined variables. That's nice and useful.

Block positioning is similar to XOOPS with right, left, top, bottom and more (with those extra options, which should be easy to make in XOOPS) and in which modules the blocks are available.
However, I don't know if it is possible to have multiple blocks in one module.

I didn't find any usergroup settings apart from a user type such as editor or system administrator.

Apache mod_rewrite... what can I say? Want it

Conclusion
I can understand why some people like Mambo a lot. It looks very nice and is very easy to use - however, it seems to lack in flexibility and the administration area may be easy to use, but this is also due to limited features available.

All in all, Mambo beats Typo-3 hands down. Easy installation, easy management, nice looks. Typo-3 may have hidden advantages, but they are just that.. hidden.

When we add XOOPS to the equation, we clearly outdistance Typo-3. Some things could be better, e.g. a configuration toggle, whether to check HTTP_REFERER, but regarding possibilities and how to use them in modules, XOOPS is way ahead of the others.

Agree 100% with you Mithrandir.

Presently, my own blog, I run with my favourite, XOOPS.
It beats all the nuke types hands down.
The postnuke permissions systems needs a Ph.D to understand!
And to move the blocks up and down using arrows is like living in the iron ages.

My other site with has a lot of content is based on Mambo.
This is because it is geared towards the student Community and I needed to ask a few questions right during sign up. Mambo has this Mambot which can help me create unique, dynamic and customisable user fields.

When an editor or publisher logs in into Mambo, he/she sees this 'edit' icon next to all the content he/she can edit. This saves the hassle of logging in seperately into the backend, navigating the menus and editing a piece of content. ( you only would have wanted to correct a typo or spelling mistake).

What I don't like in Mambo is its total INFLEXIBILITY to create Groups and Permissions. (yep Mithrandir)- You have a few hard coded groups - The writer, Editor, Publisher, Admin, Super Admin, all with pre-configured permissions.

In this regard, XOOPS rules the whole OS CMS scene (apart from Typo3 which can be classified as a professional CMS)
In mambo, I can't tailor content for different groups. I can't assign certain blocks to be seen by some and some not to be seen by others.

The Template system of Mambo is quite easy that I figured it out the very first day. With use of Dreamweaver extensions, one can make a template in 10 minutes flat.

Xoops looks fantastic, but its the work of great artists. The smarty templating systems turns off rookie php newbies like myself into everlasting dependence on Template Creators.

Xoops has a rich feature set.

In my opinion, the very first thing XOOPS needs is the user fields, secondly, explore still more possibilities to simplify the template creation task. Thirdly and most importantly, implement a Content Management module in the core for inclusion of Long Articles (without having to use the News module or custom Blocks)

Thanks for reading!

Very useful post!

I could list couple of pages of reasons why I should comit myself to xoops, but it wouldnt be productive.
I am lurking for about a month, and I cannot commit myself to XOOPS for one single reason.

Search engine friendly URL.

For example the link to this page is

https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=16084&forum=3&post_id=67834

I think that making XOOPS search engine friendly will significantly increse its popularity.

Great essay!
-One thing I really like about mambo is how easy it is to create a template that looks the way you want with an small plugin for dream weaver (I beg any developer to look at it!!! I posted this here)

- Well XOOPS is the best

PS -Typo3 Drains yor cpu.