Drupal

I have had this itch to change the theme I'm using for CMSReport.com.  I decided to scratch that itch.  I'm currently playing with some freely available themes out there for the CMS I'm currently using (Drupal).  The theme in use at CMS Report this week is LiteJazz by RoopleTheme.

So what do you think about the LiteJazz theme and is it an improvement over the theme we've been using the past year?  Feel free to use the comments section below to voice your opinion.

I'm especially interested in two things:

One of the things I like about browsing the Web for posts on various CMS topics is that they always seem to show up on the Web when when I need them the most.  For example, I'm starting to consider whether I'll continue to use osCommerce for some sites that I manage.  While the yet to be released osCommerce 3.0 will likely be an option next year, I'm open to other possibilities.  What I would like to see is a shopping cart that integrates well with a full CMS.  In the past, I've found Joomla's Virtuemart extension and Drupal's e-Commerce module to fall just short of the clie

If you are reading this post, then congratulations...you are now seeing CMS Report on its new server (a Virtual Private/Dedicated Server).  As I tweak the VPS in the following weeks, I may fall back on the old server from time to time but for the most part, I'm home.  Today officially ends my grand-experiment of running a moderately busy Drupal site on the cheap.

I just can't believe the year Drupal is having.  There has been an explosion of Drupal sites almost everywhere you turn.  Drupal is very popular with the masses in 2007.  So popular in fact, that I wonder as with all things popular if we'll be seeing 2008 as the backlash year against Drupal as it has quickly evolves as a litmus test for open source CMS (one of my predictions for 2008).

The latest Drupal-based site to flash on the screen of my browser is the portal (currently in beta) for the European Commission sponsored Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF ) project.  The site aims to be a community-driven platform for the production and distribution of educational materials. Its sustainability depends on the building of a strong community of users and participants of the platform.  The site may actually be live by the time you read this post.

You may have not have been able to access CMS Report Friday evening and early Saturday morning.  That's because I've moved CMSReport.com over to a new shared hosting account with a hosting provider I'm associated with via a reseller plan. The same host provider I've been using using all summer.

Mike Gifford, Open Concept, commented here at CMS Report that his company had just posted a report they did for a client comparing three open source content management systems. His company needed to recommend to their client whether Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal would be a good replacement for their current CMS, Back-End (BE).

A few months ago I mentioned that I was hosting my site using a "budget shared hosting plan through my reseller site which is comparable to the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy".  In that same article, I also mentioned that although I prefer to run my sites on a Virtual Private/Dedicated Server (VPS/VDS), I wanted to try experimenting with the cheap shared hosting plans despite the plans not offering full MySQL functions such as CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE.  For the most part, my sites have been running fine on the shared hosting plans but I wanted better control (oh how I miss Linux command line via secure shell).  So, I began searching for a better reseller hosting plan.  Unfortunately, my search for the perfect reseller host plan still continues.

I thought my hosting requirements were pretty simple.  I wanted a reseller hosting plan that provided CPanel, PHP5, MySQL5, secure shell, and a license to a client billing system such as ClientExec.  Oh and I wanted to be sure the hosting plans provided were Drupal friendly.  While I host more than just Drupal sites I've found that if the server is configured properly to run Drupal then it can run almost any other PHP-based CMS out there.  All in all I wanted a shared hosting plan where I spent less time managing the server, yet had the controls I needed via a Linux shell.  Simple enough right?  In fact I thought I found a great reseller plan through ResellerZoom (RZ).  However, after spending most of my weekend hours trying to work it all out, I've come to the conclusion I'm still looking for something that works better.

Not long ago, Development Seed posted a fantastic comparison of multilingual handling between Drupal 5 and Drupal 6.

Recently, I read some good posts regarding content management systems (CMS) on a few blogs I visit almost daily.  The posts have had me thinking and reflecting in general about CMS.  However, I won't talk too much about them so you get a chance to go on and read the articles yourself.  The first post comes from OpenSourceCommunity.org and the second post from Gadgetopia.

Here at CMSReport.com, I use a slightly modified version of the Zen theme.  Jeff Robbins is currently working on expanding his ideas via a series of default templates and variables added for the PHPTemplate engine.  This work is currently under the project name Zengine.  Lullabot.com recently underwent a new site design using Zengine and I guess there has been a number of comments for the site's new search tab.   Lucky for us, Mr. Robbins has decided to share with us how to code in the search tab.