Aut because it was being output in html and that variable was empty it rendered blank as we both know too well! Thanks for the input have a great xmas

Would like to see the final product once you are done.

I have taken a lot of stuff from my knowledge of opencart which basically has a line of code in the controller class which checks for the presence of a template and if it does loads it, otherwise loads the default.

I’m actually going to be releasing new flexewebs.com web site which I have just built in straight, static HTML (just using some PHP includes for repeated blocks).

It works out (for small sites) that’s the best way to build, release and maintain things.

You are going through the same exact pains as we all are. :-/

There surely must be a better way of doing these things and OO for long time promised this, but I don’t think it has really happened.

I liked your comment about going down the rabbit hole. It’s very true!

Thanks for your response, yes I totally agree with you, a more modular situation which can be tailored to suit particular needs would be much more convenient. As I said, I am nearly finished with my CMS and I am thinking about allowing the user to change environment variables during the installer to opt in or out of certain parts of the functionality.

That way too, you can have different values set in the code to present different functionality depending on whether they are using your free version or the upgraded one which they pay for.

I was thinking along similar lines with regards to E-Commerce software a few months ago after being involved in an Opencart project.

I had a very difficult time tracing my way back through that CMS from View to Model in order to find the relevant parts to change. It’s like going down one rabbit hole and finding another. Anyway, the point is that I found it was extremely difficult to change the order of the way things happened in the checkout because everything was so interconnected and interdependent.

I was thinking what a great idea it would be to have the checkout process like a sequence diagram in the back office and be able to manipulate the flow at different points without having to go on a giant Easter egg hunt. If it hadn’t been for Dreamweaver’s search function and Firebug’s network panel, I would never have been able to track down all the knock-on atrocities which occurred from simple flow changes.

With regards to WordPress, I still use it for most of my free lance jobs, just because it is quick and easy and there are so many cool templates out there for it. I used to be a real purist and hand-code everything I did, even jobs for small businesses but I soon got tired of that once I became more focused on building applications. Now I would rather put the CSS design time into creating immersive UX and the development time into writing cool mash-ups to enhance them.

Thanks for your insight! Very relevant and much appreciated.

I’m starting to think that the only way a CMS makes sense is when it’s custom built for a particular purpose/use case, but that’s usually called a custom app/web site, etc.

Working with things like WordPress is pretty much a nightmare, when you have a client who wants something fairly particular built for them, that essentially uses most of WordPress baked-in functionality.

What I would like to see is easy ways of dealing with common/mundane tasks in web apps solved as reusable components that can be used in systems.

For example, I always seem to need logging in and registration. Can I not just have that as a component with its own APIs and I will build everything else around that or to work alongside that in the way I like it?

Same with page management stuff, same with a few other things.

You could say that WordPress tried to provide exactly that with their plugin architecture, but in practice that does not work so well and it’s not a very usable way of working on a (larger) system.

I have read your article with interest as someone who is 90% through creating a custom CMS. I am fortunate to be both artistic and technically skilled, holding degrees in both the Arts and Computer Science. However, even with these skills and taking significant time out to do it the task has been colossal. I have single-handedly written the CMS using 7 different languages and even had to learn AS3 which I had left well alone until now to compliment the video side of it.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I realized what it was going to take to create a full-blown, word-press style templating system, I opted to change its purpose from a full-blown CMS to a targeted multimedia manager featuring a video subscription service mainly built around the YouTube APIs.

I completely agree that providing some dedicated, targeted content within the CMS boundaries is far more important than to be foolish enough to go head to head with the likes of WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. However, I do agree with the other guys on here that the skills learnt from such an endeavor are extremely valuable.

Anyway I’d like to hear more about your experiences with it so feel free to drop me a line.