Ideas for a central CMS?

[eluser]Tommy_DK[/eluser]
I am trying to make a very small CMS for some small business-customers. I would like to avoid having to update several "installations" of this CMS when I change something - so I expect some kind of central solution.

Can you help me getting started? I am unsure wheater CodeIgniter can be used for this and how to do it. Can it be done without a dedicated server?

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
If you're not trying to integrate it with any existing code, and / or it's going to be the bulk of the site and / or you have not commenced on writing a bunch of existing code already - then I'd recommend you go with an existing CMS - it'll save you much pain and time. Drupal, Joomla, Deki, etc - most are written in PHP and all are designed to be extended.

[eluser]SomeFunkyDude[/eluser]
This is interesting, I would like to implement the same thing on a CMS as well. Someone told me about SVN (subversioning) but I don't know if that would entail updating a system. You could create a class that retrieves the updated code from a central server, then parses it, though I'm not sure if this would be the best solution.

[eluser]Tommy_DK[/eluser]
[quote author="jedd" date="1239573250"]then I'd recommend you go with an existing CMS - it'll save you much pain and time.[/quote]

It should not be hard to make a CMS that enables somebody to update, edit or delete a site. That is what they will need. The users are not very "e-ready", so the existing CMS are to complicated for them to use.

My problem is, that I would like to have the system centralised. I did it with ASP several years ago, and think that I should be able to do I with php also. If anybody knows something, tutorials, concepts or other helpfull things please fell free to share.

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]

It should not be hard to make a CMS that enables somebody to update, edit or delete a site. That is what they will need. The users are not very "e-ready", so the existing CMS are to complicated for them to use.

I understand what you're saying - but I expect their expectations are slightly higher than a text input field where they have to put their own HTML market (or worse) to generate anything other than plain non-highlighted text pages. Wikis and CMS suites are easy to write, for varying values of easy.

My problem is, that I would like to have the system centralised. I did it with ASP several years ago, and think that I should be able to do I with php also. If anybody knows something, tutorials, concepts or other helpfull things please fell free to share.

I'm not sure what you mean by centralised - other than perhaps just on a single server that everyone can access? This isn't a function of the programming language, but rather than web server and any magic you need to wrap around that do translate domain names back to site-specific files and content.

If your code ever needs to diverge to meet different requirements of different clients, you're going to be back to separate maintenance approaches anyway. (Another reason I suggest using off-the-shelf, hosted systems like [url="http://www.mindtouch.com/Products/Deki_Express"]Deki[/url].)

For centralising (if I've understood right) just search for the forums for 'domain' and maybe 'htaccess' or 'redirect' keywords.

[eluser]SomeFunkyDude[/eluser]
I can relate to what Tommy is saying, because a lot of CMS's out there aren't user friendly. Like Joomla for instance is a great cms, but there's like 1000 features that the average person doesn't need.

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
[quote author="SomeFunkyDude" date="1239594694"]I can relate to what Tommy is saying, because a lot of CMS's out there aren't user friendly. Like Joomla for instance is a great cms, but there's like 1000 features that the average person doesn't need.[/quote]

I get that - I really do. I've played with Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, Deki, Mediawiki, trac, tiki, Moodle, etc.

If you were writing a system that includes a CMS component, then it'd be worth weighing up the benefits of writing your own versus pulling someone else's code in to play - but if you are just after a bog standard CMS, just grab an existing piece of software and strip it down (as much as you feel is necessary) and do whatever customisations you or the client think is appropriate. As dumb as we think the mortals are, they do tend to have needs that change over time, and never in a reducing fashion. I'm all for writing software to suit, but I'm also keen on taking advantage of existing software where it's applicable.