[Naatan]

Hi there,

For a long time now I've been developing my own CMS in my spare time, lately I've been working a lot on it and I've decided to finally give the outside world a glimpse as by now I could really do with some ideas / suggestions or even help.

What I'm about to show you is primarily my own homepage in development, but the main page (and currently the only page) has a little intro on Divia CMS, of course I would like your suggestions on possible layout improvements, but primarily I would like to know what your impression of the CMS is and if you would concider using it.

The CMS is targeted on other web developers who want a CMS to manage their website but don't want to give up their freedom and follow the rules that a CMS can tie you to.

Some of the features it currently has are;

• Theme Support 90% Completed
• Template Support 99% Completed
• Language Support 50% Completed
• User Accounts/Groups
• CMS Options Configurator
• Template PHP Support
• WYSIWYG Editor support (Xinha/FCK/Tiny)

Keep in mind this is just what is currently supported, and I'm leaving out the details and smaller features, for more info see the screenshots on the page linked below.

Thanks in advance for your ideas/suggestions/feedback



> The Link

[jase1000]

It's hard to comment on a CMS without having a good poke about the real thing.

The site looks okay - nothing special but pretty much what you'd expect from a CMS homepage site. What I mean is that it looks like a site designed by a coder.

How much work goes into creating your own CMS by the way? It's way out of my league but I'm still curious.

[Naatan]

I am trying to make it look like a CMS as that's what it is. But I want to prevent it from looking like Joomla or any of the big CMS'es where you get drowned in all of the options your presented with. Too many wizards and too little input.

As for how much work it is, well I'm doing it on my own so in my case it's a 'lot' of work.. but it all depends on what you want to achieve. And being as I get new ideas every single day, it's still a long way to go.

[pgo]

From the screenshots, it looks good. Love the idea of syntax highlighting in the template editor! I'll definitely be interested in this for the future.

[theRemix]

yes, looks interesting.

what script is it based on? php? cfm? .net? ror?

[Naatan]

PHP with MySQL as the database

[jase1000]

How much will you charge for an install?

[Naatan]

Nothing, it will be free, I have not chosen a license yet though, still scooping around..

[jase1000]

Originally Posted by Naatan

I am trying to make it look like a CMS as that's what it is.

I was talking about your homepage BTW, not the CMS interface which looks nice.

[Naatan]

AHh I see, well the homepage design is almost identical to the CMS :p I am still going to smoothen it a bit though, but after all I am a programmer

[R1gM]

Can't comment on the cms but the design looks like a bit of a "mint" Mint copy but not quite as polished. I have to admit my install if mint (which is the first version) looks almost identical in colour sheme including the coloured rows to your tables but the new version has changed.

I would also say I can see what you are doing with the highlight type bars but the darker area is supposed to be on the bottom half of the bar and it looks un-natural for it to be the otherway roun d and it draws the eye because of that.

I would also add more vertical padding to your main menu as I think it looks a bit too thin and fiddly. Other than that if you geta release going would be interesting to have a look round me old mucker!
Just saying that with it being a cms if you want anyone not to bag it then making it look like one of the most popular stat tracking packages by one of the worlds most popular designers probably isn't a great idea.

[Naatan]

I've never even seen Mint up till now, and as far as I can see the only similarity is that it's black&green, but I don't want to look as if I'm cloning something so I'll make some modifications.

Thanks for the hint on the gradient, I'll definitely change that and I'll take a look into the vertical padding

Thanks for the helpful comment

[R1gM]

Fair play if you haven't seen it before and like I said if you had mint ver 1 you might understand where I am coming from. Shaun inman has changed the design for version 2 slightly but it was the first thing that came to me anyways thats why I put it there and mint is quite well known to a few people anyways. Although I admit its not identical in any way it did remind me totally of it maybe its just me. Its just coincidence so ignore it fella!


Jason Santa Maria | Pepper Makes Mint Better
Mint: Green Means Go // ShaunInman.com
Rob Weychert | Editorials: “Mint: A Stats Odyssey”
Matt Thomas » Mint: It’s Good and Good For You

[solix]

It's nice, but not awesome..

[Naatan]

I made some modifications to the CMS layout

Hopefully for the better, I personally think it's easier on the eye

[Dusteh]

A suggestion from the standpoint of a designer whos used a fair few CMS systems, if you want to stand out from the crowd of CMS currently available. What I would love is a system that has a built-in file repository - allowing the user to upload any format files for a download section, and on a similar theme, a basic image gallery that allows image upload and the addition of a description. But most importantly both of these features should be clean output code and easily customisable via CSS tags. So they don't have to look anything special, just have the tags in place so that the layout can be altered.

What I've found is that almost every other gallery/upload system tries to achieve too much and they either add too many extra features you can't easily remove without hacking it, or tie the design up in tables and hardcoded attributes. Not noly that but they are always plugins crowbarred into an existing CMS, meaning the backend system for the user isn't straight forward.

Asking a hell of a lot I know - but I'm just trying to think of a good USP for you.

[microdesign]

Your cms looks great!

[Naatan]

Originally Posted by Dusteh

A suggestion from the standpoint of a designer whos used a fair few CMS systems, if you want to stand out from the crowd of CMS currently available. What I would love is a system that has a built-in file repository - allowing the user to upload any format files for a download section, and on a similar theme, a basic image gallery that allows image upload and the addition of a description. But most importantly both of these features should be clean output code and easily customisable via CSS tags. So they don't have to look anything special, just have the tags in place so that the layout can be altered.

What I've found is that almost every other gallery/upload system tries to achieve too much and they either add too many extra features you can't easily remove without hacking it, or tie the design up in tables and hardcoded attributes. Not noly that but they are always plugins crowbarred into an existing CMS, meaning the backend system for the user isn't straight forward.

Asking a hell of a lot I know - but I'm just trying to think of a good USP for you.

I will definitely be adding features such as these but by the use of plugins, I want the main CMS to be very basic yet very effective, all extra tools such as a blog, wiki, gallery or like you said a file manager will be available through plugins which will be supported by the CMS.

Like I said though, I'm still really busy on developing it, not all of the main features are operational yet so the extra's are going to have to wait a while.

But I am setting up the project on sourceforge, where I will be assembling a team to work with me and make it all happen.

Yea I have high hopes I guess but high hopes with a good feeling and good intuition

[Dusteh]

When you say plugins, do you mean systems of your own as optional extras, or 3rd party existing plugins?

[Naatan]

Systems of my own as optional extras