Is Typolight the right choice for me?

I'm working on a project for which a CMS is needed, and as I'm a CMS newbie I've been doing a lot of research around the web as to what to go for. My first idea was Joomla, but a lot of things I've read suggest that, though powerful, it's cumbersome to work with and has a steep learning curve. So I've been trying to find out about alternatives and have, I think, narrowed the list down to Silverstripe, Typolight, ModX and CMS Made Simple. Whatever I settle on, I want it to be useful for lots of sites, not just the immediate one in question (I've spent too much time in recent years learning things on a one-off basis, which isn't very cost-effective).

Now, the site I'm currently working on seems a fairly straightforward CMS-style proposition - not a huge number of pages but consistency required throughout, news items, etc., and a separate area which only certain members can see. I'm assuming this is all easily handled by Typolight? There are a couple of other areas which aren't (or don't seem to me to be) so obviously CMS-oriented, and I'd like to know how Typolight might handle them. Firstly, the site needs to have an associated set of forums. Now, I'm aware that Typolight has a forum module (unlike, for example, ModX), and this may be the way to go. It seems, though, that various other CMSes choose instead to integrate with separate forum applications, such as SMF, phpBB, etc. I'd be interested to hear from anyone using Typolight who has provided forums as part of their Typolight-based site, by whatever means, preferably with some examples I can look at. Secondly, users need to be able to register to a couple of conferences via the site. Is there some kind of module for this, or is this something which would have to be developed by me? I'm not keen on getting too deep into PHP to begin with, as it's unfamiliar to me (although I've been developing Java web applications for a number of years so I'm no stranger to programming or the machinery of the web).

Although it's not required for this project, one coming up shortly will require blogging capability, so I'd like to know about adding blogging to a site. Is this something I'd use a blogging module for, or would I instead integrate something like Wordpress, in which case I'd be interested to hear what this would involve.

Any pointers would be most welcome, thanks!

Hi Romeo,
if you like what you researched til now about TL I don't see any reason not to use it.

1. Forum:
In earlier TL versions people used to take punBB as forum application (TL then came with an extension called punBB Bridge for user management). Nowadays we have a generic extension (same accounts for Typo3, by the way). It's fully integrated, offers all one usually needs and is easy to set up. It was used for the old TL forum: http://www.typolight.org/forum.html. Of course, you could still spend some time & work to integrate some other application...

2. Conferences
I'm not sure what you mean here, but there are ways to collect special data in the backend (e.g. the EFG extension) and for event bookings (e.g. EventsAttend extension, not yet ready for 2.71 though).

3. Blogging
There's no special extension, but it can be done with TL core modules (News and comments). Works fine.

I'm personally very happy with TL as a CMS. It has a pretty much state-of-the-art backend programming (easy to build your own extensions) and frontend output. No real frontend editing, that's the one major lack I could think of. But I just read today that there's an extension to come...


cheers
Antipitch

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Originally Posted by Antipitch

Nowadays we have a generic extension (same accounts for Typo3, by the way). It's fully integrated, offers all one usually needs and is easy to set up. It was used for the old TL forum: http://www.typolight.org/forum.html.

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What generic extension is this? This forum is done using phpBB, I notice, and is not apparently integrated with a CMS, but just has the associated look and feel. That might actually be all that's required - a separate forum application with a matching look and feel.

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I'm not sure what you mean here, but there are ways to collect special data in the backend (e.g. the EFG extension) and for event bookings (e.g. EventsAttend extension, not yet ready for 2.71 though).

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It's probably just a case of learning how to create forms and the associated processing logic. The CMS world is unfamiliar to me, as is PHP, but I do this kind of thing all the time in Java web apps.

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There's no special extension, but it can be done with TL core modules (News and comments). Works fine.

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But if I were to require something more sophisticated such as Wordpress, is it straightforward enough to integrate?

Hi Romeo,

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What generic extension is this?

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Helpdesk (can also be used as a helpdesk/ ticketing system, therefore the name).

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But if I were to require something more sophisticated such as Wordpress, is it straightforward enough to integrate?

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I always stayed away from WP, 'cause it's said to be so vulnerable. Pretty sure though that it'd be lots of work to really "integrate" it (beyond using it in an iframe ;-) ). What exactly would "more sophisticated" mean? Anyway, if you need more than comments or tag clouds it would probably be easier to develop such features directly for TL...


cheers
Antipitch

So you reckon I could do a functional blog just using Typolight basics?

Here is a TYPOlight-powered blog: http://esportiveblog.phostyx.de/blog.html

you can use livezilla as a helpdesk
ti's free and powerful

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Originally Posted by leo

Here is a TYPOlight-powered blog: http://esportiveblog.phostyx.de/blog.html

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Well, that certainly looks to contain all the functionality I need, at least to start with. What module(s) does that use?

Hi Romeo,
it uses the news module with comments (comes with TL core, comments is an optional part of the news module). The Tag Cloud is built with the Tag Cloud News extension.

Of course you can have different News/ Blog archives and there are different templates to display them (short, full, latest etc.).


cheers
Antipitch

Hi Romeo,
I am a newbie as well.

I have used CMS made simple for one project about a year ago. Since then I have found TL and never looked back. After viewing these tutorials:

1. http://dev.typolight.org/wiki/Tutorials ... mTemplates
2. http://dev.typolight.org/wiki/TutorialsCustomTemplates

you can quickly see how easy it is to create website and/or use a custom template. I have found that there is enough modules to do just about anything that I have needed to do. All of them seem to be very well written and work out of the box so to speak.

I have tried to look into joomla and WP but TL just seems so much more logical to me in the way that things are done. ;)

lriver