CMS Solutions w. Foundation: Armadillo? Dropkick? Other?

I can second what Webplus wrote. Armadilloā€™s latest upgrade is really polished. Its easy to set up and even easier to use.

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As @webplus and @Bioguy have noted, this is something Armadillo can handle quite well. Iā€™m more than happy to help answer any specific questions about what youā€™re wanting to do, so feel free to get in touch: support@nimblehost.com

EDIT: We have a test site with Armadillo and Foundation here: http://test.nimblehost.com/armadillo-foundation/

Best,

Jonathan

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Just played around with Stacks Cloud. It is not updating on the site. I have two test stacks.
Using RW5 & Stacks 2 on this site. Anyone have this issue?
(really hating the lack of forum history!)

Nice looking forward to see a cms from you :wink: Is there also a blog included the cms or a maybe a media galerie? So far i like armadillo what wil be different and what will stand out.

Is Stacks Cloud dead?

There is this now! :wink:

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Downloading the 30 day demo this morning. I found Stacks Cloud easy to use, but the content was not showing up online (which was an issue). Canā€™t believe all the carping over price, your price point seems reasonable to me. I hope you make a ton of money, because I want more RW developers to not jump ship to WP or other platforms.

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I love Armadillo 2.0! The addition of Solo Content has been amazing! Iā€™ve always wanted a CMS that had a blog as well as a stack that created editable content on Stacks pagesā€¦and now I have it with Armadillo!

Hereā€™s a Foundation site with Armadillo: http://langleysaf.ca/
And hereā€™s another Foundation site (itā€™s still in progress): http://tradingpostbrewing.com/draft/

I tried out Dropkick CMSā€¦itā€™s beautiful and well-built, but it lacks a media upload function (e.g. for uploading PDFā€™s, etc.) and a blog.

Kuler Edits is super easy to install and use, but it lacks a blog. Itā€™s good for super simple websites that only need minor updating (like store hours, etc.). One downside is that Iā€™ve had a couple of instances where my clients have said their content has randomly disappeared.

@joeworkman, Total CMS looks great, but what makes it better than Armadillo?

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As I have said before, Armadillo is a great product and differs from my CMS. Its great that we have both as options. Since I donā€™t know too much about Armadillo, it would be better is users commented on what they feel are the positives of each. I have asked a few users that I know use both to chime in here.

Armadillo has a very powerful and flexible blog system. Thereā€™s a lot of things you can do with it (from a structural point of view).

Solo content in Armadillo is super easy to set up and use. TotalCMS obviously has more options. (There are also large price differentials between the two.)

Besides Armadilloā€™s robust blogging capability (soon to offer multiple blog capability) is how it handles multiple users. For me personally this is the killer feature. Iā€™m currently running a course website and all students can contribute to the blog, and are responsible for their own solo content areas. I probably have about 120 solo content areas on the site, plus the blog. Having my students navigating through 120 solo content areas would be a disaster. What Armadillo does very nicely is when a user signs on they see only the ā€œstuffā€ they are responsible for. And they can see all those solo content areas in one admin panel: so easy to make multiple edits in one session. So each student only sees a limited menu of options of things they can change. For any website that might have multiple contributors this is a crucial feature.

Based on price, Armadillo should really be compared to EasyCMS.

Iā€™m sure there are other things Iā€™m forgetting. I think itā€™s great that Armadillo, TotalCMS, and EasyCMS products exist: they provide a powerful much needed toolset for RW users.

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@Mathew

Great post!
Thank you for providing this. Iā€™ve tried a few of the available CMS systems and what you provided there will inform where I go next, I think.

I really like Dropkick CMS but it has certain limitations that are starting to annoy me. Namely:-

a) All content blocks are listed in one big long list with no possibility of listing content blocks by page or anything else.
b) Other systems - namely Armadillo and now Joeā€™s offerings - permit ā€˜on pageā€™ selection and editing, which is really what the clients like.
c) No centralised media store is a real pain.

Iā€™ve also used FlatCMS from CodeCanyon on RW sites and itā€™s also very nice but suffers from the same a) and b) issues as Dropkick.

I think TotalCMS may be ideal (it DOES look sensational) - but there is no way Iā€™m buying into a $99 per domain model for anything in RW, that simply doesnā€™t work for me at all. If the client is happy to pay that much extra for the CMS then Iā€™ll use Statamic every single time - itā€™s also $99 per site, but there the similarities end.

The way you described different content areas being editable by only the content ā€˜ownerā€™ is just brilliantā€¦ Yep, I think you have just helped me to see a way forward hereā€¦ :slight_smile:

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Another somewhat significant difference between Armadillo and the Workman CMS is that Armadillo requires MySQL databases for each usage. I donā€™t mind, because setting up a database is trivial for me, but maybe not for others, so its pretty interesting they found a way around that.

My question is: does the Workman CMS utilize the Workman servers in any way? I had wondered this aloud in a different thread about this, because the first ā€˜per domainā€™ pricing scheme I remember seeing for RW was Stacks Cloud. Iā€™m going off memory, but I believe that product requires constant communication with the YourHead servers. Therefore, I can understand the tiered pricing because each site creates an overhead in bandwidth and maintenance.

I can only imagine the amount of work and testing that went on behind the scenes of this fascinating new collection of CMS stacks, and developers should feel free to charge whatever they think their product is worth. I just donā€™t understand the per site pricing (seems to be the only beef so far with the announcement of this product)ā€¦ Meaning, if its not creating overhead for the company, why is it different than a similarly large project, and collection of stacks? (Foundation, for example)

@kryten Yes, I love the capabilities built into TotalCMS. It fills a real need. Iā€™m not a web designer by ā€œjobā€ simply by ā€œhobbyā€. Iā€™ve heard many good things about Statamic, but have never used myself. Nor do I need to use it for customers. :smile:

There is one future project (about a year from now) where using TotalCMS would be the best solution. I will take the plunge when I need to. Iā€™m certainly glad itā€™s around!

Armadillo fulfills my immediate needs beautifully. I did not mention that someone will see all the posts, or all the content areas: anyone who is given the ā€œadministratorā€ role. While my students would freak out at seeing 120 different content areas (which they donā€™t have to worry about), Jonathan has made life easy for me (the admin) by providing both (1) an intuitive way to name solo content areas (some products do the naming for you) and (2) great/easy search capabilities. This means I can always find any of my 120 solo content areas in less than 7 seconds (probably much less). He also provides sorting by various columns (publish date, edit date, name, and more) which may be more beneficial for some.

Overall I think products like Armadillo and TotalCMS are going a long ways towards ā€œsavingā€ RapidWeaver. Thereā€™s such a big need for CMS solutions: if RW doesnā€™t provide those solutions more people will look elsewhere. I hope DropKick continues to develop as well. This is an area where competition will be really really good for both customers and RealMac.

Stacks was the first truly big leap forwards, the new CMS tools represent to me the next big leap forwards. Happy days.

Hello Mathew,

Request you to please share the ā€œCourse Websiteā€ link which you refereed in your comments aboveā€¦

Thank you,
Rajat

Can you elaborate more? I donā€™t toot my own horn very oftenā€¦ but I sincerely donā€™t feel that Total CMS fits into this statement. But I am biased.

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really great post here with lots of info!

@kryten great points. A+C is on the cards. Inline editing (B) not really on the roadmap yet but would like to do it.

Thanks @Mathew - very exciting and happy days to be using RapidWeaver, I agree :slight_smile:

Itā€™s a pity none of these excellent solutions provides complete user control. I really need something which will not only control who contributes to a site but also who has access to particular pages. I run a society website with about 260 members and I need to have a number of levels of access. I also need to blog and a membersā€™ contact list to all members, but with different amounts of detail according to user role. Yes, I could use SiteLok but I donā€™t really want multiple unrelated scripts accessing the same database.

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@rajat: Iā€™m afraid I canā€™t share any of my course websites. They all contain student information that I need to keep private. (Students themselves contribute a fair amount of content to each course website.)

If there is something very specific you want to know about or see then I might be able to share a screenshot. But, again, it would all depend on maintaining student confidentiality. Iā€™m sorry.

On the other hand there are ways for me to slightly mimic key features on a course website on my regular (and unfinished) personal website. So if I know what youā€™d like to see more of then maybe I can add some ā€œfakeā€ students to my personal website so you can see how things work.

Iā€™m with Joe on this one. These are pretty broad statements you make. (And from what Iā€™m seeing of Contribute it has a fair amount of itā€™s own ā€œclunkā€ starting with the website ainā€™t even responsive. But it was nice to visit 2008 once again. :slight_smile: ).

I donā€™t doubt the solutions may be clunky for you, but itā€™s not clear what you really mean by that and whether it would generalize to other folks.

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