Any using CMS Applications?

[Sean Doherty]

I'm wondering if anyone is using a CMS application for your home page (game developers homepage)? Is so, which one are you using? Also, do you think the dynamic URL's hurt you in the search engines?

Thanks

[jankoM]

I don't and I wouldn't - I don't see any real benerits as anything I need is too specific and it's easyer to make stuff if you don't have to comply to some mambo/typo3(ugh... run away!) way of doing it.

[amaranth]

I use one and it has been a true success. It's turned my site into a real community and gives my players a place to go and meet new friends.

I think that dynamic URLS may hurt page rank, so be sure to find one that lets you implement Smart URLs.

Here is a good place to begin learning about them:
http://opensourcecms.com/

The site above is for open source CMSs, but there are also many available for sale. Prices range between $100 - 50,000.

[revve]

Two nice ones to try:

1.) Joomla (be prepared to NOT use any of the default pages - including not even modfying one - if you don't want it to look very cliche)

2.) (this is a strange recommendation) pMachine - this is a blogging app, but using custom fields, you can make it do ANYTHING. Just go to pMachine's website - the entire thing is pMachine powered. This one is commercial, though. I'm currently using it in a project (not released yet), but I can vouch that it has lots of potential.

[Cartman]

We've had this post awhile back but I'll chip in again. I use Drupal on mine and have been very happy with it. They also support Clean URLs(Smart URLs) through a module. And the best part is that it's free.

[jankoM]

To clear my point. I just think there is not much use of a CMS at normal indie game site (a website with few static pages and pages with games) instead of complicating things. If you are making a comunity a comunity webapp can be worthwile of course (like amaranths Xoops).

I have website bravekidgames for example. It is bigger than ussual indie game site because it sells not only mine games and has some other stuff going on (online activities, printables, screensavers). Games on front page (short descr.) in the list of games and on individual games page are handled by simple script which gets data from db. Any CMS would only complicate making this (I would need to make some new module or extension and this is allways a pain by itself) and noone has and indie game module that I know of.

Printables are hadled by very simplistic script so they get automatically listed and bigger images pop up and all. Online activities and all other pages are ordinary static pages. I can edit them (as anything else) in winscp's editor directly without any download upload stuff. (again no CMS could help me here)

Downloads are hadled by another very simple script which logs them and shows download info. (no cms could help)

All webpages simply include common header and footer which defines everything that is not content (the main area) and there is no repetition/multiplication of html code.

This is very plain and simple setup and I would not change it for any CMS - because I see no reason at all a CMS could help me. But if you somehow are making indie site with needs that nicely map to a features of a CMS then I recommend it too.

(I have done a lot of work for big portals(not game) so I know a little what I am talking about - I just did elearning portal here in slo. in conjunction with Typo3 and I highly un-recommend it (just tell PHP to show all errors and you will see one reason). Drupal is the only one so far that I really like internally.)

Janko M.

//edit: if anyone needs any php programming you are welcome to contact me.. I will make my main website in english soon so you can see my references and all