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Anybody familiar with Typo3?
Written By Nuthatch on Nov. 26, 2007.
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My employer has decided to homogenize all web sites across their system. Rather than providing web templates, they are going to have every department/unit transfer all of their web content into a content management system called Typo3. Units will have no control over headers, footers, and main navigation.
The folks in charge (marketing people, not designers or even ITS people) say it's just "cut and paste." Obviously it's not, as all the navigation will have to be re-done, and the new "look" utilizes web pages 300 px narrower than full-screen, which is my current format. And yes, they have implemented this without providing support in the way of manpower. I have to do it myself.
My concern (at least, that which I'll air here!) is two-fold:
1) It will take forever and a lot of work to move my 290 page web site, which includes another 1000 files (image, other media) into Typo3. I started this site in 1995 by hand-coding, and like a house that keeps getting added onto by an amateur contractor, it's pretty messy under the hood (er, roof). My duties have multiplied over the years to the point where I do maintenance and regular updates, but have had no time to even begin using CSS!
2) Like the last 2 web redesigns they've done, they may decide they don't like it and in 2 years we'll all be moving to yet another web editor/CMS/whatever.
So, anyone with experience with Typo3? What am I in for? If it is abandoned, does that mean re-formatting/writing/coding the whole damn site again? Is a CMS really the way for a huge organization to handle web sites?
Thanks for any insight!
shadowsun7
Written Nov. 27, 2007 / Report /
Found this just the other day ... hope it helps.
Cena
Written Nov. 28, 2007 / Report /
shadowsun, your link refers to Typo, the RoR blog engine.
Typo3 is a whole other thing...
Nuthatch, it's been a few years since I've looked at it, but I mainly recall that while extremely powerful, it also has a pretty steep learning curve. It's been around quite awhile, so it's not likely to be abandoned anytime soon.
Nuthatch
Written Nov. 29, 2007 / Report /
We're getting a demo in a couple weeks, after I am back to work from a bit of surgery. Will post an update here, then, just for sh*ts and giggles.
romit
Written Nov. 29, 2007 / Report /
A CMS is actually a very effective way of managing large amounts of content on a website, if the right decision is done while selecting a CMS from the many available it should serve you well ..
The most interesting thing about them is that very complex functionality can be added to your site in the form of extensions / plugins etc, with just a few clicks .. It also reduces work considerably when you have to update content as most CMS's have WYSIWYG's, And you can finally move to a CSS layout, which you can implement on the entire website with very minimal work ..
Migrating a 290page site is indeed a huge pain, but it really is worth it, when you look at the results .. If you are into PHP, You can also write a script that migrates all the content for you (grab the html, covert to SQL and insert it into the DB).
If you are doing it the first time (working on a CMS), I would advise you to install on a dev server / local PC and play around with it a little while to get familiarized ..
Hang out at the forum, and just go through the doc's, its a big learning experience.
If its abandoned, (normally big project like these don't) .. there will always be conversion scripts available to migrate to another CMS which has more or less the same features .. The last big one that I can remember was the fork (spoon) from Mambo to Joomla, and instantly there was a conversion script and lots of support on the forums, for people wanting to move to Joomla ..
Best of luck.
anadgouda
Written Nov. 30, 2007 / Report /
Typo3 is one of the heavier CMSs, which inherently supports features like their own internal search engine, advanced caching, LDAP authentication, audit trail and workflow. It also has a web-based transition management, and maybe that is something that might help you. I had worked with it about a couple of years back. While it is extremely flexible and extensible, it has some learning curve.
It is really effective if enough time and effort is given. Moving 290 pages will be worth it if the site keeps growing. A CMS lets you centralize your administration and manage the content types and associated behavior. I think the most important task for moving the pages to a CMS would be to identify the content types, e.g., articles, news, classifieds, etc.
I am surprised that you are being asked to just do a copy paste. There sure is a WYSIWYG editor with typo3, but I hope that the CMS people have considered the content types.
All the best! Be positive about the CMS, it will help you maintain a growing site.
shadowsun7
Written Nov. 30, 2007 / Report /
@Cena: oops, I'm sorry. My bad. =(