I've been looking for a good Content Management System (CMS) the last couple of days after a colleague and I had some discussion about what CMS to use for our clients. Sometimes we have clients with specific needs, which are difficult to fulfill using WordPress. The solution we used to choose was either build some plugins or use our custom developed CMS. However, none of these are a great solution. WordPress can be complicated for novice computer users, has a messy code-base and our own CMS is not really user-friendly either.
My colleague decided to try out ExpressionEngine. He bought the freelancer edition and he's been trying things out. Up until now, it all seems to work quite well, although the back-end can still be too complicated for our clients. Also, I hate the fact that you should pay 300 dollars to use ExpressionEngine for a commercial company. Thats an added fee some customers would rather spend on different things.
So, I started to search for open-source CMSes myself and made a list of requirements.
- It should not be page based, it should allow you to model your own content. If you use a CMS that supports types/entities/resources/sections/whatever you can create your own page type, but you can also create more advanced things like portfolio items, projects or products (yes, even a simple web shop is possible then).
- The back-end should be as simple as possible.
- It should be written in PHP, object-oriented if possible, and use MySQL for storage.
- There should be a good, flexible templating engine for the views.
- It should have a good plugin API.
Well, using this list it was a lot easier to search for the most fitting CMS, as quite a lot CMSes are only page or post based. The list of possible candidates shrunk by more than 75%. Eventually I found a CMS I had never heard of, but which seemed to have all the things we were looking for: Symphony CMS.
I've been trying it out in the last few days and I still haven't found any deal-breakers. Symphony CMS has a great website, friendly community (because it's still small I think), great features, simple back-end, small code-base and it can be easily extended by writing extensions.
Some things might give problems for specific clients though: multi file upload is non-existant (there's one extension that doesn't do what it should) and the WYSIWYG editor extensions, with support for placing images etc., don't seem to be integrated well enough with Symphony CMS yet. Well, maybe I'll just fix those two myself and contribute them upstream. That is, if I have some spare time... 
How are you liking Symphony CMS? Have you switch to anything else?
I'm evaluating different CMS's after using Joomla, Drupal, WordPress ... the list goes on. I always feel like I am working against the CMS to make it display the content the way I want, or getting my content into the backend. I've used Umbraco, and it honestly was the best experience I've had with a CMS to date.
Looking forward to a follow up on your impressions.
Still haven't tested it in a real world client situation because my current clients specifically requested WordPress and another one is a really specific application which I'm building using Zend Framework. I'll post on this blog when I have a real-world case study. By the way, I have the same experience like you, I always hit barriers or end up in "shady places" when using other CMSes
My clients also ask specifically for WordPress. And those who doesn't, they ask for Joomla. The latter I don't offer. WordPress I do. But I sometimes I miss my old favourite: Textpattern, and think ExpressionEngine could maybe be a killer CMS to use, and make my life as a web designer more enjoyable. But the barrier to entry is too high in my opinion. Especially now when EllisLab with EE 2.0 has replaced the beta with a lame 30-day money back guarantee. Everything EE costs money. The add-ons as well. So it's a no-go...
I've also tried MODx which is way too geeky for me and my clients. Concrete5 seemed promising, but there is a huge gap between the usability for editors, vs how to do advanced stuff as a developer when not a PHP-master.
With WordPress I can always find help, plugins and tutorials online.
Symphony CMS? Yeah, been testing it yearly for the last couple of years. I like the simple UI, and the fact that nothing not needed is there. Yet it has so much power. But the power comes at the price of having to do an extra layer between the templating and database, in order to get data to display, which for me is way way too headache-inducing. I want a CMS that lets me be little geeky as possible. I just wanna serve my clients.
I've used to work with ModX, WordPress and some CMS-es before, but I have to say that since I work with Symphony, I wouldn't quickly switch again.
Out of the box Symphony is lean and clean, giving you nothing but the bare essentials you need. The products you can make with Symphony can vary from something as small as a simple site, to something as big as a whole community site or intranet system.
I have to admit the learning curve is steep in the beginning (have to learn how XML and XSLT work together), and the way how Symphony approaches content management. Nevertheless, I've been working with Symphony now for +/- 6 months and I'm writing XSLT-stylesheets, XSLT-utilities and Symphony extensions without to much hassle.
Also, the community is very active and helpfull so if you got the chance I would definitely give it a try!
I think after a while when people search, they change as a result of looking at many options. If you had seen symphony as a first option perhaps you wouldn't be so impressed. I am learning wordpress and I'm a bit disjointed with so much option options out there... especially since some of them would better suit my need but I don't know xml and just improving my php.
I think so WordPress is the best as CMS. A lot of plugins and free stuff.
WordPress plugins has security vulnerabilities. Well, it's free and quality code is not a concern, which is why non-audited plugins is not use in mission critical environment..
My opinion on Symphony CMS (Look, not Symfony) is getting better as I learn XSL: XSLT and XPath, a powerful declarative markup that work in a similar fashion as PHP or at least the code is clearer than RubyOnRail.
Beside, simple string-manipulation and mathematical processing to more complex topics like extending XSLT, along with the ability to call PHP functions thru a Symphony Extension, the possibilities is endless.