DragonflyCMS was a piece of software I ran on my oldest site for nearly two years. When I stumbled on to this site and decided to finally install it, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the options in the admin section, but I was also determined to figure out what it all meant. It took me a couple weeks straight to become familiar with all the options, but when that few weeks was over, I felt comfortable and confident with administering a very well developed content management system.
Initially I liked the look and feel of the expandable and customizable blocks, and the very square appearance of the two included themes, default and dragonfly. When you install a script like this and decide to build a site around it, you really have to be sure you’re happy with the look and feel, especially if you’re a non-programming hack like me. Since it was also the most time I had ever spent learning the minute details of a content management back end, I was on board to build my site around the DragonflyCMS framework.
After about a year with the software my happiness started to wane and my interest in continuing to grow with DragonflyCMS was on the decline. I can’t blame that all on Dragonfly as I’m a bit flighty when it comes to new open source software. I have to give credit due where it is deserved as it kept me going strong for at least an entire year. It just became harder and harder to get excited when I was finding all these new open source content management systems out there. Another thing that didn’t help was that the script seemed to be popular with the young gamer type of website owner and that was far from the look I was shooting for.
One thing that left an impression on me was the community. I have been either a member or a lurker of many different communities in my time, and the DragonflyCMS community gave off this bitchiness that left a bad taste in my mouth. I certainly don’t mean to collectively group everyone in the community as being nasty or cranky because there were some truly helpful people there, but there were also enough snide remarks and cattiness from users and moderators alike to leave a long lasting impression.
I think DragonflyCMS was a fantastic jumping off point for getting my feet wet with a fairly substantial CMS. It just didn’t have the staying power for me to stick with it for the long haul. Have a look at the front page where you can select between the two themes that come with the software in the lower right block. It’ll give you a good idea if the look and feel is something worth implementing on your own website.
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