CMS

Article Friendly

I found article friendly a couple years ago when I was planning to grow my search engine website. There are a lot of article directory scripts out there and Article Friendly caught my eye as one possible choice. I signed up on the site and asked a bunch of questions and was really impressed with the responses. I also thought the demo of the site looked great and did not look like every other cookie cutter article site out there.

Soon after deciding I was going to purchase Article Friendly, I became distracted by the complete remodel of the site. It wasn’t until nearly two years later when I began searching for an article directory script that I stumbled on to Article Friendly once again. My old posts were still there on the site just as I left them before I vanished two years prior.

I logged back in to the site, asked a few more questions, and finally pulled the trigger this time by purchasing the script. I immediately installed it, set it up to automatically pull some isnare articles, and set it to let it run. I always loved the idea of including a niche article directory on my sites that other publishers can republish because it’s a great way to get your website link out there.

I have to add that the man behind the Article Friendly software,  Jan Michaels, had a lot to do with my comfort level in ordering this script. He’s not only built a unique and  impressive article directory script, but he’s also managed to accrue an impressive amount of whuffie.

Wiccle Community Builder

Update – 10/20/2012: I noticed the dead link for Wiccle.com and found some information on Facebook regarding the site. An officer resignation in May of 2012 and three weeks later the site goes down. Here’s the post from Facebook on June 5th.

“Our main website (wiccle.com) is currently offline for reasons beyond our control. We’re working on resolving the situation and resuming regular service. In the meantime, you can download our free CMS software at the following address: http://wiccle.cc”

Unfortunately that url also seems to be unavailable. Is this the end for Wiccle?

I came across Wiccle by accident last night. I was again trolling through random free software lists and happened on to this one. Upon first glance it reminded me a lot like SocialEngine without the price tag. There’s a fifteen day trial, then you can either get yourself a free license that is supported by ads, or buy a lifetime ads free license for ninety nine euro. Although the free price sounds enticing, I think it’s a no brainer to pay for the brandable license so you can slap your own ads on there and eventually earn some revenue. I know you really have to enjoy what you do for a living, but isn’t the point to make some coin while you do it? I would run websites for free, and I am, so getting paid for it would be the icing on the cake for me.

The install was pretty simple but there were a lot of directories I had to make writable before it would allow me to install. After that, it was really quick. I had a site up in minutes. The default site and its icons kind of reminded me of those ads I’d sometimes see on websites about dropping and dragging clothes on a cartoon girl. I forget what they were called, but it definitely had this anime type feel about it.

There are a ton of settings to play with in the admin area. I have not had a chance to try them all, so I can’t give much input on flexibility or functionality. You might be asking yourself what good is a write up for a piece of software that is fairly foreign to me, but my posts are intended to be more about discovery than the dissection of all the software offers. It’s up to you to figure out if this software will fit your needs or not. I can say that there is a nice and easy website builder option to add your own content to standard pages such as terms, privacy, about us, etc.

I will add that Wiccle seems to have all the typical menus you would expect from a social networking content management system. It offers the ability for its users to blog, post events, write and rate articles, create image galleries, include links, start groups, and more. This one is definitely going to be explored more in the coming weeks.

Drupal Content Management System

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The first time I made my way over to Drupal was to find a new script to replace Dragonfly. I needed a new look and more flexibility. After a quick test drive of the demo, I downloaded a fresh copy of Drupal and installed it immediately. I was overwhelmed by all the options and it didn’t take long before I gave up and decided the script I had wasn’t that bad after all.

I’m a bit stubborn at times so a few weeks later I gave Drupal another shot. By this time I had already dumped Dragonfly from my website and gone in a different direction, but I still wanted to know what was so great about Drupal. I installed it on one of my sandbox sites and decided to really spend some time figuring it all out. Funny thing happened when I took the time to learn Drupal. I learned Drupal.

Okay, I never became a Drupal master by any means, but I did start to get the feel of it. This piece of software has a lot to it and it takes time for the hack like me. I played around with Drupal for a few days and nights and really enjoyed learning it all. The more I learned, the more flexible it became, and that’s coming from a non-programmer.

I wasn’t looking for a content management script at this point so my Drupal skills have kind of gone bye bye, but if that next greatest idea comes to me again and I’m looking for a script to handle community content with greater user and content control, Drupal is getting revisited.

To give you a quick glance into all the options and settings there are in Drupal, here’s a screenshot from the demo over at opensourcecms.com. You about ready to do some learning?

Pligg Content Management System

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Pligg is a free content management system that is based on the Digg website framework. Users post website links to stories, pictures, or videos and other users rate them up or down. Pretty simple, pretty effective. I don’t think you will replace Digg with a knock off site, but I do believe you can create a successful site if you choose the right niche. Check out this gallery of Pligg sites and see what it possible using this free software. There are some really cool sites using Pligg.

Digg started out with news and stories about technology and computers and it thrived into this all encompassing mega site that now includes news and information about any topic imaginable. If they can succeed as a niche and grow, I don’t see why any popular topic couldn’t be used to build a successful Pligg site. As a matter of fact, the site I had was working fairly well because I was getting visitors and users posting here and there. I just lost interest (par) and ended up scrapping it to install a new kind of open source software. Ooo, look, a butterfly. *chasing it*

The demo I’m looking at actually looks a bit dull, yet it still appears a little cleaner and nicer compared to the earlier version I installed awhile back. I might just have to install it again to have another look. I remember I was able to find the areas to change the colors and add some advertisements pretty easily. Those are the two things I always try and change right off the bat. The first makes sense, but the ads part is very backwards of me. What do I need to get ads on there for when nobody even knows it exists yet. I guess it is good to know right off the bat if the software is flexible and easy to customize, because if your site does one day become extremely popular, you will need to know how to insert ads to pull in some revenue.

Isn’t that the dream?