Sitellite CMS Review

CMS Roundup: The search for the perfect Content Management System

Homepage: http://sitellite.org/ Demo: http://sitellite.org/index/org-demoReg-form Download: Size: 5 mb (compressed)

Installation:

I uploaded the tar file to my server, and followed the directions in their /documentation/install file. After a few changes to the /inc/conf/config.ini.php file, I was up and running. Note: It is recommended that you have Telnet or SSH access to the server to install. I first tried by extracting on my computer, FTPing the files up, and using FTP to chmod, and I had a few problems.

First Impression

To login, go to http://yourdomain.com/sitellite . The admin interface is very clean, even though a few things are hard to find (the 'Add User' button for example). The admin interface is a template as well, so you can edit that if you want to use it on your clients site.

Templates

To create your own template, duplicate the /inc/html/default folder, and name it something else. Then open up the /inc/conf/config.ini.php file, and change the word default to the name of the duplicated folder in the line default_template_set = "default". Upload the new folder and config.ini.php file. Try it out by going to http://yourdomain.com/ . You should see a Sitellite example site.

In that directory, open up html.default.tpl. This is the template file that the pages will use. Notice the line <p xt:replace="body">. This is the template engine Sitellite uses. Look for more of these tags in the document. Most of them are pretty self explanatory. Now past in your template page, but place <p xt:replace="body"> where you want your content, <title xt:content="php: intl_get (object.title)"></title> for your page title, etc. You can learn more about these commands here.

The learning code is not to bad for this program. The most important concept to know is 'boxes'. These are short PHP scripts that you can add to the page with the command . You can make your own, or use the 'boxes' that came with Sitellite. To find some boxes to use, click on 'AppDoc' under tools on the far right of the admin page. When you find something you want, copy the text under "Usage" to your template file, or a new page (click on 'Source' under the formfield for entering content.)

Things I learned

Hopefully I can quickly answer some questions that took me hours to solve.

To create an item in the menu that will be a link to a page that is not part of the CMS (i.e. put a link to Google in your menu), create a new page, then click on the 'Properties' tab, and by the line 'Alias (of a URL)', enter the URL you would like to link to (i.e. http://www.google.com) Last, some pages will not show up in the menu, and it is impossible to put them there without creating them again (I think this may be because I edited their example pages to make some new pages. Make sure you create your own home page, about us page, etc).

Cool things

The admin panel is a theme just like the site is. This means if you sell a site to a client using this CMS, you can easily make the admin interface match your branding (add your logo, etc.).

Match to Requirements

Page-Based: Yes. Very clean structure
Runs on LAMP: Yes.
Runs on shared hosting: Yes.
WYSIWYG editing: Yes.
Friendly URLS: Yes.
Open-Source: Yes.
Easy template engine: Good. Uses "boxes" which are hard until you understand them.
Flexibility: To add PHP code, you have to make your own "box" or module.
Modules and Built in Applications: A few useful ones - forum, search, FAQ, etc.
User Management: Good. Multiple Admins. Publish controls
E-commerce: Not that I can see. Probably could add though.
XHTML / Standards Compliant: Yes. This is the only one that went to XHTML already.
Auto-Generation of Bread Crumb Navigation: Yes.
Usable UI: Hard to find some things.
Easy Installation: Fairly simple, but I ran into a few problems.
Documentation: Not much. And the project doesn't seem very "open source". They aren't on sourceforge.

Pros

Simplicity:
Content Structure: Very usable.
Flexibility: Compared to other CMS's, this is pretty easy to hack.

Cons

Flexibility:
Community: Not really.
Documentation: There is little or no documentation for this program. There is no community (the forums only have about 50 posts), so you will have to write your own modules. Maybe when this program matures and has a larger open source base, it will be better.

Conclusion

I integrated the CMS into the site in around 3 hours (this was with no prior experience), which was better than I expected. It is very powerful if you are willing to get your hands dirty in PHP and create your own 'boxes'. Like Exponent, there is not much of a community or documentation, so there is a steep learning curve. Once you have some experience, it will get easier. If this CMS continues to be improved, it could be much better, but until then, I like Exponent better.

Other Reviews

CMS Roundup: The search for the perfect Content Management System: The parent article for this review. If you haven't read it already, click the link.

Mambo CMS Review: Another review in the series.

Exponent CMS Review: Another review in this series.