community (front site) cms?

[phpdevrus]

I am trying to figure out a solution for a front site cms for an online community (vb).

I am having an issue figuring out what kind of content management system to
use to create front sites for 3 of my forums. The obvious answers are something like wordpress, joomla, drupal, mambo or custom. Tyler's big movie forum has a custom cms.

I am not sure whether I should just get something up or be more concerned
about trying to figure out a way so that members can help to add content. I just feel that having the ability to have mods add content is key.

I noticed most of Tyler's sites have a section for news, sponsors, links, ect
on the right or left hand column. Does anyone know how those sections updated?

I have been stuck at this point for a while and feel that all 3 of my communities would benefit from having a front site and not just be a forum. I think that deep down all members within a community want it to be more than just a forum especially the active members.

Thanks.

[Anthony]

This all comes down to one question:

What budget do you have, if any?

A lot can be done with a custom programmer (the right one) onboard, and a lot can be done by having modifications made to existing CMS applications.

[phpdevrus]

ya forgot to mention little to no budget.

I definitely cant afford to create a custom one and would rather use an existing free one. More so I just wanted to know what people normally use or do in this particular situation.

Do ppl start with a particular free cms and then as soon as their sites earns enough commission a custom one?

I am a programmer so I could code something myself but have grown accustom to working with what is available.

;-)

Thanks for the help.

[Tyler]

Welcome to the site phpdevrus,

I'm not sure what to address first here...

First of all you say:

I have been stuck at this point for a while and feel that all 3 of my communities would benefit from having a front site and not just be a forum. I think that deep down all members within a community want it to be more than just a forum especially the active members.

I'm going to disagree here. While I'm sure that there are those that do want to expand on just a forum and have 'more' to the site, I think that most are more than fine with just the forum. Personally I hate it when a forum feels the need to build a bit of a 'front area' to the site. The forum is the strength and main reason of the site, and while it feels natural to want to expand on that, it takes away from the main reason of the site in my opinion, which is to discuss, read, learn, and have fun - to network with others.

I wish Sitepoint was just a forum. Less fluff, easier to navigate, less ads as a result. I don't build front ends on any of my forums... the main focus (and only purpose if I may be so extreme) should be the forum itself and nothing else! There are many sites that try to build a front end, and in the end it really just hinders it... www.movieforums.com (http://www.movieforums.com) is an example - OOPS, looks like he reverted back to just the forum! See? Perfect example! The front used to look more like http://www.movieforums.com/reviews but it appears as though he reverted back to just the forum.

On Movie-Vault.com I have a forum, but the site is revolved around the reviews, not vice versa, which is why you see such a large front-end to the site.

What you may want to do is still keep the forum the main attraction of the site, while still having a few side 'options', similar to what I'm doing on PokerForums.org. This wasn't a $5,000 expensive CMS programming job.. I just played around with the HTML a bit, and voila. I edit the side pages by hand through SHTML/SSI. I hired a guy to make a CMS for my reviews page, only to save me time when editing the page in the future.

So, my main message here is that if you're trying to build a front end to a forum, that I think you're much better off keeping it plain and simple to the point and just focusing on making it into a nice forum. You don't even have any traffic yet - worry first about growing your forum, then when it starts to get fairly big, then you can worry about maybe expanding on it :)

Hope that helps.

[phpdevrus]

thanks..

hmm ok i forgot to mention my forums are already pretty big. Ranging from 45k to 671k posts. Trying to figure out ways to monetize them better as well as to attract more new members.

The reason behind my desire to add a front site is 2-3 fold
1) It is a way to add some member driven unique content to the site
2) Forums arent accepted with most major cpm advertising networks
3) I need the member driven content to attract new members/lurkers through the SEs

Only 1 of my communities are really pushing for a front site but only because that it used to have one back in the day.

I want to add it to the other 2 because I personally think it would be a great way to showcase good member content as well as to attract new members.

Thanks.

[trigatch4]

Tyler... your PokerForums.org with the "side options" is exactly what I'm trying to capture in a few of my new projects. How much would it cost to have someone program this feature, with ease of updating content? Could you refer me to a programmer?

[Tyler]

trigatch, actually, believe it or not but I did that myself.

It's not difficult at all and doesn't require a programmer. Basically just change the skin and apply SSI within the forum :)

[TWTCommish]

Well, as the owner of the example site below, I feel a bit compelled to weigh in. :)

I wish Sitepoint was just a forum. Less fluff, easier to navigate, less ads as a result. I don't build front ends on any of my forums... the main focus (and only purpose if I may be so extreme) should be the forum itself and nothing else! There are many sites that try to build a front end, and in the end it really just hinders it... www.movieforums.com (http://www.movieforums.com) is an example - OOPS, looks like he reverted back to just the forum! See? Perfect example! The front used to look more like http://www.movieforums.com/reviews but it appears as though he reverted back to just the forum.
For a time, yes, but the reviews area is back up. I don't think my site is a good example of what you're talking about, because it's my own lack of time and offline distractions which led to the temporary death of certain sections. As it stands, the site has always seen far more traffic and new user registrations with regularly updated content to accompany the forums. Without it, the community is a bit more likely to become closed off/clique-ish, and more than a few potential regulars have been turned off by that in the site's history.

Also, in the case of my particular forum, the reviews area can serve as a useful way to highlight standout reviews on the forums; it's a badge of honor, in a way, for the best reviews posted by the users there.

That said, finding ways to run things off the forums is great, but it really depends on what you're trying to do. You'll see an inevitable dropoff in quality, for example. It's the nature of the beast that forum posts will read more like an IM conversation than anything you'd ever read in a newspaper.

In short, keeping the focus on the forum is essential, I agree, but that in no way rules out a main content area. I find content areas like this a) bring it more traffic, b) make the site appear even more current, and c) attract a different type of user who would otherwise not necessarily bother to involve themselves.

Some of this I can see in my site's statistics, and some I'm simply making educated guesses about, but the overall positive trends are pretty clear to me. It's a good option -- but only if you have the time and dedication to keep such areas fresh.

Just my opinion, naturally.