PostNuke

Flexible Content Management System

News

PN as community software; hybrid site

Contributed by on Jul 25, 2002 - 01:26 AM

Postnuke is a server-side scripting system, which stores its content in a database (MySQL, also open-source and free). It allows contributors to post articles, comments, and photos using their web browser. Pages are generated on-the-fly by the server, which uses the PHP scripts to load the appropriate information from the database.




I have had to learn some PHP (a server-side scripting language), but the Postnuke community is very supportive and very active. There is an extensive body of multilingual user interfaces and multilingual support. In addition, Postnuke is evolving rapidly. The bottom-line reason why I chose Postnuke is that it had the capabilities I was after, was open-source, and had a large and active support and developer community. Documentation and installation scripts are rapidly improving; not much technical expertise is required to install the system, but more is required to customize it. See www.postnuke.com




Not that I don't have an issue or two with the system, but overall I am very pleased. It allows our website to be truly interactive, and to move from the model of broadcast of OUR TRUTHS to passive recipients, to a learning community or community of practice. The core of Postnuke is a user-authentication system, which is a prerequisite for giving users the power and responsibility of contributing content.




Postnuke evolved from weblogging software, and the default (but customizable) interface favors those people who are familiar with scripted or dynamic sites. However, I feel that Postnuke is adaptable to community-site usage where not all have this kind of familiarity.




Because not all search engines do a very good job of indexing scripted/databased content, and because extensive server-side scripting slows page loading for low-bandwidth users, our site is a hybrid. The Postnuke system is installed in a subdirectory, and our site has a good deal of static html content.




Peter Donovan Enterprise, Oregon, USA




Find out what others are learning from conscious attempts at managing wholes, rather than just positions, agendas, species, problems, or parts: http://managingwholes.com


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