I’m currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. I need to
identify a new CMS for my company but I am struggling (we’re a digital
agency and produce tens of websites a year of varying sizes for
retained clients.)
We currently use MySource Matrix (which is a blackbox, no technical
documentation) as our CMS and the Zend Framework for our applications.
My requirements are that templates are available via FTP only so they
can be stored in an external VCS and edited in an IDE. Templates
should have a templating language like smarty so pure PHP cannot be
misused in them.
It would be good if we could continue to develop in a 90% ZF way. If
the CMS comes with a reasonable framework then we would embrace it to
drive synergies between CMS projects and other bespoke applications
projects.
I’m not satisfied that either Drupal or EE solve my first point.
Drupal enforces FTP templates but allows PHP to be entered in
templates. I don’t know how compatable the smarty engine module is (it
hasn’t been updated since 2007). EE has a reasonable template syntax
but doesn’t enforce maintenance via FTP (you can easily edit the
template via the browser and break external version control.)
My second point is not ideal either. Drupal and ZF 2 are at polar
opposites of the programming spectrum. EE has CodeIgniter but on
initial inspection it’s very light and we’d largely still use ZF to
the extent that we may as well not use CI.
Other issues are that of functionality. Drupal looks superior on this
front. It’s core has most features that we require. To use EE we’d
have to install a few paid for add-ons before we start (templating,
wysiwyg and taxonomy.)
Noting my two requirements (coming from a ZF background and wanting
synergies and forcing FTP for templates that don’t allow PHP) can
anyone help me make a decision between the two and or suggest another
CMS that might be better suited.
In terms of suggesting another CMS, it must have a strong community,
documentation, be pretty much be open-source and have a number of high-profile websites built upon it.
We ended up going for EE. Thanks @Bitmanic for your advice.