Hi, I have been looking at a few CMS (Joomla, WP, Drupal) and after some playing around and searching I still haven't found the right solution (not saying the ones mentioned can't do it).

What I'm looking for is a CMS that can handle all the basic CMS stuff (menus, layout, permissions, etc), but let's me put my own PHP pages in there instead of articles. I know pretty much all of them can do this, but I'm looking for one that does it natively and supports caching of custom pages.

For example, I tried a Joomla extension that I don't think cached the content and the URL was quite "ugly":
index.php?option=com_php&Itemid=2

Does anyone have any experience doing something similar, or an idea of a good solution?

Content management systems are easy to make I've never worked with Joomla but your URL is correct did you try to grap it with

PHP Code:

 echo $_GET['option']; echo $_GET['Itemid']; 


Originally Posted by Sarke1

For example, I tried a Joomla extension that I don't think cached the content and the URL was quite "ugly":
index.php?option=com_php&Itemid=2

Right. Since Joomla uses a database, it has no need for 'static' pages. The page template and layout can all be dynamically generated. So if you look for index.php?option=com_php&Itemid=2 in your directory, it won't be there.

But to answer your question. For what you want, you probably aren't going to get a big-name CMS. While there are some CMSs that would suit your needs, I didn't find any for myself - so right now I'm programming my own.

- Steve

Wordpress to me is by far the most user-friendly system IMO. Some people will say WP is not a CMS, but I think it can do many of the same things. Not quite the features of Drupal, but very flexible and has documentation that you can understand(unlike Drupal)! You can create "pages" that contain any type of content and layout theme.

As stevej said, the CMS's are all dynamic so they serve pages fresh based on the user query, though, most have a plugin that will cache dynamic pages as an html file. Thus, when someone requests a page, that html file can be returned. Here is a Wordpress plugin that does this:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Also with Wordpress(and Drupal, I don't know much about joomla), you can enable clean URLS. Check this page of the WP manual to answer your question exactly:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

As with any CMS you can bend and mold them into what you want, but at some point, it may be easier to create CMS from scratch.

Hope this helps!

Joomla 1.5 is very easy for making your php applications. I use Joomla for all my sites, and if there is there is something I want it to do that it can't, I can quickly code a solution.

You can do it natively with WordPress. You just create a blank "page" and set your custom php page as the template and it works. Really couldn't be easier.

Originally Posted by Sarke1

Hi, I have been looking at a few CMS (Joomla, WP, Drupal) and after some playing around and searching I still haven't found the right solution (not saying the ones mentioned can't do it).

What I'm looking for is a CMS that can handle all the basic CMS stuff (menus, layout, permissions, etc), but let's me put my own PHP pages in there instead of articles. I know pretty much all of them can do this, but I'm looking for one that does it natively and supports caching of custom pages.

For example, I tried a Joomla extension that I don't think cached the content and the URL was quite "ugly":
index.php?option=com_php&Itemid=2

Does anyone have any experience doing something similar, or an idea of a good solution?

Regarding "ugly URLS" - JOOMLA has option in glogal configuration called SEF (Search engine friendly), whitch rewrites the url's to look "pretty"