I wish we could develop CMS together that will enable for sharing (open source) and also have the following features :-

Forum
THEMES
CMS
NEWS
DATING
AND SOME MOSTLY USED MODULES  on major CMS.
(Made in Nigeria CMS)
Will be developed in various programming languages :-

PHP+MySQL
ASP.NET + SQLSERVER
CFM
JSP
Python and perl may also be considered.

Designer , developers join this...  Top ten designers (as claimed in a topic on this forum https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-5654.0.html) u may like to put your skills to test.

Why? You just wanna practice your skills?

Not just practise but something worthwhile !

Made in 9ja

Consider me in guyz

Not that am spoiling things o. But i don't see any reason for these.

Nigerian developers are in need of money, so going open source is likely to doom the IT industry growth here in Nigeria. 50% of people are in IT simply for the dough, 40% are in IT just because that the course they gave them at school. The remaining 10% are only the born hacker/geek.

Until people here are OK, no open source collabo will take off.

What's a CMS? Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

the security substructure should separate... so that the cms could be deployed on any network and guys can write different adapters for ldap, passport, active directory,odbc,jdbc, etc

If its for practice purposes then its a cool idea.
Whats the point of a made in Nigeria CMS, you can practically build one out of the box with various packages out there. Macromedia used to have a great product called Spectra built with Cold fusion which allowed you to build a CMS in less than a day.

joftech:
Not that am spoiling things o. But i don't see any reason for these.

Nigerian developers are in need of money, so going open source is likely to doom the IT industry growth here in Nigeria. 50% of people are in IT simply for the dough, 40% are in IT just because that the course they gave them at school. The remaining 10% are only the born hacker/geek.

Until people here are OK, no open source collabo will take off.

Open Source do not necessary translate to FREE.  Just that the source code is open to modification and redistribution depending on the GNU License.

Most of this application developed under GNU are relatively difficult to re modify, that is where programmers comes in to help organization adopt the software and re-modify it for the purpose of integrating it into their ERM.

I think you missunderstand GNU for free software.  GNU communities combine today are richer than Mr Gates.  Open Source rules the world, it provides jobs, new opportunities, and it facilitates education.

Developing our own CMS from highly intelligent professionals from nairaland in my opinion would create jobs and opportunities at least to people in nairaland that helped in developing it.

@sbucareer - Well said...

Keep me posted

I havent comment since yesterday, been busy gathering seminar materials.
well what i think we should start up by is having a repository as said earlier...  and if u know that you are very good at designing then design a template (or better still u guys could design as much as possible) then we will use one as default theme.

And again i  think we should state out the concept  we will use (OOP || procedural) then we are off.
(i suggest OOP)
I have a server to which i can host the whole thing (2gig +).
Any one that know  languages other  than php should start something.. but i suggest we make php the primary.

.....

skima:

Any one that know languages other than php should start something.. but i suggest we make php the primary.
.....

I'm detecting a PHP bias here Why PHP ? Is it because its free. Cold Fusion is a lot better, development turn around is definitely faster than any other language out there.

CFM is not criticised.

skima, since you are the original author of the thread it is only fair to elect you as the Project Manager.  Thanks for providing CVS repository.  You could make it an ftp server and create series of folder that depict what it does and configure the ftp server to allow a particular user access to certain folder(s) base on the part they registered on i.e

1. GUI folder for HTML Gurus
2. Theme folder for (Digital Artist) graphic
3. Database for Mysql gurus
4. Requirement for analyst
5. code for programmers

etc.

I would read this thread daily to see the development.  Better still, we could use Jave Project Repository and it is free.  I would also agree on OOP. and CMF is very good and fast.  That is why CMF is good for prototyping/JAD session not on heavy project like this sorry.

We can use CMF for requirement analysis phase and protoype before going down to implementation stage.  I think ASP/JAVA/PHP should be used for the implementation phase of the project, since many members of the forum has shown a keen interest in these languages.

I'm detecting a PHP bias here   Why PHP ? Is it because its free.

I don't know cold fusion, but there are definite advantages to using PHP.  Large support community for one.  Post a php question, and somebody would answer it within minutes.  I don't care what anybody says, LAMP is going to wax stronger with time.

CGI used to be king.  Then the new kid on the block (php) came in and knocked everything off its axis.  That is phenomenal for a programming language that is just over a decade old.

Cold Fusion is a lot better, development turn around is definitely faster than any other language out there.

Can you substantiate that claim?  Like I said, I don't know CF, but I doubt the statement you just made above is correct.  Perhaps if you shed more light, we could better understand the advantages of CF over php.

Vendor locking is the worst thing anyone should avoid.

All those FUDs are nothing but marketing strategies by vendors.

oasis:

I don't know cold fusion, but there are definite advantages to using PHP.  Large support community for one.  Post a php question, and somebody would answer it within minutes. 

Well CF is a bit of a niche market, been under the radar for quite a long time but you'll be surprised the number of sites that use it. I've been developing in CF since 98. Its great the way things are cause it keeps the contract rates pretty high 

some major sites using CF
http://www.forta.com/cf/using/list.cfm?highlight=1
http://www.forta.com/cf/using/

oasis:

Can you substantiate that claim?  Like I said, I don't know CF, but I doubt the statement you just made above is correct.  Perhaps if you shed more light, we could better understand the advantages of CF over php.

PHP vs. CFML
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/php_cfmx.html

Perfect.  I ask for clarification, and you give me an article from the creators of CF.  How quaint. 

I can see that CF would be much friendlier to a beginning web developer who is just getting into using database content in web pages.

A seasoned php programmer doesn't have all those looping/emailing/coding problems mentioned.

For example, I don't use php's mail() function to send email.  Instead, I have a pre-written function that I include() in any page where mail is to be sent.

Here are points I scrapped off the web...

CF:

Expensive license cost vs $0 for php.

Because everything is handled internally in cf, it's very easy to write BAD code.

Owned by macromedia. If Macromedia dies, CF dies along with it.

Cold fusion is extremely weak at regular expressions.

Coldfusion has striking similarity with HTML. For a new programmer, Coldfusion can be learned in couple of weeks time.  Cold Fusion has a good IDE and is generally easier to get started with, whereas PHP initially requires more programming knowledge. Cold Fusion is designed with non-programmers in mind, while PHP is focused on programmers.


PHP:

Free licensing.

Blazing fast.  PHP can serve pages under 1 second (CF 3-5 seconds), server load ratio  of cf/php is about 2 to .2.  You can serve MORE page views with php than you could with CF.  Some say PHP is up to 5 times faster than CF, and less resource intensive.

So much free support available.  Tons of developers use PHP so there's always someone out there that can help you.

C is the father of all programming languages.  PHP is closer in syntax to C and perl.  You can do true OO programming in php.

Lots of pre-written code widely available.

PHP is here to stay.  No company red tape anywhere.

Supported by nearly all ISP's for no extra cost.

PHP runs on almost every platform there is. Cold Fusion is only available on Win32, Solaris, Linux and HP/UX.


So those are the facts. 
You decide for yourselves.  CF or PHP?

oasis:

Perfect. I ask for clarification, and you give me an article from the creators of CF. How quaint.

what did you expect ?, better hearing it from them no use writing code to show you how you can access a database with 3 lines of code compared to PHP

oasis:

Because everything is handled internally in cf, it's very easy to write BAD code.

You can write bad code in any language (Java, C++ etc) thats why you have coding standards. In my organisation, it doesn't matter if you can write the best code, if you don't adhere to our coding standards then it's bad code

oasis:

Owned by macromedia. If Macromedia dies, CF dies along with it.

Same applies to Oracle, Microsoft products, Sun etc. Doesn't stop you from learning about their products, just means you need to diversify your portfolio of knowledge

oasis:

Cold fusion is extremely weak at regular expressions.

says who? you can always write your own

oasis:

Coldfusion has striking similarity with HTML. For a new programmer, Coldfusion can be learned in couple of weeks time. Cold Fusion has a good IDE and is generally easier to get started with, whereas PHP initially requires more programming knowledge. Cold Fusion is designed with non-programmers in mind, while PHP is focused on programmers.

At the basic level it is similar to HTML but by the time you become more experienced, you start to write your own scripts, functions, cfcs and custom tags and this requires programming knowledge.

oasis:

Expensive license cost vs $0 for php.

oasis:

PHP:
Free licensing.

which is also its weakness as who do you hold responsible if there's a security hole. It is widely used and it means hackers target it a lot. for instance phpBB has experienced a series of security problems.
No surprise then that a lot of major institutions and banks don't use it, they feel more comfortable dealing with a software company than open sourced software.

oasis:

Blazing fast. PHP can serve pages under 1 second (CF 3-5 seconds), server load ratio of cf/php is about 2 to .2. You can serve MORE page views with php than you could with CF. Some say PHP is up to 5 times faster than CF, and less resource intensive.

Boils down to your hardware configuration, you'll have to run similar sized apps in PHP and CF side by side to actually confirm that.

oasis:

So much free support available. Tons of developers use PHP so there's always someone out there that can help you.

there's a large CF support group that has been around since the late 90s. PHP developers are a dime a dozen around here and it reflects in their contract rates. CF is a niche market and commands a higher premium.

oasis:

C is the father of all programming languages. PHP is closer in syntax to C and perl. You can do true OO programming in php.

OOP is actually very limited in PHP, can't have private or protected objects, only public .
The current versions of CF (CFMX) now runs on Java and allows you to leverage development across the two platforms.

oasis:

Lots of pre-written code widely available.

same with CF, in addition it also allows you to plug in modules and cfx tags built in Java, ASP and JSP

oasis:

PHP is here to stay. No company red tape anywhere.

its quite popular but the large investment banks (the bread & butter of the IT contract market) are still sticking to the old tried & tested ways.

oasis:

Supported by nearly all ISP's for no extra cost.

Not really true, most ISPs will still charge for its use as its normally included in the overall cost.

oasis:

PHP runs on almost every platform there is. Cold Fusion is only available on Win32, Solaris, Linux and HP/UX.

these are the main platforms used on the web, what other platforms does it need to support? (CF works on the Mac as well)

oasis:

So those are the facts.
You decide for yourselves. CF or PHP?

To be honest it doesn't really matter, in a competitive market knowing a niche product gives you that extra leverage. I never follow the herd but i trust my instincts. We run large CF development projects all the time and we can hardly get enough CF developers.

what did you expect?

I expect independent account, rather than a marketing ploy.

You can write bad code in any language (Java, C++ etc) thats why you have coding standards.

True.  But the point is, cf is more susceptible.

Same applies to Oracle, Microsoft products, Sun etc.

And if you look around, all those companies are scared of the open source community.  So the point still stands, if a MM goes, your cf goes.

says who? you can always write your own

Is it at the C/perl level?  Several people confirmed that CF is weak in regex, but you seem to be a CF nazi who hates to admit it.

there's a large CF support group that has been around since the late 90s. PHP developers are a dime a dozen around here and it reflects in their contract rates. CF is a niche market and commands a higher premium.

Yep, a dime a dozen.  Therefore tons of on-the-minute help.  That's a positive, not the negative you're trying to spin it into.

Boils down to your hardware configuration, you'll have to run similar sized apps in PHP and CF side by side to actually confirm that.

I'm sure you don't think people just sit around and eat Cheetos all day.  Of course similar apps were used for benchmarking.  It's been confirmed.  All you have to do is seach the web for those facts.

OOP is actually very limited in PHP, can't have private or protected objects, only public .
The current versions of CF (CFMX) now runs on Java and allows you to leverage development across the two platforms.

When was the last time you checked php's OO capability?

Not really true, most ISPs will still charge for its use as its normally included in the overall cost.

Untrue.  LAMP is the standard.  Anything else, like Windows, CF, etc attract extra cost. If you say no, we'd dig up some prices for comparison.

which is also its weakness as who do you hold responsible if there's a security hole. It is widely used and it means hackers target it a lot. for instance phpBB has experienced a series of security problems.
No surprise then that a lot of major institutions and banks don't use it, they feel more comfortable dealing with a software company than open sourced software.

How can you say for sure what a major institution like banks use?
You could use php and conceal it to appear as .exe, .asp, .html, .cf, .jsp.  Basically whatever you want.

As far as hackers, how many php sites have been broken into that you know of?  As ubiquitous as php is, we should be hearing daily horror stories.  But are we?

If a hole is discovered, it's fixed very quickly, because the whole world is working on it by virtue of it's open source. If a hole is discovered in cf, you have to wait for MM to get to it. If a hole is discovered in Ms Windows, it takes much longer to issue patches, than say in Linux.

same with CF, in addition it also allows you to plug in modules and cfx tags built in Java, ASP and JSP

Numbers don't lie.  PHP has way more scripts out there than any other programming language, period.

At the basic level it is similar to HTML but by the time you become more experienced, you start to write your own scripts, functions, cfcs and custom tags and this requires programming knowledge.

Which therefore defeats your initial argument that CF is easier than PHP.  Case closed.

In terms of support and usabilty.. php rules ... millions of sites are running php.

PHP won programming language of the year 2004 http://www.thejackol.com/?p=96

PHP now support private & protected objects.

@oasis
I think we've taken over the thread if you want to carry on we can always continue this debate via PM. .
'CF Nazi' that cracked me up

Just to answer this one

oasis:

As far as hackers, how many php sites have been broken into that you know of? As ubiquitous as php is, we should be hearing daily horror stories. But are we?

Do a search on google for security holes in PHP

The Anita Baker forums site was hacked (by el-ScRe@M) last week http://www.anitabaker.org/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=1
the admin has only just sorted it out but you can still see traces of it

"oasis":

You could use php and conceal it to appear as .exe, .asp, .html, .cf, .jsp.  Basically whatever you want.

I don't know about Nigeria and where you are Oasis, here in London and I believe in other developed world, we have some Authorities regulating Banking and Finance.  I will also use my university as a reference as I have used this so many times in the past.  I learned all this from university from academic visitors coming to give lectures in the world out there.

Financial Regulating Authorities set out laws that govern these bodies.  FSA provide a framework and specification all banking institution MUST adhere.  Something like Databases that UK banks MUST use, Software that they MUST use and other laws like that.  That is because of internal and external security breach.

If a bank go and use technologies NOT mandated by this regulatory body MUST seize to exit as they would be posting as a terrorist institutions.

My dear, I know you can conceal document extension on the internet by tweeking the MIME and setting different parameters in you configuration webserver but, BELIEVE me that is not the case with banks in western world.  They are contolled by FSA.  Why do you think ORACLE/MMSQL are so famous and rich?

Something like Databases that UK banks MUST use, Software that they MUST use and other laws like that. That is because of internal and external security breach.

Do you know that most of these big software houses influence the decision of these boards and even what universities get to teach their students.

So that's no prove that they are the best.

We need a name for this project...

u guys should suggest a name. after this ill register the domain and the official website will be created.

i suggest naijacms, nairacms hmm still thinking though.

One thing I always believe since I have been living in the West is, if you want the truth ask academics.  They are there to serve people that is what they are paid for.  They make the world we live in so simple by conducting conclusive research and producing journal and articles to back it.

If an academician says it would rain you better start running.  When academician says wear a seat belt whilst driving you'd better do it.  So my brother, I believe in education and research and references.  I am telling you that it was pass to me by a academia at South Bank University Guy Carter. Not him but by a visiting professor that works for Captial Investment Banking on Guy Carter unit ISDSA (Integrated System Development -- a System Approach)

suggestion needed please!

I have a name suggestion. How about spinl (software produced in naira land)

dats not bad...
cmsmin (CMS made in nigeria)

Guys, every programming language has bugs.  Just type "cold fusion vulnerability" into google and see what comes up.

It's wrong to say because a site that happens to be built in php was hacked, therefore php is bad.  The hacker could have used an Ms Windows weakness to get in.  It could have been a weakness in ftp, ssh, etc, or just plain admin carelessness.  You'd be surprised how stupid some admins are out there when it comes to assigning passwords to admin accounts.  Some of my account passwords are as much as 56 characters long.  Good luck guessing that.

We've arrived at an impasse here.  So let me just say that large companies like yahoo wouldn't adopt php if it isn't solid.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1491221

Also, don't forget that yahoo does billions of dollars worth of business online daily through e-commerce.

All the php sceptics often operate on knowledge that is several years old.  Once they update their knowledge and find out where php is today, they'd all change their minds and embrace it.

I suggest WAZOBIA. That reflects the collaborative nature of CMS. (The MD, CEO, Clerk, and even the gateman can work together to create a document), so it brings people together and the name WAZOBIA relay the diversity of CMS solution.