looking for recs...

[bovil]

K and I are both ready to give our personal websites a redesign.

His is just a pretty straight HTML site. I've got old HTML pages, but the main site is Joomla 1.0.x and Gallery 2.

I'm not wedded to the tools I'm using right now. That said, my first path option is:

• Joomla 1.5
• Gallery 2.3

It's less than optimal, though. The Joomla/Gallery bridge module is pretty much abandoned.

So here's what I want, in order of importance:

1. Easy web-based content administration
2. Support for direct HTML formatting of content (rich-text editing not required)
3. Structured navigation
4. Easily managed user and group security
5. Easy template management and design customization
6. Fully embedded photo gallery with an upload client option (for photos I don't want to put on Flickr)
7. LiveJournal Integration
8. Twitter integration
9. Flickr integration
10. Delicious.com bookmark integration
11. Librarything integration
12. LinkedIn integration

Anybody got any tools or combination of tools they're willing to suggest?

Comments

[dprisoner.livejournal.com]

I'm happy with Joomla 1.5 (use it on all 5 sites I run.) The Joomla/Gallery bridge still works with it.

I haven't found a LJ integration with Joomla 1.5 (at least not free, someone out there is willing to sell what they've done...) which is why there are no entries on my LJ account. Though you might be able to do the reverse - but I haven't looked into that.

I have a little Twitter app on dvillage.org that I got from Twitter, which displays the latest tweet with the ability to cycle back through more.

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

Would this site be useful to you? http://www.genjipress.com/ This is run by a very long-time friend of mine and I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any technical questions.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty well grounded in the technical aspects of web development ;)

That's a MovableType site, which happens to be one of the content management tools I don't want to get anywhere near (in spite of it being available pre-installed at my hosting company). It's from the people who bought, screwed up and abandoned LiveJournal.

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha. (I was unaware of MovableType's origin- eep!)

[unayok.livejournal.com]

Generally, this is the scope of what I've had rolling around in my head for years and have some partial implementations but nothing anywhere near useful.

Pinax comes sort of close, but doesn't necessarily have all the integrations you want and requires a little bit more futzing for the initial install than you may be interested in (you have to actually type some command line bits).

I have this feeling that when Google Wave comes into being, it will likely be fairly easy to combine all of this. Whether one should wish to... well, that's another question.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Pinax looks really cool, but is probably overkill for a personal site. If I was looking at recreating all those social networking tools, though...

[thirdworld.livejournal.com]

Although I've yet to use all of that functionality, I believe Drupal can do most/all of that and you can still use Gallery 2 (module last updated in January). I'd suggest Drupal 6. The Drupal tech community is vibrant. I usually suggest Wordpress for simple sites, and it might handle this, but I'm not certain, and I'm not sure how well. Last I checked, image handling was ok, a bit clunky and counter-intuitive, but okay. Joomla is my next suggestion, because it is easier to learn. Drupal is what I recommend for any site that needs more functionality, or will need more functionality in the future, or is to have a longer lifespan. With Drupal you can also create your own gallery, if you don't like Gallery 2. See this example.