What to use instead of Cutenews.ru?

[Goberg]

I am sorry to write this post, but I think I have to face it now. Cutenews.ru is dead and it doesn't seem to come back. I am currently working on a new site and I need a powerful CMS system. CN.ru is great and easy to use, but sadly it is missing a lot of features that I think is needed when creating a website today. I really wish the CN.ru community was sparkling.

I would be really interested to start a "new" group where we seriously take a look at how Cutenews.ru is working and where we try to add features and systems that are needed for a modern CMS system. I am not very skilled with PHP and server side scripting, but if we could gather up some people that are still using CN.ru I am sure we could manage to make the CMS that we REALLY need.

I'm gonna try to list of a few things that I think Cutenews.ru really really need:

- A better image system:
Today, all we really can do with cutenews and images is to upload them into folders and insert them into the news as single images. I think it would be fantastic if we where able to insert not only single images, but also galleries into our news items. It needs to be easier to insert multiple images as thumbnails that could be clicked and opened in for example a Lightbox module. It should also be easier to control the code that is generated when inserting the image, what if you want to style it the way you want to with borders or padding? If you want to do this you have to edit the code in the actual script files, but if you do this it could be hard to for example align the images the way you want to.

The image system really shows it's weakness when you are using multiple images for your story. Say you are using the avatar field for one image, but you also want to have another image (say a filmcover for a review), then you need to use XFields. Then it suddenly gets hard to remember how to post news when you have to sort out lots of different fields. This is specially hard when you are dealing with multiple editors that aren't that into HTML and don't know the system as well as I do. We need to be able to upload images and automatically resize them for our design and easily post them to our stories.

- A system for managing videos:
Sort of the same as images, but it would be really handy to have a easier way to upload and manage videos. It would even be great to just be able to save a database of videos that are embeded from sites like youtube and vimeo. For there it should be easy to add these embeded videos into our news items with a popup box where we could choose the video much like images today. I know its sort of possible to use XFields or QuickTags, but nothing beats a system that is made to handle video files.

Other than this Cutenews.ru are not handling users and commenting very well. What if it was possible to somehow connect the commenting system with Facebook, I know its possible to use Discus or something, but honestly it doesn't look very well and I would much more prefer to use something that is styleable with templates.

I don't know what other people on this forum think, but I don't really think Cutenews.ru is good enough for a modern website today. Adding news is a hassle when you have to deal with multiple XFields and code to make the news items look right. So I am wondering: Does anyone know of a CMS that is as easy to incorporate into a website design as Cutenews.ru is? Or would someone be interested to seriously try to develop CN.ru into a modern CMS? Maybe we could set up a new forum or Google Wave or something to have everything new in one spot.

Just to add at the very end, MediumWideShot is the site I am working on at the moment, I am using cutenews and it is working well, it's just that it is a bit outdated and hard to work with.

[mark99]

I have a similar problem, CNRU works very well but without a greater push and given the PHP5.3 problems I fear that it will be too broken before too long.

The biggest problem I have had with hunting for a replacement is that 99% of CMS alternatives are resource hogs, while I can make pages in CNRU that use less than 10 SQL queries.. others may require 100+ for a single page render and this quickly bogs the CPU down.

[Hawk]

Personally, I find Wordpress to be the closest to the CNR, tho I still prefer CNR because of it's ease of use and wide options of expanding the system. However I agree, there is a lack of php coders in community, which is eating lots of potential this system has.

[Torstein]

Closest thing would be strawberry.

If I were to change for a different system I would go for Wordpress, simply because of the immense amount of addons and the large community and dedicated developers.

As for CuteNews.RU, I'm afraid it is a "dead" CMS. After all it has been abandoned by it's developer several years ago (although FI-DD kept it alive for quite a few years). It is however still a capable system, supporting through some creative thinking almost all newer technologies.

I do not think other systems are that much easier to use, although I do agree that all the plugins sure looks tempting.

[mark99]

Wordpress is only comparable on the surface, underneath I find it's template engine and flexibility to be very limited and hard to engage with. It's still more of a blog system than a CMS and uses a lot more of my system resources.

I quite like Vivvo CMS and Joomla has a lot of support, but I know that the latter is a resource hog and I have yet to guage how Vivvo works. On the free end you have Nucleus CMS too, which I really must try since it seems close to CNRU's original goals. Drupal is one of the best but a lot of people find it hard to get to grips with, I really must try it myself.

As for Strawberry, is an English version out yet? Does it have a good english speaking community with mods and tweaks yet?