Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

Michel-Ange · 2011-09-22 21:20:24

You switched from Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, other, to Ionize...
Or you started with Ionize...

- Who are you ?
- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?

Answer to these simple questions will help us alot to improve the CMS !

Many thanks !

thedoglett · 2011-09-22 22:27:17

Hey Michel, here's my story & thoughts...

Previously I've used modX which is a great CMS with straightforward templating and editing features - but with unnecessarily awkward features ('ditto' for blogging springs to mind amongst some others) and - so I was told by those who were not familiar with using a CMS - the admin area seemed a little complicated to them.

I had looked at Wordpress but I don't like having to edit standard templates to fit in with what I want my site to do - I want to code it and get it working. Looking at all the code I'd have to hack around with in Wordpress made me shudder - sure, its a powerful blogging system but not what I'd consider an all-round-CMS.

So, I made it my mission to try and find *the* perfect CMS - no easy task.

I liked a few of them (such as 'Pyro') but they didn't quite fit the bill - and then I found Ionize. I loved the admin interface - its clear, easy and shows the structure in a logical manner. I can't see my customers having a problem editing articles - its very straightforward - and as for the way that the front-end navigation menu can be manipulated all I can say is fantastic.

I'm currently doing two new sites for customers, both using IonizeCMS, and I'm finding it quite easy to code (although there are times I have to come here for some help - I only have a basic knowledge of php) - once the sites are done I'll post them here for you to see.

The templating is really easy (similar to modX in some ways) and the content elements now act like modX 'Template Variables'.

In all, I can say that IonizeCMS has fulfilled 90% of my needs, with only a few tweaks needed here and there in order to make it what I would consider *perfect*:

Content Elements - if we could somehow loop through them as in my post here. Handy if you want to show all fields within a content element.

TinyMCE - some functions don't work with Ionize, such as iFrames, we can hardcode a content element into a view but sometimes you need to link to something inline within an article.

Embedding of youtube videos in TinyMCE (not just in views) - sometimes clients want to embed a youtube video inline with their article content and as such there's no specific place for them to go if using a dedicated view. They may be using several different views throughout a site so I would say this is quite important (see my other post here).

Some way of showing a random article/content element field - for example, say I have a content element which contains 20 individual fields/quotes from customers. Rather than have only specific quotes, or in a specific order, when the page loads it will choose 1,2 or 3 etc random fields to display.

The ability to edit views in the admin area is great and if it were possible to also edit CSS files in the admin area it would certainly be incredibly helpful. Sometimes you notice something which needs a tweak but you have to get back to your computer, load up Coda (or whatever you use to code) and update it. Being able to edit it on any computer via the admin interface would be very helpful.

Best of all, the Ionize community is very helpful and (most importantly) active - there's a dedication to helping people get the most out of this wonderful CMS and that speaks volumes about the people behind it.

So, that's my story. Keep up the good work - the hard work you chaps do is very much appreciated!

Last edited by thedoglett (2011-09-22 22:33:40)

xare · 2011-09-26 15:22:19

- Who are you ?
I am Juan a web developper and live in Greece.

- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
I was using mainly joomla. Joomla, even if recently improved, generates it's own html code from the content management system. It is not very flexible with multilingual content. It does not provide tags.
- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
Because although it has not much modules it is solid, simple for the client to use and straight forward to program.
- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
The most is it's multilingual interface. Then the capacity to add media to articles. Then the simplicity in programming through tags. And finally that developping modules is easy once you get it.
- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
It is as easy as opening the admin section and show him how easy it is to make changes.

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?
I still miss the chance to better integrate modules into ionize specially in article content. it is not always obvious how to do in order to show a module at a given url.

Guardian · 2011-10-18 20:10:08

- Who are you ?
I'm John, a freelance web developer, though I seem to spend most of my time working on OpenSource projects.

- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
Mostly I used RavenNuke but that's because until very recently, I was on the development team for a number of years. I still use it when it fits the clients requirements because it's a great system, easy to work with and develop for BUT since I left, the release cycle is just to long for it to be able to keep up with modern technologies like HTML 5.

- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
I haven't really 'switched' - I use whatever fits the clients (or my own) requirements. Ionize is simple to install, simple to use and most importantly, easy to use for novices. It is search engine friendly and has multi-lingual support. Ionize also uses the great Code Igniter framework.

- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
Multi-lingual support - it is not enough to have multi-lingual admin area's etc, a CMS has to be able to support multi-lingual content as well - Ionize does this extremely well and even has SEO optimization for that content as well.
It is easy to install, extremely easy to use and most importantly, it is intuitive to use - you don't need to spend any time getting familiar with it.

- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
I would only recommend Ionize for very simple sites at the moment or very big sites that needs lots of functionality to take advantage of the CI Framework.

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?
Lack of a contact form is extremely annoying! I know no one wants to add modules etc before Ionize v 1.0 BUT for people that cannot code (end users) it prevents them from using this great CMS because it doesn't have this one basic "must have" feature.
I believe quite strongly that any website must have certain basic functionality and a contact form is one of them.

The tinyMCE editor is pretty good, though personally I prefer CKeditor because it ensures any user inputted html used is xHTML compliant - I don't think tinyMCE enforces web standards.

Last edited by Guardian (2011-10-19 23:57:01)

kojiroh · 2011-10-19 13:30:45

- Who are you ?
I'm an all-purpose programmer in a tech consultancy/software development company, who didn't (probably still doesn't) have enough experience in PHP. I code in C++, C#, PHP, PL/SQL, manage and develop on Oracle and MySQL databases and do DHTML front-end development with CSS and Javascript.

- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
I wasn't exactly using any, but I was maintaining a website developed by a former fellow employee, who used his own homebrew CMS. It was very weak and it wasn't even object oriented. When I got the hint that I would be tasked on a website development, I skimmed through PyroCMS's help documents.

- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
I chose Ionize over Pyro because it was multi-lingual, and PyroCMS charged developers for multi-language support.

- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
The multi-language support and its ease to use was the main one. But over time I got very used to its theme, templating and view concepts.

- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
I tell them about the multi-language support

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?
The lack of a built-in contact form functionality, for starters. Also, the documentation is a bit lacking, but it's not very much of concern at the moment, as the development is still on-going. I'm also having a little problem with website structures and auto generated menus, but I'm not really sure if it's because of my lack of in-depth knowledge on Ionize or if it's because of Ionize itself. I also think that creating templates isn't really well-suited for end-users, but for more advanced users (such as coders).

Reddy · 2011-11-01 15:28:41

- Who are you ? Freelancer Web Developer
- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ? I have been using trying any kind of CMS systems.
- Why did you switch to Ionize ? I was only checking like other CMS systems,. But clear and sexy demo design and easy template integration, plus codeigniter based. Made me curious.
- What things made you happy in Ionize ? Feel like old school CMS systems (Love it), and without end if you are creative enough can add many things.
- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ? At the moment I am only trying to build a %100 functioning test website with ionize. Later I will answer this question.

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ? Actually like others, same problems. But those things are can be fixed really fast next version I believe. Documentation really lack of information.

But I really looking forward to using ionize, thanks for this hard work. Also thanks for sharing with us.

nitech · 2011-12-14 20:31:52

Hey Michel-Ange, this is my story:

First, let me clarify that I haven't tried Ionize CMS more than fiddling around with the admin for 20 minutes, but the thing of it is, I've been the lead developer of a commercial CMS system for almost eight years until recently when I left to try something new.

During my years as a CMS developer, I've made my opinion of how a CMS system should be - and though I realize one system cannot easily satisfy all customer groups, ranging from blogs to multinational companies, I believe one system can satisfy most customers from one-man-companies up to 2-3000 employees without problem.

I've wanted to dig deeper into Wordpress for a while, and that's what I'm doing now. What strikes me though is that the user interface, organization and "template system" is aimed heavily at 3rd party developers and blogs - thus the focus on templates and plugins. And the interface itself reminds me much of A List Apart, trying to be artistic at the cost of simplicity. Don't get me wrong though. Wordpress seems wonderful at many areas.

However, when I bumped into a strange and surprising problem with how to display second level menus at a different place in the template, I went looking around at the other CMS plattforms out there.

I believe simple admin UI is crucial to the end user. We might think open source is heaven, but Lisa at SimpleFish Inc doesn't need fancy html5 and open standards - she needs our skills to help her sell more fish - and the simpler and cleaner UI, the more she can concentrate on selling fish instead of fancying around the user interface.

After having tried Joomla, Ez, Wordpress and a whole lot of others, I was stumped at the simple and beautiful interface. Love the way you solved multilingual interface.

I'll be hanging around.

Last edited by nitech (2012-01-06 22:08:07)

dimotar · 2011-12-30 16:53:42

Salut Michel, hi to all.
I'm not hardcore web-developer, but I was developing sites ever since HTML and first browsers appeared. And I was even teaching IT and application security lately. I extensively used joomla and wordpress as CMS and Dreamweaver for static/presentational sites during last years. But true multilingual CMS was my primary concern ever since. In most cases small- to medium-size websites are requested by my customers, so SilverStripe, Drupal are overkill, while joomla and wordpress are messy, damn slow and not multilingual by origin. Yeah, "WP themes" is huge market, and there is the reason for it, but I'm not theme|plugin developer|coder.
I tryed IO on local site and liked it a lot. It IS the SOLUTION for my everyday task, and I can't wait for "production version".
Actual issues are:
1. lack of documentation for developers.
2. http://www.ionizecms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=682 (i'm too lazy for making the link)
3. lack of important plugins, lack of themes, but it's understandable.
4. and please, provide in install pack or as additional download the theme used on http://www.ionizecms.com. I consider developing the theme for my next web-site based on this theme.
Generally- thanks a lot to all the IO team for developing such great project. You did nice job! I think IO has very prominent future.
I could help with russian and serbian translations too.
Docteur d'Electronique de l'ENSEEIHT (99)
Dimitri TARASSOV.

jacknails · 2012-01-17 04:17:42

- Who are you ?
I'm a freelance web designer. I'm good at html and css. I'm not a programmer, so PHP, Javascript and MySQL are not my strong side.
It's important to me to offer my clients a full package and for that I'm always on the lookout for the best CMS to suit me and my clients.
Also, I'm secretly in love with Ionize. That sounds kinda sad now that I think about it

- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
I'd say about 90% Textpattern and 10% ExpressionEngine.
All 3 have a similar templating system - you embed your CMS tags inside your html.
This works for me, as I can build the site the way I want it, and then connect the bare HTML to the CMS.

Textpattern advantages over Ionize:
1. TXP tags are more versatile and there are more tags to choose from. I sometimes feel I'm missing that in Ionize.
2. TXP's documentation is very good. All tags are documented with all their options.
3. There are many plugins available.
4. TXP has a nice and helpful community, but I'm sure Ionize will pick up with time
5. Thanks to TXP's tags, I can create navigation easily with no PHP code.
With Ionize, I find creating navigation harder.

Ionize advantages over Textpattern:
1. Multilingual support! And implemented in a brilliant way. TXP has an MLP plugin for this, but Ionize is way way ahead of the game.
2. With TXP, I usually need to install about 5 plugins to get the functions I need from the CMS. But with Ionize, the basic install has everything needed for a basic site to work.
3. The Ionize admin is simple, clean and so easy to use. With TXP I usually need to go over the CMS with the client for about an hour before they can start working.
With Ionize, I feel I can just send them the link and they'll know how to do almost anything.
In TXP, all the articles are listed on one long page, with no hierarchy. So a site with many articles becomes a mess to work with.
In Ionize, the page navigation on the left is exactly the way it should be, clearly showing all the site sections and listed articles.
4. I like how in Ionize a theme is a folder and all views are in a sub folder.
This allows me to easily edit files locally or remotely.
In TXP, all the templates are inside the CMS and saved in the database. So editing is more complicated because you need to login to the admin and work in the browser.
5. Custom Fields! In ionize you have unlimited content elements AND extended fields.
This allows for some great customization of the publish page.
In TXP there are only 10 custom fields, and they are shared by all the articles. So you can't have section A with specific fields, and section B with different fields.
6. Image support. I love how in Ionize each article has all it's images right there in a tab.
I also love that you can drag and drop the images easily to arrange them.
Uploading could be better. I find the image manager a bit lacking. It's not easy to move between folders and select multiple images to add to the article.
In TXP, by default images are handled in a separate area of the CMS, so you need to go back and forth between editing an article and adding an image.
Plugins do help with this, but it's still not as sweet as Ionize.

- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
Love at first sight

- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
Multilingual out of the box.
Easy templating.
Beautiful admin.
Custom Fields out of the box.
Each article has it's own images, videos and files.
Adding content is fast and straight forward.

- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
Show them the admin. Done!

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?
There are some bugs and it seems it's taking a long time to have them fixed. (the ones I've noticed are multiple image upload not working and IFRAME in tinymce not working).

The documentation is basic and I'm still not exactly sure what the difference is between a page view and an article view and exactly how they work together.

I think Content Elements could be a bit better:
1. If you could assign a specific Content Element to a Page by default. So any article under that page would automatically have that content element in place.
So, let's say I have a "Cars" page, any article inside would automatically show the "Car Details" content element.
2. When you're editing an article, it would be nice if you could see the contents of the content element, without having to click on it.
At the moment, you only see the first field inside, but not the whole list of fields.
To actually edit this, you need to click on that element and then it pops up.
It would be more elegant if you could edit all the details directly, just like the basic fields (Title etc.)

No revisions. It would be comforting to have revisions of articles.

A small issue, but I think the term "Page" is a bit confusing and could be better described as "Section".

That's about it for now. I'm just starting out with Ionize, and I'm loving it like mad.
Really appreciate all the work gone into it, and will be happy to help any way I can with this project!

Last edited by jacknails (2012-01-17 04:27:27)

osd29 · 2012-04-20 09:32:40

Hi all!

I am a project manager. I known Ionize in one of my project for which we wanted to implement CMS. We tried "classical CMS" but those were to complicated to use and to customize. The developer (Beninho ) found Ionize and now we are "Ionize lovers".

As I am secretary of works council I decided to use Ionize to make our website. I am conviced that Ionize has a great potential.

Note: sorry for my English which is a little bit rusty.

Last edited by osd29 (2012-04-20 09:33:19)

hypervisual · 2012-05-02 03:57:30

- Who are you ?

Peter. Web developer. Melbourne, Australia.

- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?

Joomla/Mambo
Word Press
Umbraco
Drupal

Of all of these I am proficient with Word Press by overwhelming client requests and then Word Press became my CMS of choice because of my familiarity. But I am growing weary of WP footprint, the code base, the slowness and never-ending stream of updates.

Drupal to me seems over sized, over engineered and hard work.

I've only ever worked with Umbraco as a front-end dev. I've heard good things but I can't really verify.

As a fan of CodeIgniter I had been scouring the web for a light-weight extensible CMS built on CodeIgniter. Ionize seems appears to fit the bill. At this point I have not used it in anger but it looks promising. It appears to offer everything I have wanted from a CMS.

I am preparing to prototype a micro-site with Ionize and if all is good, then I will use it in production.

- Why did you switch to Ionize ?

I am still in the evaluation period but the reasons for choosing it are: it's footprint, it's underlying framework, it's extensibility, and it's apparent ease-of-use.

- What things made you happy in Ionize ?

Will let you know...

- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?

I perceive the benefits more from a development point of view. I am hoping it will lead to short development periods and highly customisable admins. The knock on benefits to the client are a fast time to market (fewer $$) and a admin system that meets their specific requirements without compromise.

- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?

So far it's the level of documentation but this will hopefully evolve.

webshunda · 2012-06-14 16:43:04

My name is Jack, and I am from China.
Now I'm a manager of Beijing Webshunda CO., Ltd.

I have made some projects with PHP, and I like it.

The first two projects were made via native PHP, the first one is a online registeration system for a univerisity, site is:http://www.bnulxsh.com/uc/; the second one is a website for showing products, the website is: http://www.feizhongda.com/.

I'm totally tired with the hard coding work even with this kind of small project. At the mean time, I made another website, Http://www.studyinxjtu.org, I used native PHP, although I spend a lot of energy on the whole website while planning the architecture. I found that I can't release myself if I have more customers with the same kind of job.

I'm in a mood to learn something, which can release my hand with new projects. I have heard that PHP framework can do this, but I don't know how.

After google searching on the internet, I know that Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress can do this kind of job.
I tried each of the above, and I found that Joomla and Drupal are to much for me, there are too many things I have to learn, and I found a big problem that It's even hard for me to update the core. As for wordpress, it was hacked by somebody within a month.

While I was almost disappoint about using framework, I found the light weight framework, the name is CodeIgniter, and I found it's very easy to learn. Almost at the same time, Ionize comes into my eyes.

Althouth it's only a baby now(0.9.7), I like it. And I found that it can do most of my current job and release my hands.

The reasons are:
1.I like the way of Really Multilingual, I need this for almost all my projects;
2.Ionize is Simple at the same time I can do most of my job;
3.Ionize is fast than other frameworks that I have tried.

Xuewu
My english is not very good, I'm sorry if there are some spelling or grammar mistakes.

6aKa · 2012-12-25 09:15:50

- Who are you ?
Alexander from Ukraine. QA Engineer
- Which CMS were you using before Ionize, why was it horrible or better ?
Joomla, Mambo, Drupal and many others.
All of this CMS horrible, besause it's developed for developers, not for users.
Make own template for this cms - task from hell. Noodles of HTML markup and code.
Then I start using TextPattern CMS.

Textpattern advantages over Ionize:
1. TXP tags are more powerfull. Many ways for sorting articles, media and others and with custom fields.
2. TXP's documentation is very good.
3. Permanent refactoring for core code - clean and good code style.
4. Directories and files structure with permissions - good for security, and best for deployment on linux servers(not need after installation corrections).
5. Textile markup.

Ionize advantages over Textpattern:
1. The feeling that the TXP developers specifically want the kernel was the smallest and don't add anything to it. Because of this, there are many modules that don't always work, especially on latest version.
2. Multilingual support. TXP has an MLP plugin for this, but it's almost never works on the latest version.
3. SEO, in TXP hasn't meta description tag and few title tags(you need use custom fields for this)
4. Caching.
5. Good usability for admin side.
6. Media support and media manager. All medias under control, no broken medias.
7. Clean and understanding article navigation (navigation levels powerfull solution, not need sections, categories and tags for structuring articles)
8. Views output control (View, Single Article View, Article View for pages and acticles)

- Why did you switch to Ionize ?
Because, Ionize CMS using best practice and ideas.
- What things made you happy in Ionize ?
All of which will be made.
- How would you introduce the benefits of Ionize to your client ?
Nothing, because no clients.
- About what were you disappointed or frustrated in Ionize ?
Less types for extended fields, no numeric type.
No field validation masks.
No sort options for articles and medias using extended fields.

Last edited by 6aKa (2012-12-25 10:02:39)

ionize CMS forum

#1 2011-09-22 21:20:24

Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#2 2011-09-22 22:27:17

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#3 2011-09-26 15:22:19

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#4 2011-10-18 20:10:08

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#5 2011-10-19 13:30:45

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#6 2011-11-01 15:28:41

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#7 2011-12-14 20:31:52

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#8 2011-12-30 16:53:42

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#9 2012-01-17 04:17:42

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#10 2012-04-20 09:32:40

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#11 2012-05-02 03:57:30

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#12 2012-06-14 16:43:04

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

#13 2012-12-25 09:15:50

Re: Why Ionize, Why Not ? It's great ? It sucks ? Tell us !

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