[opencms-dev] Beginner completely lost

[Florian Heinisch]

Hi Gregor,

apparently you feel the same way I did when I started with OpenCMS.  
Except of you already have read the OpenCMS book ;-)
Well, IMHO OpenCMS has a really steep learning curve. As the standard  
installation of OpenCMS provides a lot of features it might not that  
easy to grasp every little detail of OpenCMS at the very beginning.
I fully agree with you the documentation that comes along with OpenCMS  
is not very beginner-friendly. And as far as I know there is no  
complete "how-to-build-a-website-from-scratch" tutorial. You'll have  
to grab all the necessary information from different sources.

Nevertheless, if you are firm with Java and the concept of a J2EE web  
application you should be able to get your website up and running with  
OpenCMS.
Therefore, I would suggest you'll do the following:
1. Install OpenCMS with all the template2 modules
2. Follow the instructions in the OpenCMS book to setup your  
development environment (Eclipse) with WebDAV for efficient development
3. Develop a template from scratch as described in the OpenCMS book in  
order to convert your website layout into a OpenCMS template
4. Have a look at the existing content types (such as Article, News,  
etc.) that come along with the standard OpenCMS installation  
(template2). For the case that these content types do not fit your  
needs, develop your own (also described in the book and in the OpenCMS  
wiki).

That's it basically. Feel free to share your problems with the mailing  
list for the case that topic was not discussed yet :)
If you'll drop OpenCMS in favor of another open source Java-based CMS  
please let me know which one and for what reason (personal interest).

Good luck,

Florian



On Aug 28, 2009, at 5:39 PM, Gregor Schneider wrote:

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> Hi there,
>
> I'm looking for an CMS in Java since due to our security-policy PHP is
> not an option, and we don't know our ways aorund in Perl.
>
> Therefore, OpenCMS is (was?) one of our candidates, and has been my
> personal favourite until I started testing.
>
> Giving you some background-information:
>
> Installation 1:
>
> - - OS: Debian Edge
> - - DB. MySQL 5
> - - Java: SUN JDK 1.6
> - - Webserver: Tomcat 6
>
> Installation 2:
>
> - - OS: Windows XP
> - - DB: MySQL 5
> - - Java: SUN JDK 1.6
> - - Webserver: Tomcat 6
>
> On both installations I'm using OpenCMS 7.5
>
> Myself:
>
> I know my ways around in Java, JSPs, Servlets, Tomcat-Administration,
> so there should hopefully not be any lack of knowledge of essential
> components
>
> However:
>
> After having set up OpenCMS, all the questions began:
>
> - - Where's the documentation?
> - - Where's any sort of a good tutorial?
> - - How do i...?
>
> I have to setup a complete new webpage, so just editing the
> demo-applications doesn't help at all.
>
> What I'm really, really missing is a step-by-step-howto showing the  
> following:
>
> All tutorials / books I read just start somewhere in between showing
> how to hack into existing pages, but not how to set up a new site from
> scratch.
> And yes, I looked into the Wiki, however, the points of interest don't
> contain anything but a headline.
>
> Currently I feel that OpenCMS is one of those really bad examples of
> an OpenSource-project, where the code is the docs. Ok, I'm exagerating
> a bit.
>
> So if anybody could give me a piece of advice how to set up a new page
> incl. new templates, how to start, what's the best practices etc., I'd
> really, really appreciate this.
>
> My other option is to dump OpenCMS as a cms for our company, which I
> really dislike, however, currently that seems to be the most likely
> option.
>
> And yes, Ive read
>
> - - http://opencmsnewbie.netfirms.com/
> - - http://www.opencms-wiki.org
>
> The book from Packt Publishing: OpenCms.7.Development (Apr.2008)
>
> Again, any hints are really, really appreciated.
>
> Cheers
>
> Gregor
> - --
> just because your paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you...
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