Posted By: Khaleeka on October 29 2011 04:55 pm
I've been looking for a suitable CMS for my online project for quite a while and OcPortal was the answer to my prayer.
It has enough features and flexibility to organize a vast array of different types of websites. It's programming is easy to learn and their online community has gone out of their way to help this ocp virgin figure out various kinks and bugs.
Don't diss it till you try it.
Posted By: BobS on September 6 2011 02:00 pm
I wanted to update my thoughts based on recent developments at ocPortal/ocProducts and my better understanding of the software after a few months of use.
Compared to many other CMS systems which are largely created by committee with a great deal of third-party development, I think ocPortal has the three Cs necessary to a successful software deployment: coherence, cohesiveness and consistency.
Since ocPortal is not cobbled together by committee, there is a coherent strategy for its development based on the commercial projects the company works an - and yet, ocPortal is free.
Since ocPortal tries to include all the basic things which are often provided by third-party add-ons in other CMSes, the product is more cohesive. You can rely that the included add-ons will integrate well with the base code. This is one of the great challenges for other CMS products.
Finally, there is consistency. Much is made about large third-party development communities but without meticulous code review, the code often lacks the consistency that facilitates both maintenance and customization. Again, since ocPortal is created and supported by a commercial company, the code tends to be more consistent because code review is enforced from the time the code is written largely by the same group of developers.
All products have their pros and cons, but you will see that ocPortal has virtually all pros with the only downside being that the community is still somewhat small. That will change as more people explore the benefits that ocPortal has to offer.
The other shortcoming that is sometimes cited is the lack of themes but with ocProducts just delivering 30 professionally-designed reasonably priced themes (http://ocportal.com/site/downloads/misc/addons/version-70_4/themes_13/professional-themes.htm), I don't think this will be an issue much longer. This, along with the growth of the third-party theming community, should soon deliver a myriad of choices at competitive prices for those who are in need of an inexpensive solution to site design.
It is rare that you will find such feature-packed software for free which is based on a commercial product in the CMS arena. When you add in the fact that ocProducts, the commercial arm of ocPortal, offers a range of support options and services - including full agency design services (http://ocproducts.com/start.htm) for those businesses who would prefer to outsource their website design or customization (by the same people who wrote the original code) - you have a really great CMS solution for needs large and small.
To sum up why my CMS choice is ocPortal, I’ll mention a 4th C - comprehensive. ocPortal really is about offering a complete solution for your CMS needs. ocPortal provides the tools for beginners to build a complete site with the prospect of using the additional tools provided as their needs change. DIYers will find helpful theming tools and well-structured code making their changes that much easier. Finally, businesses can choose to go with the full-agency treatment making certain that their online presence is unique in terms of appearance and any added functional needs. And they back it up with top-notch support.
I know this may sound a bit like marketing (which is my background) but I have no affiliation with ocPortal other than as a very satisfied user/customer.
To find out more about ocPortal’s features, check out http://ocportal.com/site/features.htm or, if you’d like the quick rundown, http://ocportal.com/start.htm.
Posted By: Tisnart on July 29 2011 08:26 pm
I searched for about 4 months trying to find the right CMS to use, it had to be easy to understand and it had to have a great community to back it up.
I tried joomla first and although it was very attractive I found it very frustrating and not as easy as it looks. Then I came across ocPortal and tried it and thought it was pretty good. After that I wanted to make sure ocPortal was for me, so I tried many different CMS software and I found myself liking ocPortal even more after comparing it to all the others that I tried.
I am new to the whole CMS world and I can tell you that if you find yourself in the same situation you owe it to yourself to try ocPortal. Whats even better is the fact that they have an amazing community full of very knowledgeable and helpful people to help you on your journey.
Posted By: Duck on July 29 2011 06:10 am
Just started learning ocPortal and while it may seem a little daunting to learn for some it is actually quite easy to get a robust site up quickly without too much complexity. What is nice though is if you would like furtherintegration of exciting features it does have some more complex gears under the hood for those techie types who want more control. A fantastic CMS I wish I had discovered a long time ago!
Furthermore the Philosiphy of the Developers is truley refreshing and I think this is the kind of CMS that has greater potential than many might think. You would bedoing yourself a disservice if you did not give ocPortal serious looking over!
Posted By: Optimal Unity on June 29 2011 08:47 pm
With limited experience I have been able to set up a community portal and forum in fully customised set up.
This is a great piece of work.
Thank you ocPortal
Posted By: BobS on June 26 2011 08:35 pm
I have used several CMS systems over the years and, each time, became frustrated with dealing with upgrades and add-ons.
ocPortal is different in that many and, most importantly, most of the features requiring add-ons are built into ocPortal. Those that aren't are frequently delivered by add-ons maintained by the ocPortal developers. The result is that updating to the current release is much less of a crap shoot and instead just works subject to any mods you have made.
The software is very stable to begin with and benefits from developers whose attitude is that bugs should not be put on lists, they should be fixed.
Yes, there are areas that can and should improve, but at this point, I consider ocPortal the best solution for a "canned" CMS. For a current project, I decided to take a look around once again at what was available and chose ocPortal - and I am happy that I did.
Posted By: Chris Jones on April 22 2011 11:05 pm
I don't agree with what i have written either now. I did not take sufficient time to evaluate this product. It is simply the best CMS bar none....and yes Mythus you are correct it is not that difficult to make a themes, and likewise I would go further and say its actually easier to create a theme in this product than most other products and believe me I have tried just about everything. In fact my community website is now based on this product.
Posted By: mythus on April 19 2011 03:26 pm
I don't agree with you Chris Jones. While there is a lack of a lot of themes, to say that there are none is completely wrong. There are several themes that can be downloaded from ocportal add-ons page. Some great themes made by the CMS's user base can be found there, and you can even find demos and screenshots of some of these themes in the ocportal forums.
Besides I find it extremely easy to make a theme. I have made several myself whereas I have been unable to do so in other CMS'es.
So yes, there are not a lot of themes, but there are some. 9 out of 10 on any CMS, if you truly want a unique website, you aren't going to want to use a premade theme, you are going to want to make your own (or hire someone to do so). Theme making in ocportal is at lease very easy to make simple themes, and you can of course make very complex themes if you so desire.
Posted By: Chris Jones on April 4 2011 02:19 am
Without doubt, the very best CMS, with more options than you can shake a stick at.
Where the product lets itself down is themes, there are none, not even commercial themes.
I somewhat think that the developers in their haste for technical excellence, have forgotten the most basic of all user requirements and hence their product has not gained wide popularity.
Whilst they have made an attempt to address this issue, they have not gone far enough and still continue to develop the product unnecessarily,
The latest version does make it easier to change most of the very basic elements of the design, but further than that, my experience has been, that this is difficult to achieve unless you are a programmer.
In summary this is technically a great product, feature rich,free, probably without equal, but let down by lack of themes and difficulty to personalize the product.
I want to use this CMS but essentially I cant for this very reason.
I suspect that the guys developing this are primarily programmers and would explain why the product lets itself down.
They would seriously benefit from hiring someone that understands something about aesthetics and the desire for the average user to create a site that is unique and that the importance of this aspect is equal to if not greater than the technical capabilities.....otherwise this would be the product of choice for 80% of users looking for a competent/world class CMS.
Chris
Posted By: Puran on February 6 2011 03:29 pm
I did search many months for the right CMS, you know, a CMS that you can make looking less as a CMS, thats stable and has a lot of options within the source. Two major points where a forum thats good and no bridges or member shares, and the Dutch language in it. I tested many CMSs, installed them, even found some that where almost good, till I found a drawback and deleted them. I spend most of the time waiting till promissed upgrades from third party addons where ready; some never did appear. Then I find ocPortal, the first with a buildin fully powered full grown forum and the Dutch language. They even have some minor wishes, I tryed to get to work trought third party software, build in allready. Now I can finaly build my site like I wished and I'm happy!!! Greetings Puran.
Posted By: J on January 14 2011 01:53 am
OCP is refreshingly *complete*.
It's got a built-in forum with a wide array of importers; a very clean and intuitive admin panel; and an overall structure that's very flexible and extensible.
If you want to avoid development time, and want to skip the hassle of trying to lash together different apps and keep them integrated, OCP is probably the way to go.
Posted By: Chris Warburton on December 15 2010 04:43 pm
I recently expanded the Web site of a University society I help to run, which had started to outgrow its previous static HTML + PHPBB setup. I decided on ocPortal, and it was very straightforward to install, even on the rather restricted hosting we have (for example it includes scripts for setting file permissions correctly). It integrates nicely with the existing PHPBB installation (existing user accounts work in ocPortal, staff permissions are used across ocPortal and PHPBB, the existing emoticons appear throughout ocPortal, etc.). We now have a calendar, galleries and a wiki system thanks to ocPortal (I disabled the other addons), along with other nice community features like the points system (this integrates well too, since every user started with a load of points due to their PHPBB activity over the years :) ).
Highly recommended!
Posted By: Jean Gosselin on December 14 2010 12:59 pm
I use my website primarily as a virtual classroom needing to be updated constantly, often with real time content submitted by multiple authors(students).For three years, I’ve had to struggle with Joomla and a number of third party addons to create my idea of such a site. Searching for the right components that would play nice with the ones already in place was time consuming and somewhat wearisome, while striving to keep a stable site. I was constantly reminded by a multitude of invasive critical updates and upgrades cascading through components, modules and bots that I had created a living nightmare requiring constant administrative attention to repair the disturbances to the site.Searching for a better solution, I stumbled upon ocPortal and it was “love at first site”
I built my interactive website in under an hour without requiring a single third party addon as right out of the box; I had access to a sophisticated forum, group memberships with an elaborate permission tree structure, blogs and photo galleries for each member and most formidable; interactive front page blocks updated in real time with content submitted by multiple authors, RSS feeds, quiz and polls. Most of these goodies set up practically by themselves with the installation wizard.
With a small and friendly community, it was easy to notice how the architect of this powerful software is always readily available to fix problems, instruct and reassure users and designers over their best course of action to implement their ideas; meanwhile, guiding the project through well defined objectives.
However, unlike Joomla and other better known CMS, there seemed to be very few “Themes” for ocPortal, indicating perhaps that most of its users were favoring substance rather than relying on spiffy graphics to create unique websites, or was it that it was too difficult to implement such radical changes without affecting the stability of the software?
Since I like to give an artistic flavor to my websites, I set out to explore the theming possibilities of ocPortal. Equipped with a very rudimental understanding of HTML and CSS templates and documentation provided by ocPortal, I had my first theme standing proudly on its own within a couple of hours. I was stunned at how easy it was to change the look of the main page without ever going out of the software and accomplishing it in real time. I was so thrilled by this prospect that I immediately created a series of tutorials and set out my students into crafting distinctly unique ocPortal sites, as part of a new and exciting topic of my virtual classroom.
In the case of ocportal, having limited theme choices does not necessarily imply it is difficult to implement one, but rather an apparent minimalistic preference in using what is working just right, out of the box, for most satisfied ocPortal users.
Posted By: Terry Fletcher on November 30 2010 11:08 am
ocPortal is FREE! With the release of version 4.x.x (currently at version 5.0.3) ocPortal made its way into 'opensource' and that, put simply, is a wonderful addition for those that want a CMS that can do just about anything you want. And a few things you didn't know could be done! The synopsis for the product says it all, and as a user of the engine, both paid and free, I cannot recommend it highly enough! It comes with 'everything', out of the box; you disable modules you don't wish to use. That is refreshing, especially when you've used other CMS's and have had to hunt for hours looking for add-ons that may or may not have integrated seamlessly, or which might have turned your installation into a veritable Swiss-cheese as far as security is concerned. Go get it. What are you waiting for?
Posted By: Hobbis on November 3 2010 09:46 am
Amazingly great CMS with every functionality the potential user may dream of. Robust, efficient and flexible but with steep learning curve as this is rather complex professional system. Moreover there is also a friendly and vibrant community where you can even expect support, very promptly given by the creators of the ocPortal. This excellent CMS is unique in terms of being a real out of the box solution. Present version - 5.03 but 5.1 is already coming, which means that this system is improved on constant basis. Best regards.
Posted By: Columbo on October 9 2010 11:18 am
I was looking for something to replace my Wordpress site with because I wanted to have the use of a forum on my site. With Wordpress you had to use a bridge and I really didn't want to have to do that. Then I stumbled upon ocPortal which has a built-in forum. After installing the software I was, to be quite honest, a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of features it has. But I quickly realized that I could use only the features than suit my needs and simply turn off the rest. The cms software is great and the built-in forum is great as well making ocPortal the perfect answer to my needs. Many thanks to the ocPortal team for a great piece of software and FREE!
Posted By: mythus on September 3 2010 05:53 pm
Boxx, I don't know about the demo, but I have been running ocPortal for a few years now, with no issue, whereas I've had Joomla crash and such. Sure, the issues I had with Joomla were 9 out of 10 do to the plug ins I was using, but for my site I needed those types of plugin, and lots of plug ins. Having so many 3rd party plugins to run my site ended up bringing in unwanted crap and left vulnerabilities. After facing yet another intrusion, I left joomla for ocPortal.
I've started in the 4.1 series, and have upgraded throughout to the current 5.0.1, largely with no issues. Sure I'd have the occasional small bug or misunderstanding, but the team over at ocportal helped me out, and most of the time gave me same day and in some cases same hour service, all for free, and often by the head developer himself. There are add ons for ocPortal, but I haven't needed any of them as it does what I need out of the box. Theming it has been easy, and the theme generator gives a good start, and don't even get me started on the wonderful forum, catalogs, and CEDI (wiki) tools of the site. Buggy? My site disagrees.
So yeah, go ahead, stick with Joomla if it suits you better. Joomla is a decent CMS. I just find ocPortal better, more stable, and just plain more awesome. I'd give you a link to my site to prove it, but I am not sure if that is against opensourcecms rules or not. Demos aer generally a good way to see how a product works, but sometimes the demo itself isn't installed right or isn't maintained as it should be, plus with a system like ocPortal, really the only way to get a good feel for it is to install it yourself.
Posted By: Boxx on September 1 2010 04:25 pm
Demo is very buggy.
Many features, but maybe the developers should focus more on stability ?!
Stick to Joomla.
Posted By: Gridwalker on July 8 2010 08:46 am
I have not produced a website in many years, but have had the dubious pleasure of using many CMS systems through work; I have since chosen to use ocPortal for a personal project and the power, flexibility & simplicity of this software has blown me away.
There are now rumors coming from the development team, suggesting a new release is imminent ... I can't wait for the upgrade, so I can't see what version 5 has in store!
You can even perform an upgrade straight from the administration area; what more could you want?
Posted By: friendly on March 19 2010 01:10 am
ocPortal is an incredible CMS product. Personally I am redesigning my 12-1/2 year old website which, over the years has not kept pace with the changing web standards and has other problems. It badly needed to be brought into the 21st century web experience.
I had found ocPortal about a year ago in my three year search for a ??perfect?? CMS platform. I am finding that ocPortal enables me to produce a web compliant, fully featured website that has community and other cool features which will make my website so much better than I could have done on my own. Usually, I am a do it yourself kind of guy but since ocPortal comes â??out of the box? with excellent technical support and a creative and helpful user community, I am enjoying having help in my endeavor.
I read so many good reviews in this column and tend to agree with them that ocPortal is the best.
Posted By: Terry Platt on February 6 2010 11:01 am
Unbelievable! I'm still checking to make sure I have not died and gone to heaven!
I am very fortunate to have several web sites that have become very popular with thousands of visitors per week. Unfortunately, success does have it's downside - especially when the foundation was not built for such a load.
I have spent weeks and weeks evaluating everything I could find that might be suitable for a new foundation. Without a doubt, I have found it in ocPortal. Using the features already built-in, I had replacement sites up in less than one hour.
I am abandoning Drupal, Joomla, ModX, Wordpress for ocPortal.
Posted By: David on January 28 2010 12:47 am
ocPortal and it's team is a delight to work with. It's developers work tirelessly to produce a CMS that simply WORKS! ... Out of the Box. The comments above regarding needing FTP access, etc are simply bogus. If you want ocP to install it for you( in about 3 minutes) sinply create a database / user and dedicated FTP user/password and you'll be running in now time.
My experience is with Miva 5.5, Joomla, MODx, Magento, WordPress and SilverStripe. All CMS and ecommerce solutions have their + and -. ocPortal seems to place most of the checks on the right side of the isle, and no need to download buggy 3rd party modules, etc.
ocPortal is extremely well planned, well documented, and even has helpful tips WITHIN the CMS. The videos are extremely helpful to the newbie since its logic is not logical... at first. After a few hours playing around with ComCode and dropping in your own css styles, you'll start to understand the power and potential it has. My next project will use its ecommerce functionality... I'll post more when I get some hours behind it.
Posted By: Fun_Friendly on January 25 2010 10:46 am
Have a look at http://ocportal.com/docs/tutorials.htm kelechi, they helped me out lots when i first started using ocPortal.
I've used loads of CMSs over the years and never found one I could really get along with. ocPortal was the first one that had everything I needed without having to try and import third party modules which would then need tweaking to fit and look right. I'm not a programmer so i struggled and finding ocPortal made my life a lot easier to what i was using before.
Posted By: kelechi on January 9 2010 11:21 am
I am New user of ocportal.I need a guide or manual with which i can use it with out difficulties.any 1 can help.my email knwuba@yahoo.com
Posted By: Diegis on November 12 2009 03:54 pm
For me, this CMS was crash (I work on it for about 4 month) after the first try to upgrade without possibility to upload the back-up. Doesn't work!. Was very complex but moving slowly and very complicate set-up!
I don't recommend!
Posted By: shustas on October 19 2009 06:35 pm
Really the most powerfull and the most feature rich free CMS in the whole wild world. Nothing compares to it.
The only bad thing is very little custom themes.
But that can be fixed by making your own
Posted By: WildHaggis on September 29 2009 07:18 am
The previous poster needs to relax and not get so nurotic. The need your ftp address and password if you want to use the auto install. That simple, they don't force you to do that it's your choice. And yes you can upload it to your webspace and install it because I have. Before you go crazy with comments, just try it out for yourself. Jeex....
Posted By: Shovvelly on September 28 2009 11:48 am
The above post is why I came here.
WHY DO THEY WANT YOUR FTP AND PASSWORD?
CAN ANYONE ANSWER THAT?
It seems there is a Problem here?
You can't just Install it from a Browser? - The Download section of their web site is weird ...
Install Options...
1.) They want you to give them your FTP site name AND PASSWORD ...??? so their server can Install the CMS for you! ...Don't do it!!!
2.) They will send you a self extracting Install File for your Web Site!!! - ...Don't do it!!!
3.) You can down load a ZIP [or TAR Ball file for a Manual Install] ...But, It reads; You then have to set the CHMOD of thousands of files???...
This all seems VERY WRONG!...
Posted By: kyle on September 21 2009 03:25 am
its very buggy, try searching a catalog via listbox entry. can't do it, it never gets results
Posted By: Alberto on June 30 2009 03:01 pm
This is a complete web system for anything. You can even create your own databases and forms about anything through the admin panel, choose what filename your cookies should have and debrand everything with 2 or 3 clicks...
In Joomla and many other systems, when permitted, you have to edit the module or component's core files to get rid of third party addons... by the way, I'm sure there are addons for everything in the Joomla and alike worlds, but that's exaclty the problem: too much time to find what 'could' suite your needs and then customizing and often editing core files.
ocPortal has everything built-in and is probably the most flexible yet robust system out here. I've read complaints about its server resource needs and difficulties in the installation method (below). I have a few observations about these:
1 - ocPortal creates about over a 160 database tables, but if you add all of its functionality to Joomla through add ons (after months of searching within the 'joomla world', for instance, you will most problably get about 190 tables...
2 - server systems are rapidly getting far faster and more robust everywhere, whereas the costs and dropping steadily for maintaining a cms hosted. I have a shared host account where I maintain 11 websites, 3 of which using ocPortal as their backbones and all goes quite normally. In the same shared account I also use and test several systems (Joomla, impress, e107, wordpress, etc) and everything have always kept working all right.
3 - Regarding the installation, just upload the manual extraction file option and do all the rest just as the same way you would do for most of the rest of the cms here. Although ocPortal's team is polite enough to warn you might have to chmod many files, actually you do not have to do anything for most of the standard apache/mysql server configurations around. I have never had to do this.
Having said all this, it is true that there is a learning curve to customize and specially to adjust your design to the system, but even this is much easier and more flexible than many other options.
Posted By: terry on June 25 2009 02:30 pm
It seems there is a Problem here?
You can't just Install it from a Browser? - The Download section of their web site is weird ...
Install Options...
1.) They want you to give them your FTP site name AND PASSWORD ...??? so their server can Install the CMS for you! ...Don't do it!!!
2.) They will send you a self extracting Install File for your Web Site!!! - ...Don't do it!!!
3.) You can down load a ZIP [or TAR Ball file for a Manual Install] ...But, It reads; You then have to set the CHMOD of thousands of files???...
This all seems VERY WRONG!...
Posted By: Aaron on April 27 2009 02:23 am
I've been using OCPortal for years, nearly since the beginning, and I can tell you that this is one of the best CMSes on the market today. It has more ability, flexibility, and just raw power, while maintaining a real friendliness; this is something that is the mark of true excellence. Bravo Chris, Philip, and everyone associated with developing this product.
Posted By: James Milligan on April 7 2009 12:46 pm
I currently work in the ClanTiger project, so I would usually be slightly biased.
However...
This CMS is absolutely, positively, the BEST CMS IN THE WORLD!!!
When I saw the options in the set up for the different types of modules etc, I couldn't believe it!
Great work guys, keep it up!
James Milligan / Lake54
Posted By: Marc on March 16 2009 02:04 pm
Nice :)
Posted By: Ash on February 1 2009 03:51 pm
Man. I read the above comments and I thought "Yeah, this is going to be just like the other ones" but I can tell you now, that I was definitely mistaken. This is an excellent CMS. It's an excellent Community Portal. It's literally excellent at everything it does, and it's extremely configurable while it does it.
I've used PHPNuke, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Joomla, Mambo and Umbraco. All of the above are completely left in the dust by ocPortal.
Posted By: SoccerDad on January 21 2009 06:24 pm
After having thoroughly used Joomla/Mambo, Xoops, Drupal and all the "nukes", I was delighted to find ocPortal. This CMS/WebDev package leaves the above behind. No more wading through addons for functionality, arcane usage, and community implosion. After a short learning curve, the power and flexibility of this package is second to none in the OpenSource community. User and group access control, broad to granular security options, fully integrated forums, and the list goes on. Check it out!
Posted By: mythus on January 21 2009 09:52 am
This is a script like none other. Nothing else on here gives as much power and ability to change and customize and as many tools as ocPortal does, and I have used quite a handful of the. About the only one that even comes close is Joomla after adding a hundred or so different addons. ocPortal is fast, powerful, feature rich, and secure. It's catologue system allows you to create and manage your own forms which of course can be product catalogues and so much more; it has drivers taht integrate (not just bridge) most of the forums you see here on this site and it's built in forum (OCF) is feature rich and powerful; and for easy customization there is a theme wizard. You have access to everything; in built css editors, template editors, even a command line tool.
There is just too much to say about ocPortal. Give it a try. I did and I am lovin' it! My cms hopping stops here!
Posted By: Amy on January 19 2009 10:53 pm
I have to tell you this cms is the best cms I have ever used.
I honestly feel there is not better cms then ocportal and I have used and tested all of the cms's posted on this site.
ocPortal Website
Download ocPortal
ocPortal Docs
ocPortal Forum
ocPortal 7.1.5
I've been looking for a suitable CMS for my online project for quite a while and OcPortal was the answer to my prayer.
It has enough features and flexibility to organize a vast array of different types of websites. It's programming is easy to learn and their online community has gone out of their way to help this ocp virgin figure out various kinks and bugs.
Don't diss it till you try it.
I wanted to update my thoughts based on recent developments at ocPortal/ocProducts and my better understanding of the software after a few months of use.
Compared to many other CMS systems which are largely created by committee with a great deal of third-party development, I think ocPortal has the three Cs necessary to a successful software deployment: coherence, cohesiveness and consistency.
Since ocPortal is not cobbled together by committee, there is a coherent strategy for its development based on the commercial projects the company works an - and yet, ocPortal is free.
Since ocPortal tries to include all the basic things which are often provided by third-party add-ons in other CMSes, the product is more cohesive. You can rely that the included add-ons will integrate well with the base code. This is one of the great challenges for other CMS products.
Finally, there is consistency. Much is made about large third-party development communities but without meticulous code review, the code often lacks the consistency that facilitates both maintenance and customization. Again, since ocPortal is created and supported by a commercial company, the code tends to be more consistent because code review is enforced from the time the code is written largely by the same group of developers.
All products have their pros and cons, but you will see that ocPortal has virtually all pros with the only downside being that the community is still somewhat small. That will change as more people explore the benefits that ocPortal has to offer.
The other shortcoming that is sometimes cited is the lack of themes but with ocProducts just delivering 30 professionally-designed reasonably priced themes (http://ocportal.com/site/downloads/misc/addons/version-70_4/themes_13/professional-themes.htm), I don't think this will be an issue much longer. This, along with the growth of the third-party theming community, should soon deliver a myriad of choices at competitive prices for those who are in need of an inexpensive solution to site design.
It is rare that you will find such feature-packed software for free which is based on a commercial product in the CMS arena. When you add in the fact that ocProducts, the commercial arm of ocPortal, offers a range of support options and services - including full agency design services (http://ocproducts.com/start.htm) for those businesses who would prefer to outsource their website design or customization (by the same people who wrote the original code) - you have a really great CMS solution for needs large and small.
To sum up why my CMS choice is ocPortal, I’ll mention a 4th C - comprehensive. ocPortal really is about offering a complete solution for your CMS needs. ocPortal provides the tools for beginners to build a complete site with the prospect of using the additional tools provided as their needs change. DIYers will find helpful theming tools and well-structured code making their changes that much easier. Finally, businesses can choose to go with the full-agency treatment making certain that their online presence is unique in terms of appearance and any added functional needs. And they back it up with top-notch support.
I know this may sound a bit like marketing (which is my background) but I have no affiliation with ocPortal other than as a very satisfied user/customer.
To find out more about ocPortal’s features, check out http://ocportal.com/site/features.htm or, if you’d like the quick rundown, http://ocportal.com/start.htm.
I searched for about 4 months trying to find the right CMS to use, it had to be easy to understand and it had to have a great community to back it up.
I tried joomla first and although it was very attractive I found it very frustrating and not as easy as it looks. Then I came across ocPortal and tried it and thought it was pretty good. After that I wanted to make sure ocPortal was for me, so I tried many different CMS software and I found myself liking ocPortal even more after comparing it to all the others that I tried.
I am new to the whole CMS world and I can tell you that if you find yourself in the same situation you owe it to yourself to try ocPortal. Whats even better is the fact that they have an amazing community full of very knowledgeable and helpful people to help you on your journey.
Just started learning ocPortal and while it may seem a little daunting to learn for some it is actually quite easy to get a robust site up quickly without too much complexity. What is nice though is if you would like furtherintegration of exciting features it does have some more complex gears under the hood for those techie types who want more control. A fantastic CMS I wish I had discovered a long time ago!
Furthermore the Philosiphy of the Developers is truley refreshing and I think this is the kind of CMS that has greater potential than many might think. You would bedoing yourself a disservice if you did not give ocPortal serious looking over!
With limited experience I have been able to set up a community portal and forum in fully customised set up.
This is a great piece of work.
Thank you ocPortal
I have used several CMS systems over the years and, each time, became frustrated with dealing with upgrades and add-ons.
ocPortal is different in that many and, most importantly, most of the features requiring add-ons are built into ocPortal. Those that aren't are frequently delivered by add-ons maintained by the ocPortal developers. The result is that updating to the current release is much less of a crap shoot and instead just works subject to any mods you have made.
The software is very stable to begin with and benefits from developers whose attitude is that bugs should not be put on lists, they should be fixed.
Yes, there are areas that can and should improve, but at this point, I consider ocPortal the best solution for a "canned" CMS. For a current project, I decided to take a look around once again at what was available and chose ocPortal - and I am happy that I did.
I don't agree with what i have written either now. I did not take sufficient time to evaluate this product. It is simply the best CMS bar none....and yes Mythus you are correct it is not that difficult to make a themes, and likewise I would go further and say its actually easier to create a theme in this product than most other products and believe me I have tried just about everything. In fact my community website is now based on this product.
I don't agree with you Chris Jones. While there is a lack of a lot of themes, to say that there are none is completely wrong. There are several themes that can be downloaded from ocportal add-ons page. Some great themes made by the CMS's user base can be found there, and you can even find demos and screenshots of some of these themes in the ocportal forums.
Besides I find it extremely easy to make a theme. I have made several myself whereas I have been unable to do so in other CMS'es.
So yes, there are not a lot of themes, but there are some. 9 out of 10 on any CMS, if you truly want a unique website, you aren't going to want to use a premade theme, you are going to want to make your own (or hire someone to do so). Theme making in ocportal is at lease very easy to make simple themes, and you can of course make very complex themes if you so desire.
Without doubt, the very best CMS, with more options than you can shake a stick at.
Where the product lets itself down is themes, there are none, not even commercial themes.
I somewhat think that the developers in their haste for technical excellence, have forgotten the most basic of all user requirements and hence their product has not gained wide popularity.
Whilst they have made an attempt to address this issue, they have not gone far enough and still continue to develop the product unnecessarily,
The latest version does make it easier to change most of the very basic elements of the design, but further than that, my experience has been, that this is difficult to achieve unless you are a programmer.
In summary this is technically a great product, feature rich,free, probably without equal, but let down by lack of themes and difficulty to personalize the product.
I want to use this CMS but essentially I cant for this very reason.
I suspect that the guys developing this are primarily programmers and would explain why the product lets itself down.
They would seriously benefit from hiring someone that understands something about aesthetics and the desire for the average user to create a site that is unique and that the importance of this aspect is equal to if not greater than the technical capabilities.....otherwise this would be the product of choice for 80% of users looking for a competent/world class CMS.
Chris
I did search many months for the right CMS, you know, a CMS that you can make looking less as a CMS, thats stable and has a lot of options within the source. Two major points where a forum thats good and no bridges or member shares, and the Dutch language in it. I tested many CMSs, installed them, even found some that where almost good, till I found a drawback and deleted them. I spend most of the time waiting till promissed upgrades from third party addons where ready; some never did appear.
Then I find ocPortal, the first with a buildin fully powered full grown forum and the Dutch language. They even have some minor wishes, I tryed to get to work trought third party software, build in allready.
Now I can finaly build my site like I wished and I'm happy!!!
Greetings Puran.
OCP is refreshingly *complete*.
It's got a built-in forum with a wide array of importers; a very clean and intuitive admin panel; and an overall structure that's very flexible and extensible.
If you want to avoid development time, and want to skip the hassle of trying to lash together different apps and keep them integrated, OCP is probably the way to go.
I recently expanded the Web site of a University society I help to run, which had started to outgrow its previous static HTML + PHPBB setup. I decided on ocPortal, and it was very straightforward to install, even on the rather restricted hosting we have (for example it includes scripts for setting file permissions correctly). It integrates nicely with the existing PHPBB installation (existing user accounts work in ocPortal, staff permissions are used across ocPortal and PHPBB, the existing emoticons appear throughout ocPortal, etc.). We now have a calendar, galleries and a wiki system thanks to ocPortal (I disabled the other addons), along with other nice community features like the points system (this integrates well too, since every user started with a load of points due to their PHPBB activity over the years :) ).
Highly recommended!
I use my website primarily as a virtual classroom needing to be updated constantly, often with real time content submitted by multiple authors(students).For three years, I’ve had to struggle with Joomla and a number of third party addons to create my idea of such a site. Searching for the right components that would play nice with the ones already in place was time consuming and somewhat wearisome, while striving to keep a stable site. I was constantly reminded by a multitude of invasive critical updates and upgrades cascading through components, modules and bots that I had created a living nightmare requiring constant administrative attention to repair the disturbances to the site.Searching for a better solution, I stumbled upon ocPortal and it was “love at first site”
I built my interactive website in under an hour without requiring a single third party addon as right out of the box; I had access to a sophisticated forum, group memberships with an elaborate permission tree structure, blogs and photo galleries for each member and most formidable; interactive front page blocks updated in real time with content submitted by multiple authors, RSS feeds, quiz and polls. Most of these goodies set up practically by themselves with the installation wizard.
With a small and friendly community, it was easy to notice how the architect of this powerful software is always readily available to fix problems, instruct and reassure users and designers over their best course of action to implement their ideas; meanwhile, guiding the project through well defined objectives.
However, unlike Joomla and other better known CMS, there seemed to be very few “Themes” for ocPortal, indicating perhaps that most of its users were favoring substance rather than relying on spiffy graphics to create unique websites, or was it that it was too difficult to implement such radical changes without affecting the stability of the software?
Since I like to give an artistic flavor to my websites, I set out to explore the theming possibilities of ocPortal. Equipped with a very rudimental understanding of HTML and CSS templates and documentation provided by ocPortal, I had my first theme standing proudly on its own within a couple of hours. I was stunned at how easy it was to change the look of the main page without ever going out of the software and accomplishing it in real time. I was so thrilled by this prospect that I immediately created a series of tutorials and set out my students into crafting distinctly unique ocPortal sites, as part of a new and exciting topic of my virtual classroom.
In the case of ocportal, having limited theme choices does not necessarily imply it is difficult to implement one, but rather an apparent minimalistic preference in using what is working just right, out of the box, for most satisfied ocPortal users.
ocPortal is FREE! With the release of version 4.x.x (currently at version 5.0.3) ocPortal made its way into 'opensource' and that, put simply, is a wonderful addition for those that want a CMS that can do just about anything you want. And a few things you didn't know could be done! The synopsis for the product says it all, and as a user of the engine, both paid and free, I cannot recommend it highly enough! It comes with 'everything', out of the box; you disable modules you don't wish to use. That is refreshing, especially when you've used other CMS's and have had to hunt for hours looking for add-ons that may or may not have integrated seamlessly, or which might have turned your installation into a veritable Swiss-cheese as far as security is concerned. Go get it. What are you waiting for?
Amazingly great CMS with every functionality the potential user may dream of. Robust, efficient and flexible but with steep learning curve as this is rather complex professional system. Moreover there is also a friendly and vibrant community where you can even expect support, very promptly given by the creators of the ocPortal. This excellent CMS is unique in terms of being a real out of the box solution. Present version - 5.03 but 5.1 is already coming, which means that this system is improved on constant basis. Best regards.
I was looking for something to replace my Wordpress site with because I wanted to have the use of a forum on my site. With Wordpress you had to use a bridge and I really didn't want to have to do that. Then I stumbled upon ocPortal which has a built-in forum. After installing the software I was, to be quite honest, a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of features it has. But I quickly realized that I could use only the features than suit my needs and simply turn off the rest. The cms software is great and the built-in forum is great as well making ocPortal the perfect answer to my needs. Many thanks to the ocPortal team for a great piece of software and FREE!
Boxx, I don't know about the demo, but I have been running ocPortal for a few years now, with no issue, whereas I've had Joomla crash and such. Sure, the issues I had with Joomla were 9 out of 10 do to the plug ins I was using, but for my site I needed those types of plugin, and lots of plug ins. Having so many 3rd party plugins to run my site ended up bringing in unwanted crap and left vulnerabilities. After facing yet another intrusion, I left joomla for ocPortal.
I've started in the 4.1 series, and have upgraded throughout to the current 5.0.1, largely with no issues. Sure I'd have the occasional small bug or misunderstanding, but the team over at ocportal helped me out, and most of the time gave me same day and in some cases same hour service, all for free, and often by the head developer himself. There are add ons for ocPortal, but I haven't needed any of them as it does what I need out of the box. Theming it has been easy, and the theme generator gives a good start, and don't even get me started on the wonderful forum, catalogs, and CEDI (wiki) tools of the site. Buggy? My site disagrees.
So yeah, go ahead, stick with Joomla if it suits you better. Joomla is a decent CMS. I just find ocPortal better, more stable, and just plain more awesome. I'd give you a link to my site to prove it, but I am not sure if that is against opensourcecms rules or not. Demos aer generally a good way to see how a product works, but sometimes the demo itself isn't installed right or isn't maintained as it should be, plus with a system like ocPortal, really the only way to get a good feel for it is to install it yourself.
Demo is very buggy.
Many features, but maybe the developers should focus more on stability ?!
Stick to Joomla.
I have not produced a website in many years, but have had the dubious pleasure of using many CMS systems through work; I have since chosen to use ocPortal for a personal project and the power, flexibility & simplicity of this software has blown me away.
There are now rumors coming from the development team, suggesting a new release is imminent ... I can't wait for the upgrade, so I can't see what version 5 has in store!
You can even perform an upgrade straight from the administration area; what more could you want?
ocPortal is an incredible CMS product. Personally I am redesigning my 12-1/2 year old website which, over the years has not kept pace with the changing web standards and has other problems. It badly needed to be brought into the 21st century web experience.
I had found ocPortal about a year ago in my three year search for a ??perfect?? CMS platform. I am finding that ocPortal enables me to produce a web compliant, fully featured website that has community and other cool features which will make my website so much better than I could have done on my own. Usually, I am a do it yourself kind of guy but since ocPortal comes â??out of the box? with excellent technical support and a creative and helpful user community, I am enjoying having help in my endeavor.
I read so many good reviews in this column and tend to agree with them that ocPortal is the best.
Unbelievable! I'm still checking to make sure I have not died and gone to heaven!
I am very fortunate to have several web sites that have become very popular with thousands of visitors per week. Unfortunately, success does have it's downside - especially when the foundation was not built for such a load.
I have spent weeks and weeks evaluating everything I could find that might be suitable for a new foundation. Without a doubt, I have found it in ocPortal. Using the features already built-in, I had replacement sites up in less than one hour.
I am abandoning Drupal, Joomla, ModX, Wordpress for ocPortal.
ocPortal and it's team is a delight to work with. It's developers work tirelessly to produce a CMS that simply WORKS! ... Out of the Box. The comments above regarding needing FTP access, etc are simply bogus. If you want ocP to install it for you( in about 3 minutes) sinply create a database / user and dedicated FTP user/password and you'll be running in now time.
My experience is with Miva 5.5, Joomla, MODx, Magento, WordPress and SilverStripe. All CMS and ecommerce solutions have their + and -. ocPortal seems to place most of the checks on the right side of the isle, and no need to download buggy 3rd party modules, etc.
ocPortal is extremely well planned, well documented, and even has helpful tips WITHIN the CMS. The videos are extremely helpful to the newbie since its logic is not logical... at first. After a few hours playing around with ComCode and dropping in your own css styles, you'll start to understand the power and potential it has. My next project will use its ecommerce functionality... I'll post more when I get some hours behind it.
Have a look at http://ocportal.com/docs/tutorials.htm kelechi, they helped me out lots when i first started using ocPortal.
I've used loads of CMSs over the years and never found one I could really get along with. ocPortal was the first one that had everything I needed without having to try and import third party modules which would then need tweaking to fit and look right. I'm not a programmer so i struggled and finding ocPortal made my life a lot easier to what i was using before.
I am New user of ocportal.I need a guide or manual with which i can use it with out difficulties.any 1 can help.my email knwuba@yahoo.com
For me, this CMS was crash (I work on it for about 4 month) after the first try to upgrade without possibility to upload the back-up. Doesn't work!. Was very complex but moving slowly and very complicate set-up!
I don't recommend!
Really the most powerfull and the most feature rich free CMS in the whole wild world. Nothing compares to it.
The only bad thing is very little custom themes.
But that can be fixed by making your own
The previous poster needs to relax and not get so nurotic. The need your ftp address and password if you want to use the auto install. That simple, they don't force you to do that it's your choice. And yes you can upload it to your webspace and install it because I have. Before you go crazy with comments, just try it out for yourself. Jeex....
The above post is why I came here.
WHY DO THEY WANT YOUR FTP AND PASSWORD?
CAN ANYONE ANSWER THAT?
It seems there is a Problem here?
You can't just Install it from a Browser? - The Download section of their web site is weird ...
Install Options...
1.) They want you to give them your FTP site name AND PASSWORD ...??? so their server can Install the CMS for you! ...Don't do it!!!
2.) They will send you a self extracting Install File for your Web Site!!! - ...Don't do it!!!
3.) You can down load a ZIP [or TAR Ball file for a Manual Install] ...But, It reads; You then have to set the CHMOD of thousands of files???...
This all seems VERY WRONG!...
its very buggy, try searching a catalog via listbox entry. can't do it, it never gets results
This is a complete web system for anything. You can even create your own databases and forms about anything through the admin panel, choose what filename your cookies should have and debrand everything with 2 or 3 clicks...
In Joomla and many other systems, when permitted, you have to edit the module or component's core files to get rid of third party addons... by the way, I'm sure there are addons for everything in the Joomla and alike worlds, but that's exaclty the problem: too much time to find what 'could' suite your needs and then customizing and often editing core files.
ocPortal has everything built-in and is probably the most flexible yet robust system out here. I've read complaints about its server resource needs and difficulties in the installation method (below). I have a few observations about these:
1 - ocPortal creates about over a 160 database tables, but if you add all of its functionality to Joomla through add ons (after months of searching within the 'joomla world', for instance, you will most problably get about 190 tables...
2 - server systems are rapidly getting far faster and more robust everywhere, whereas the costs and dropping steadily for maintaining a cms hosted. I have a shared host account where I maintain 11 websites, 3 of which using ocPortal as their backbones and all goes quite normally. In the same shared account I also use and test several systems (Joomla, impress, e107, wordpress, etc) and everything have always kept working all right.
3 - Regarding the installation, just upload the manual extraction file option and do all the rest just as the same way you would do for most of the rest of the cms here. Although ocPortal's team is polite enough to warn you might have to chmod many files, actually you do not have to do anything for most of the standard apache/mysql server configurations around. I have never had to do this.
Having said all this, it is true that there is a learning curve to customize and specially to adjust your design to the system, but even this is much easier and more flexible than many other options.
It seems there is a Problem here?
You can't just Install it from a Browser? - The Download section of their web site is weird ...
Install Options...
1.) They want you to give them your FTP site name AND PASSWORD ...??? so their server can Install the CMS for you! ...Don't do it!!!
2.) They will send you a self extracting Install File for your Web Site!!! - ...Don't do it!!!
3.) You can down load a ZIP [or TAR Ball file for a Manual Install] ...But, It reads; You then have to set the CHMOD of thousands of files???...
This all seems VERY WRONG!...
I've been using OCPortal for years, nearly since the beginning, and I can tell you that this is one of the best CMSes on the market today. It has more ability, flexibility, and just raw power, while maintaining a real friendliness; this is something that is the mark of true excellence. Bravo Chris, Philip, and everyone associated with developing this product.
I currently work in the ClanTiger project, so I would usually be slightly biased.
However...
This CMS is absolutely, positively, the BEST CMS IN THE WORLD!!!
When I saw the options in the set up for the different types of modules etc, I couldn't believe it!
Great work guys, keep it up!
James Milligan / Lake54
Nice :)
Man. I read the above comments and I thought "Yeah, this is going to be just like the other ones" but I can tell you now, that I was definitely mistaken. This is an excellent CMS. It's an excellent Community Portal. It's literally excellent at everything it does, and it's extremely configurable while it does it.
I've used PHPNuke, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Joomla, Mambo and Umbraco. All of the above are completely left in the dust by ocPortal.
After having thoroughly used Joomla/Mambo, Xoops, Drupal and all the "nukes", I was delighted to find ocPortal. This CMS/WebDev package leaves the above behind. No more wading through addons for functionality, arcane usage, and community implosion. After a short learning curve, the power and flexibility of this package is second to none in the OpenSource community. User and group access control, broad to granular security options, fully integrated forums, and the list goes on. Check it out!
This is a script like none other. Nothing else on here gives as much power and ability to change and customize and as many tools as ocPortal does, and I have used quite a handful of the. About the only one that even comes close is Joomla after adding a hundred or so different addons. ocPortal is fast, powerful, feature rich, and secure. It's catologue system allows you to create and manage your own forms which of course can be product catalogues and so much more; it has drivers taht integrate (not just bridge) most of the forums you see here on this site and it's built in forum (OCF) is feature rich and powerful; and for easy customization there is a theme wizard. You have access to everything; in built css editors, template editors, even a command line tool.
There is just too much to say about ocPortal. Give it a try. I did and I am lovin' it! My cms hopping stops here!
I have to tell you this cms is the best cms I have ever used.
I honestly feel there is not better cms then ocportal and I have used and tested all of the cms's posted on this site.