Website Baker 2.8.3

Website Baker is the best for me. I use it from my website project clients in Cambodia. It easy to customize template with easy back-end manage site. So I recommend for all CMS user.

NOTE: As I get ready to post this long -- but necessarily so -- comment, I am remembering that this web site's comment section has a nasty habit of sometimes inserting line breaks where they don't belong. So if my below is weirdly broken-up, it's not, trust me, the way I typed it. Anway, to my post...


Back in September of 2011, I posted, here, a response to "alex" who suggested that anyone "annoyed of the slow progress of WebsiteBaker Development and the harsh sound in the Forum" should check-out Website Baker's fork, the LEPTON CMS. So, what the heck, I did...

...and the first thing I noticed was that LEPTON hid the fact that it was a Website Baker fork... didn't mention it on a single page of its site. And that struck me as disingenuous. So my September 2011 posting, here, really took LEPTON to task for it; and I recommended, in fact, that no one use LEPTON because of its bad behavior.

Two months later, in November of 2011, someone named "Kurt" (whom I suspect is -- or at least was -- somehow connected with the LEPTON CMS... more on that in a moment) posted here suggesting that it was "nonsense" that LEPTON's web site didn't fess-up to that it was a Website Baker fork; that the front page of the LEPTON site, and two other pages on it, all acknowledged that LEPTON derived from Website Baker. He then chastised me, writing: "You should open up your eyes before you post something like you did," followed by an equally disingenuous smiley face, as if that could somehow soften the criticism.

I'm no child. In september of 2011 I had just turned 55 years old, and had been in IT for over 35 years. I'm a programmer. I used to be a newspaper reporter. I've run big companies. I've written legislation and have testified before House, Senate and Assembly committees. As a management consultant, I analyze entire companies and write hundeds-of-pages-long reports, chock full of mind-numbing (but nevertheless dead-on accurate) details. And I'm even kinda' almost a tiny bit smart. I'm certainly, in any case, careful; and there's nothing wrong with my eyes. Trust me, then: As of my writing, here, in September of 2011, no admission of being a fork of Website Baker was anywhere on any page of the LEPTON website. Nowhere. Period.

Obviously, someone from LEPTON read what I wrote, here, and then went back and added the Website Baker fork acknowledgement/admission to the LEPTON site. There was certainly plenty of time to so do between my criticism of LEPTON for not having so done in September of 2011, and Kurt's accusing me of making so glaring (and ridiculous) an error in his two-months-later posting, here, in November of that same year. In two months, LEPTON's entire web site, in fact, could have been rebuilt.

If what happened was that the first time Kurt ever looked at the LEPTON site was in November, and so the acknowledgement had by-then been posted there, then I ask him to consider the possiblity that it wasn't there when I first posted, but got added later BECAUSE of it; that I'm not an idiot; that nothing was (or is, even now) wrong with my eyes or my ability to open them.

On the other hand, if Kurt is (or at least was, back then) somehow connected with LEPTON, and was somehow involved in adding the Website Baker fork acknowledgement to those three pages of the LEPTON site; and, that having by then been done, if he then he came here and pretended that it had always been there, and that I was just a buffoon for not noticing, then to Kurt I say: Please don't pee on our legs and then tell us it's raining.

That the LEPTON site now acknowledges that its product is a fork of Website Baker is wonderful. That it didn't so acknowledge as of September of 2011, and had to be told, here, how wrong that was in order for the pressure of that to make it finally fess-up and do the right thing is sad. However, having one of LEPTON's minions come in here and accuse me of making it up is downright shameful...

...er... I mean... you know... if that's, in fact, what Kurt both was and did. Again, if he's just an end-user like most others around here, and he simply noticed when he visited the LEPTON site in November that it did, indeed, acknowledge its Website Baker base, and so came back her to chastise me for saying that it didn't without stopping to consider that someone at LEPTON had changed it in the intervening two months, then, fine. He obviously, in that case, made a mistake, I guess. People do that... even me.

But I'll tell you what makes me suspect that ol' Kurt is (or at least was, at the time), indeed, somehow connected with the LEPTON site, and that's the final words of his November posting, to wit: "...is it really important what the base of LEPTON is? Is it good for joomla that it is based on mambo or the other way round?"

Back to the peeing on our legs thing: Some questions, in life, aren't really questions; rather, they're really statements, but with question marks forced at their ends. And such questions, in contexts such as this one, nearly never come from mere innocent bystanders. Rather, they tend to only come from those with skin in the game, somehow.

And the answers to those questions, in order, are "yes," and "no."

Yes it really is important for the user of a product that's forked from another product to know what said other product is/was. And the reasons, c'mon, should be so glaringly self-evident that I shouldn't even have to enumerate them, here. Plus, I kinda' already did that in my September 2011 posting.

However, the answer to precisely how Kurt asked that second question is "no" because whether or not it's "good for joomla" that it's based on Mambo (or even the other way around) is irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make; and so the answer to precisely how Kurt worded his second question is, necessarily, categorically "no." But the fact that Kurt worded the question that way shows that he has no concept or understanding of the importance of things like transparency, and full disclosure... the end-user's right to know what is the breeding of the product s/he's being asked to use. That's the issue.

It matters not, for our purposes, here, whether Joomla's "better" because it came from Mambo. Rather, what matters is THAT it came from Mambo.

It's a full disclosure sort of thing; a transparency sort of thing; a "the user being fully advised in the premises" sort of thing. Mambo is part of Joomla's heritage, and the potential user of it has a right to know it; and to make his/her determination about whether or not s/he even wants to use it based, in part, on that information. That's the very thing that full disclosure and transparency are about.

If LEPTON is good (and I have no idea whether or not it is... but I'm just saying that IF it is), then at least PART of the reason is because of its Website Baker heritage; and I'll even go one step further and add that if LEPTON's bad, then it's because it squandered said heritage. LEPTON's not, in any case, fully disclosing said heritage deprived Website Baker's developers of credit where credit was rightfully due... possibly even illegally, pursuant to what I suspect was Website Baker's licensing agreement.

Those of us who have written commercial software in life, only to see our code hijacked by some bona fide thief, and then put into a copycat product with someone else's name on it, recognize LEPTON's at least initial behavior in all this as the very sort of thing that such thieves do.

That Kurt has to have the wrongness of that both called to his attention, and then explained to him, is a pity, indeed.

_____________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com

I agreed with last comment. I dont really understand why this CMS has low rating. It is by far the simplest and best CMS I have used so far. I have tried others and they tend to be quite complex and harder to customise. Designing template is so easy and flexible with WB. It is ideal for web designer or granny learning CMS and developer to write sophisticated plugin!

Working and testing all kinds of CMS since 2004. (Drupal, Joomla, CMSMS, Lemon, Typo3, Wordpress you name it) And I don't understand the low rating of WB. This is by far the best working CMS on the market. Not only for webdesigners but (more important) for end users it's a new world of simplicity once they met the admin.

As a webdesigner you can build custom templates and insert WB with both eyes closed. It's easy, fast and reliable. Over 160 websites with WB (small companies to big international ones) and no sweat at all.

Keep up the good work.

WB 2.8.3 - our first choice. With WB we like to work - we can create our own Templates - sometimes special moduls - it depends on demands/wishes of our customers. Time for developing websites - even with special demands is much lower as with other CMS. We tried of course other cms...
So we decided working with WB also in future. Only one customer works with typo 3 - costs has been at least 7 x more..Reason for typo3 was only the wellknown of this system and recommandation of one programmer. At least: now there are always problems with working because system is to complicated.
Special changes costs a lot. For new projects the customer wish now WB!

Love to dev on WB.

Been on it as a web dev from v.2.6

I've done more than 100 sites with it, some very big (millions of views/moth) and some very small.

Main problem is core unicity. There is no rounded easy code definition and it may be messed up sometime. Plus no hooks/listener so you need to allmost implement all in the template, but who cares? that's the EASIEST of template convertion system in any cms today. And we've done sites in Joomla/Drupal/Xoops/Wordpress and othe less knowed CMS.

btw: the new FTAN security sucks for developpers, but most user wont get the "security offence" red box.

I followed WSB since Spring 2010, but have now given up on this CMS with good base and potential (reason: slow development, undemocratic and uncooperative core dev etc.). I have changed to a flat file CMS (no more MySQL needed, that can do almost the same (+ good plugins): GetSimple. For small projects I feel much more comfortable.

I am surprise this cms is voted lower than it deserves. I have used websitebaker for 4 years and in my opinion is one of the best around. If you are looking for a fairly stable and easy to use cms, I recommend Websitebaker.

@Gregg DesElms

This is nonsense.
The homepage of LEPTON says right from the start that it's a WB-Fork, see here
http://www.lepton-cms.org/english/about/backstage.php
here
http://www.lepton-cms.org/english/about/lepton---websitebaker---amasp.php
and even here
http://www.lepton-cms.org/english/download/upgrade-wb.php

You should open up your eyes before you post something like you did :-)

BTW: is it really important what the base of LEPTON is?
Is it good for joomla that it is based on mambo or the other way round?

Great website system, if we wrote 1998.

The add-on are mostly poorly programmed, buggy or in alpha or beta state, last updated years ago).

Too bad. It could be a winner.

Websitebaker is really a good tipp for everyone, who is looking for an easy cms an has no experience with cms-systems at all.

When I was looking for an easy cms a year ago I tried:

Joomla (first)
For small projects for me it was to complicated.

Wordpress
Easy to handle if you use a template. But developing a template on (you have to cut the template-file into several files) my own was not as easy as using the cms itself.

GetSimple and gpEasy
Great solutions for very easy pages but a little bit to simple for my projects an just very small comunitys (on year ago!)

CMS made Simple
Seems to be very similar to Websitebaker to me. CMS made simple has an bigger comunity than Websitebaker and has been my first favorite thatfore. But the problem was: I didn't find structured Infos about the development of templates. This (for me) was better and easier on Websitebaker. (But if you compare take a look at CMS made Simple ... it's the same size as Websitebaker.)

Please understand right: All the named cms-systems are good systems an you can build good pages with them. All the systems has their advantages. Other has other experiences an decided to use the other systems.

So this reasons has been my personal reasons when I came to Websitebaker a year ago. And today I have to say: Websitebaker is a small an easy system, which helps me to develop my projects on a very easy way.

And today I know: There are some really big projects, which uses this system too. But it's not a Blooging-System (thatfore I would use Wordpresse) and it is not an editorial system (thatfore I would use Joomla) and it is not a syocial system (thatfore I would use drupal).

Unfortunately Websitebaker has not so many free templates like Joomla or Wordpress. And some friends use Wordpress oder Joomla thatfore. But I learned: developing my own Templates or transforming the templates of Wordpress or Joomla to this system for me is easier in Websitebaker.

Just my two pence after one year experience with this system.

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Last I would like to say thank you to this page (opencourscms.com). It helped me a lot to find and compare the different cms-systems. It's a very good overview for everyone, who is looking for a new system (even if he is a beginner too).

This is the best CMS I ever found.
You can manage a website and go live within hours (literally).
Nice and easy to extend, growing community, consistent help forums in different languages.
Easy to install and extendible - nice template learning curve, good for designers, developers and end users.

I've been using Websitebaker for 3 years now and after trying dozens of CMS this one actually WORKS.
It is very easy to create a good looking site and while there may not be as many addons as some other CMS I do not miss them.
Development may be slow, but really I do not need an update very often.
As for Lepton, I do not like the methods they use to promote their software. When Joomla forked from Mambo, it was clear and upfront.

alex wrote: "Those who are annoyed of the slow progress of WebsiteBaker Development and the harsh sound in the Forum, may want to give the forked project: http://lepton-cms.org a try."

MY REPLY: I have no idea if Lepton is better or worse than Website Baker, but I'l tell you (everyone, actually) one reason not to use it, no matter HOW good it might or might not be...

...and that's its disingenuousness. Nowhere on the Lepton site does it actually admit that it's a fork of Website Baker...

...yet it puts, words like "baker" and phrases "website baker" into two of its pages' META "Keywords" tag area, as evidenced by this Google search...

http://bit.ly/nRijqX

...and then a quick look at the source of those two pages, obviously in the hopes that those searching on "Website Baker" will stumble-onto it, but without owning-up to that it's a fork thereof.

Any CMS that's a fork of another CMS of which I've ever heard, or about which I've ever known, has been very up-front and open and honest about what it's a fork of; and doesn't refuse to mention it on its pages, but nevertheless hope to snag those looking for it by META tag cleverness.

Fortunately, Google doesn't reward this sort of thing by giving higher ranking to pages which include all META keywords down in the body of the page. In other words, if a keyword is in the page's META "Keyword" tag, but isn't also down in the main body area, on the web page itself, then the page is ranked lower... often, for that reason alone, not even on the first pageful of 10 search results (though sometimes other factors can make the page rank highly despite its attempt at keyword cleverness).

In any case, the people who make Lepton need to behave more honorably in order to get most people's trust; and I hereby implore it to so do.


____________________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA

Great CMS with modules and styles even with forum systems to build in - not at all like the name Baker and self made buns and rolls .....