Let's spread a word about ocPortal

1. Solid default theme that doesn't impose too many styles or make too many assumptions (this is why it is as it is, it's very intentional)
2. Large collection of top quality creative themes
3. A powerful inbuilt Firebug-like CSS editing facility, and syntax highlighting interface
4. Great themeing tutorials
5. A Theme Wizard that can work on any themes, including our professional collection

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 (Professional Themes - ocPortal), 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 (Sheffield web design/development agency - ocProducts) 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 Learn more - ocPortal.com or, if you'd like the quick rundown, Content Management meets Social Media - ocPortal.

Chris Graham said

I'm about to add the view-image-outside-lightbox feature a few people have asked for now .

Regarding sponsorship, I remember we talked a lot before about a build-out tool to auto-create complex and deep site structures. Anything like this you want, just let me know and we can discuss getting it sorted. A lot of possible future plans are on the tracker:
My View - ocPortal feature tracker

Fletch said

My personal take is that I am more than satisfied with the feature set that comes out-of-the-box.

I'd like to see the sitemap.xml generated as a guest user. While it is true that it does no harm (I've researched this pretty thoroughly in the last few days), it nonetheless creates errors in the crawler access that need to be run down, not to mention that it causes needless crawling which utilized resources better spent elsewhere.

Since this is also current in another thread, I would say that it is important that ocPortal be always conscious of what the search engines complain about in Webmaster tools. Like it or not, they are the gatekeepers and anything to do that appeases them is of value. It might make the difference between being seen on the first page or not.

EDIT: Add the Google +1 code to the MAIN_SCREEN_ACTIONS block - +1 is not going to go away.

Chris Graham said

Here we go, my contribution!

Chris Graham said

It's not that the sitemap isn't generated by guest, it's that these aspects aren't controlled by page permissions so the sitemap generator can't tell the code itself is going to trigger it's own internal "access denied". Never-the-less, I did just remember there's a way we can workaround that without making a mess, so that will come with the next patch release (it's the same thing we do to stop the 'logout' link coming up in the sitemap – we avoid reporting certain entry points for Guests).

EDIT: Add the Google +1 code to the MAIN_SCREEN_ACTIONS block - +1 is not going to go away.

Just added a tracker issue for this.

Chris Graham said

Here we go, my contribution!

State of ocPortal today