Hello Edouard,

Welcome to the eZ Community!

Congratulations for starting to discover eZ Publish and for being so direct as to interact with the community here on share.ez.no to find answers to all your questions, we are here to help.

"We are a relatively small company dealing into automation with absolutely no expertise in web design. I would be the sole person working on the website. This is why I am documenting on eZ Publish."

One of the aspects I love about the default eZ Publish package (ezwebin) available for download, separation of design from content! I am a backend PHP programmer myself and not much of a graphic artist or web designer (with a focus on design ui implementation) so I can very much relate to your need to be free to create the site without having to be responsible for much design work (in general/day to day after your initial implementation). I go for very very long times before ever having to modify default styles or other design ui aspects when working on creating and maintaining eZ Publish based sites / web applications. When I need to modify the design, most changes are usually a very simple to accomplish within eZ Publish quickly and effectively.

"As our current version is very difficult to update and maintain we are looking for something that would be :"

I have being using eZ Publish since before 2001. I have found it to be the most feature rich, easy to use, very very very stable and reliable. Perhaps even more importantly I have found the 3.x and 4.x branches of eZ Publish to be designed to be simple to upgrade as frequently or infrequently as you prefer. I love upgrading eZ Publish to the latest version. In most situations it's almost always a brilliant success right away (and not very complicated or involved). Only rarely will you be affected by changes which might cause problems with your site but this can easily be avoided with proper planning testing beforehand and changelog research.

1. very easy to add new content to as we would update the website several times per month or each week

I've not found very many web application systems which make adding content as reliable, stable, user friendly, well organized/structured as I enjoy daily with eZ Publish. The more requirements you research to provide within your site, I think you'll simply find eZ Publish has a solution for them all (in one way or another). And if you think managing content from one user is enjoyable using eZ Publish just imagine how well it scales when working with hundreds of editors, worldwide, with tens of thousands of users ... it's an amazing feeling when it all works so well.   

2. either easy to create or with great partners in the vincinity (around Mons / Brussels in Belgium or around Lille in France as we are inbetween)

There are a large number of eZ Publish Community Partners available through our partner directory.

http://share.ez.no/directory

3. able to support two to three languages (French and English at first, Dutch afterwards... )

eZ Publish has amazing muli lingual support (many if not most languages supported)

Ranging from muli lingual content all the way to muli lingual templates. I've found eZ Publish provides for the needs of websites which have extensive muli lingual needs.

There is a limit (technical, not an overlord design decision, i can't remember accurately but the number 32 comes to mind for some reason) presently on how many languages can be supported at once but I forget it offhand, apologies. I believe solve the problem associated with the limit entirely in the future as we would naturally wish to support all possible languages available at once (as needed/required)

4. with excellent SEO

There is almost nothing I've found that can not be done with eZ Publish with respect to SEO requirements. I personally enjoy helping improve eZ Publish website SEO because it's always been a matter of connecting the pieces to existing content to make a more verbose site (using content within the site in more useful ways, etc). There are quite a few eZ Publish extensions which provided all kinds of SEO specific functionality ready to use off the shelf.

5. still around in five years.

Again I learned about eZ Publish just before 2001. For almost 10 years I've been actively developing applications using eZ Publish. I've created and done development work on almost any kind of feature or requirement you could imagine. Using eZ Publish I have grown to become a much smarter, faster and reliable PHP programmer and systems administrator. I like to think the amazing smartness of how eZ Publish simply works can rub off on others who use it. I strongly expect eZ Systems and eZ Publish to be around in another 20 years. I'm actually making life long plans surrounding it. I urge you to consider doing the same, you won't be disappointed!

I have a long personal experience with WordPress (cf. my personal website, www.edouardstenger.com) but would have no problem to learn to use a new CMS if it was the right one for all our needs. (Above is just an overview of the critical points).

Wordpress is very good at some things and not so good at others (in many different aspects) this can be said of many web application systems and solutions. Still ... I know for certain that eZ Publish offers more features, more potential for future growth and expansion and a much more stable website. I regularly hear other eZ Publish developers commenting that eZ Publish is superior in too many aspects when compared to solutions like Wordpress.

I have personally experienced that I would almost -always- prefer to create using eZ Publish by default than to ever use Wordpress again for a serious project. And I still use wordpress (but I will not fanboy an app that does not scale well) so I'm not blind to what wordpress does get very right but none of what can be said about wordpress would convince me to enter into another professional project using it over eZ Publish. I like to think that at least with eZ Publish ... The creators have actually taken the extensive time to design a system which allows you to grow and do so many common tasks simply and effectively (in a smart way right out of the box) even when doing your own custom development.

With wordpress I would always run into problems with the system not designed to handle or support my needs almost right out of the box, This is a polar oposite from eZ Publish where I find no matter what question I ask about eZ Publish, the answer is it's supported or possible without the same kinds of future upgrade problems that wordpress is still plauged by to this day due to it's design.

I hope other community and business users here in the forums can also share a bit of their own experiences and thoughts here with you over the holidays.

I hope this helps ... Happy Holidays!

Cheers,

Heath

Hi Edouard,

Normally the eZ community responds quickly to questions, but since its almost Christmas I suppose people are either on vacation already or trying to finish their work before going on vacation.

Anyway, I have done quite a number of multilingual websites, and I have come to the conclusion eZ Publish is the ideal solution when it comes to setting up and managing multilingual sites. However, you need to be aware that eZ publish has quite a steep learning curve, for developers as well as content editors. The backend is not very intuitive, and to save yourself and your editors a lot of time, I would recommend you get someone to give you a training. When it comes to finding a partner to help you with the site, you could give Smile Benelux a try. If you need a smaller company, contact me. I'm based in the Netherlands, but happy to come over to Brussels when needed.

Happy holidays!

Sebastiaan

One note about people available in your vicinity: at least one community member is open for freelance tasks in Lille, and he's damn good. He can speak for himself, but you can find his profile here: Jérôme Despatis.

You can also check with our professional services & sales department what business partners might be available in that area.

Cheers.

Thanks to the three of you for your answers. I wish you all a happy new year 2012 !

Given the many detailed answers given by Heath I am sure I can keep on looking at eZ Publish for our project.

Sebastiaan's answers make me wonder however if it will be simple enough for us. WP might be too simple, but we are looking for the right CMS. No need for a plane to buy some bread next door.

(by the way, we are based near Mons)

Is it possible to test eZ Publish on a computer (ie. not on a server) ? Is there a Codex of some sort where I could find the answers to all my questions ?

Thanking you in advance again for your answers

Hello Edouard,

Thank you for your kind words.

I think if your looking to create good solutions than eZ is a good fit, where wp often fails to scale ...

Yes it is possible to use eZ Publish on your personal computer (not a server), but you will need to install a supported webserver, php, mysql, etc the basic lamp stack quivelent for your os platform as well before installing eZ Publish. Alternatively you may give the eZ Publish Bitnami packages a try as they provide all of this software required. I've used them before myself.

As for codex, there is not mearly one site you should read cover to cover, there are several.

I regularly search the share.ez.no site for answers and help. I also contribute to and read ezpedia.org

For software I check projects.ez.no and github. For community news I also read planetezpublish.org, twitter, friendfeed, linkedin and individual blogs. Also worth reading and leveraging are doc.ez.no and pubsvn.ez.no

Also worth checking out is the freenode.net IRC channel #ezpublish which offers fantastic realtime eZ Publish help, discussions and support.

I hope this helps ...

Cheers,

Heath

Hello everybody, (and thanks again Heath for your answers)

After working on my benchmark it seems the six solutions offer more or less the same possibilities. Now we will have to see if we are going to build this website in-house or hire external help.

Ones of my questions regarding eZ Publish is whether it already has been used by companies similar to ours, ie. small companies.

We don't need no intranet, we don't need a forum, we just need to present our company and to be able to present our existing products and new ones when they appear...

I am really afraid eZ Publish would be over-kill for our humble needs. Thanking you in advance again for your answers.

Hello Edouard,

Can you name the CMS's you are comparing? And more important, some hard criteria that you have set yourself which are must have features, or nice to have features? I know my way around Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Typo3 and eZ Publish. I might be able to give you some advise from the experience I've had with all of those CMS's.

Regards Robin

Hello Robin and thanks for your interest.

I am comparing all five CMS you are mentioning plus Jahia. But we ditched the latter as well as Drupal and Joomla. Now remains eZ Publish, Typo3 and WordPress.

Our key need is to have a CMS where it is easy to add new content (either page or news article). It also has to be easy to maintain. Our current website isn't doing just that and it's a major problem.

On the main features, we have great SEO and possibility to have multiple languages.

If we go ahead with WordPress I would probably do the design by myself with a professional theme. Concerning the other two, we would need to hire somebody to do the design and to train me to the new (at least for me) CMS.

Hi,

While writing this, I'm still thinking of a good answer to your question(s). It's hard to give advise on which CMS to use if you do not have a list of features you need/wish.

Easy to add content, and easy to maintain; that would also be Joomla and Drupal. Joomla recently added an automatic update in it's backend similar to Wordpress. A one-click update. Drawback with Joomla and Drupal is that they do not always provide backwards compatibility. This means the update can be simple, but leaves you with broken features (plugins, extensions) which in turn will cost you hours of work.

eZ Publish will remain backwards compatible. And although it does not have a one-click update (yet!), it is not too difficult to update. It is very well documented.

I can't say much for Typo3 in terms of maintenance. Wordpress is very light and easy in this area but personally I would not use it as CMS.

eZ Publish might look like it is overkill, but you can actually choose to install the basics, and not activate something like a forum etc. One thing I like about eZ Publish is that it is secure. You get your half-year releases and that's it. With Joomla, Drupal etc. you might be looking at more updates, security related. So, in terms of maintance eZ has a + here.

Knowing that it is easy to expand the CMS with features, and the fact it is enterprise level, I'd be feeling safer using eZ over anything else. But, that's personal of course. One other benefit that jumps to mind is that with features like multi lingual sites there is no need to install something extra. Thah't not the case for Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress. They all require you to install extra plugins/extensions and configure them. They also add to your maintenance load.

Let me know if you have more questions. And... I'm really curious what your final choice will be.

Regards, Robin

You might be surprised at how 'easy' it is, install, configure and set up a basic site in eZ. The design is also well documented, also changing/making your own custom design.

Thank you Robin for your invaluable help.

Even if I use WordPress for my personal blog (cf. link above or my twitter) I wouldn't use it for our current project.

The more I delve into eZ Publish the more I am convinced that it is exactly what we need. It is natively multilingual,enables customers to connect, modern, sleek, easy to maintain...

I am trying to install it locally. I seem to have problems with the SMTP configuration. Will have a look at the other parts of the forum if I am blocked... 

Robin : you note that it is easy to change your design. Given the fact that I modified my own design for my blog. ( from that to this ), do you think I could do the same with eZ Publish ?

Thank you all for your help and if you have any other examples of small companies websites done with this heck of a CMS, please send them my way.