Best modules for CMSMS
01. May, 2010 
12 Comments
One of the problems of CMSMS is that there are a hell of a lot of modules, but it’s hard to know which ones are the best without trying them out first. Here are my recommendations on the best modules.
Product catalog – Products – Great module. One of the great things about it is it has hierarchy (vertical) and category (horizontal) navigation. For anything where I need vertical and horizontal navigation I’ll use this module and change over the titles in the language file. Recently I’ve done just that for a links directory.
Directory – Company Directory – This has only horizontal navigation
Forms – FormBuilder
E-commerce – Products, Cart, Orders. I wouldn’t really recommend using CMSMS for any decent size ecommerce operation, but if you need some ecommerce features, these modules are the best. There’s a tutorial on setting up CMSMS to do ecommerce by Calguy here.
Blog – CGBlog
Calendar – CGCalendar
Importing feeds – CMSSimplePie
Comments/ratings – CGFeedback
Users - FrontEndUsers (Allows for front end users), SelfRegistration (Allows users to register on your site), CustomContent (allows you to change content based on whether a user is logged in or other user properties)
Post your own favourites in the comments
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Luke
Mikey McCorry
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Great list, and very timely now that I’m doing a lot more CMSMS stuff. I’ve recently tried out a whole bunch of modules:
– I don’t remember trying “Album” but I really liked “Gallery” for image galleries, especially the template control.
– FormBuilder is great! It had a bit of a learning curve, but it’s definitely the best.
– I just use the built in “News” module. Is there a benefit to using “CGBlog” if it’s just for a “Latest News” section?
– I used “Events Listing” for events. Can’t remember if I tried “CGCalendar”… What makes it good?
- I found the following modules to also be pretty good: “CGGoogleMaps” works well for mapping – the others were very glitchy or overly complex. “DownloadManager” is great for providing a templated view of a folder’s contents – just point it at a folder and you’re good to go.
Thanks Mikey. I’ll have to look at the Gallery module. Just reading some of the comments on the forge and it looks like that’s the best now. Next project I’ll try it out. That’s probably good because Album does have a few quirks.
CGBlog is very similar to news except it has a few little differences more suited to blogging like being able to post in multiple categories. I left News out of my list because it’s a core module. For basic news, I use the news module.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think EventsListing has a calendar view.
Never used DownloadManager. I use the Uploads module which allows for descriptions and stuff. I think its easier to explain how to use the Uploads module than explaining how to upload to a certain folder.
You’re right about EventsListing. There is no calendar view, but I think for most sites I work on they only have a handful of upcoming events at any one time and a calendar view would be less intuitive from a user’s point of view when compared to a simple chronological list of events.
I’ll look into the Uploads module. The description made it sound like it was just for front-end users to upload files, and didn’t mention being able to group files together (eg. newsletters, forms, flyers, etc)
Hang on. Forget what I said about calendar views. I just realised that “EventsListing” doesnt order events proplerly in the back-end which will make finding a particular event difficult once there are a few in there. I’ll check out CG Calendar.
I agree you don’t always need a calendar view. You can always just use the upcoming events view without having a calendar view shown anywhere.
Just a quick note to say that, yes, the CGCalendar is much nicer than EventsListing. Ta!
Oh, and Template Externalizer is also another good one I’ve found. It lets you edit your templates in a text editor like you normally would, instead of having to use CMSMS’s template form.
ah interesting thanks, hadn’t heard of that one.
Just checked the Gallery module and it’s way awesomer than Album. Thx for the tip
Does anyone have any good recommendations for a newsletter manager for cmsms? Allowing visitors to subscribe and unsubribe to custom newsletters sent to them? Is there such a module(s) or am I better of looking at another system?
Hi Kensley,
There is a “Newsletter Made Simple” I think, but I would recommend against it. You’re better off using a 3rd party service like Mail Chimp. Its easier, it’s better, they take care of ISP’s, the deliverability is better, and it’s more reliable.
Cheers,
Luke
Luke thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction – mail chimp is simply amazing!
No problem, glad I could help!