Christian News Updates.com

After toying around with a few other software packages, I decided to give the ImpressCMS software a try. I'm glad I did. It is in fact impressive.

Christian News Updates.com

Modules used:

News
Web Links
Site Map
xhld
Contact
snx dwodp
Protector
and a few other goodies

The server's kind of sluggish. I might be changing hosts.

Nice layout - the site is clean and seems pretty cohesive. I did find that if you navigate to the 'shop' area, there is no way to get back to the rest of the site, other than using the 'back' button in the browser - you might want to see what you can do about that.

The site seemed to respond OK, except on the home page - that might be due to clipsyndicate.com taking so long to long. That, and google didn't exactly jump right up, either. When visiting the clipsyndicate web site, they do seemed to be lacking in responsiveness there, too.

It would be nice if you would update the meta tag to have ImpressCMS as the generator

No user interaction, though - just a portal?

Hello Steve,

Thanks for taking a peek at the site. Your Christian Web Resources site will be added to my Links section. I'm using the web links module for that. Your link will show up on the right column in the Christian Links block. The links rotate, so you may not see it every page visit.

Once you're in the category section of the shop, if you look at the left hand menu on the shop, there's a link there to return to the home page. I should probably make it more noticeable. I will also make turn the header into a link.

About the meta tags, I kind of don't like making it too easy for people to know what software I'm using.

You're right about the clipsyndicate sluggishness. They just revamped their site and servers and it's causing problems.

Interactivity..... hmmm. That's always a problem. I really don't trust some users - especially some of the visitors to Christian sites. A few of them have been malicious on some Christian sites I've seen.

For the moment, I have things set up so that anonymous visitors can make comments on the Feature Articles that I moderate.

I'm considering adding a forum for registered users, but I want something lightweight. I tested newbb, but it really doesn't suit my needs and, IMHO, it's kind of slow and bloated.

Newbbex would be cool if it had RSS. Guess I'm looking for a basic, RSS-using forum that I don't have to add frameworks packages to. Any suggestions?

Thanks again for stopping by!

For forums, take a peak at D3Forums, it's basic, lightweight compared to the other options and the guy who codes it is a security guru.

The templates/layout is not the greatest but with some TLC it could look good in no time.

D3Forums on ImpressCMS Addons

Thanks Tom. I'll try it today.

Oh and another thing or two, you could make this a news article and post it to the 'News & Articles' section under the category of 'They Use ImpressCMS'.

As for the video site, you could also look at some of the video modules, those that use the Jeroen Wijering can use it free of buy a licence from him and private brand it for promotional purposes. If you stream videos from your site, this will also stop the reliance on third party services which may slow you down but it would increase your bandwidth costs. It's also not as automated.

Maybe something to think about.

I'll add it to the news section after I fix the items that Steve pointed out. They definitely need attention. I also want to try the d3forum you mentioned.

Great looking site, congrats.

Just realised you mentioned you used the snx dwodp module. Isn't that the search engine one? (I think there were two snx modules)

If so you need to be careful with this module, in the main folder there is a sub folder called 'Cache' this can fill quickly tons of files. On one install I had over 500,000 cache files in it which were generated very quickly.

This could cause a strain on your server and will waste resources.

I didn't actually click on the Home Page link in the menu, just hovered over it and it looked like it stayed in the shop area. It also looks like you modified the header in the shop so the logo points back at the home page (the hover affect looks out of place, though)

Currently, your meta says 'XOOPS', which is why I suggested changing it to ImpressCMS - I saw some ICMS-specific css, so I am assuming it is built on ICMS.

Thanks for the backlink - I'll be adding your site to my directory, too.

I didn't realize that newbbex wasn't rss-enabled. RSS-Fit may have a plug-in that would work for it, or instant-zero may have this on their development plans.

Opening your site (or any site) to posting by visitors does have some risks, but you can manage it. You need to decide how much you are willing to trust and who you are willing to trust.

Ah, I see what you mean about the meta generator, Steve. I just fixed that. It was hardcoded into the theme.html file. I thought I'd gotten rid of references to xoops. I had tried xoops before, but hated it. If I had a choice between using it or a simple HTML site, HTML would win.

I wish newbbex was RSS enabled. Doesn't look like RSS fit is compatible with it either. Oh well. Not the end of the world.

Triying the d3forum module, but got some message at the bottom of module admin that said I needed to install altsys and some additions to class and some more files to my trust path, which I did. Will see how it works, but I think I'd rather leave the site as lightweight as possible.

Turned off the cache in the snxdwodp. Thanks for the warning, Tom.