Typolight is an open source cms that has been slowly gaining in popularity in recent years. Today, we are going to give you an overview of the product with some commentary on how we feel about the product.
The first step to setting up Typolight is to download and install the software package.
You can then unzip and upload to your web host. Once you've done this, simply visit http://yourdomain.com/typolight/install.php to kick off the installer.
Initially, you will be prompted to enter an install password... by default, this is "typolight". This is the first time we've seen an install tool password so far, but it's not a bad idea.
Once you enter the default one, you will be asked to select a new password.
Once you've selected a new password, you can proceed through the installation.
Now it's time to enter an encryption key. Personally, this seems like a bit of overkill and it's not very clear when/how this would be used but i'm sure it's in the documentation somewhere. Having a focus on security is nice, but it would be better if the tool itself made it a bit more clear as to when these features would be used or at the very least, link to an article on the Typolight site that describes it's purpose (for those that are interested).
It's now time to enter the database information and begin populating the tables.
Once the database population process is complete, you have an option to start with a blank template (which is what you will end up with if you select nothing in the step below.. or you can select the example website in the drop down and have a starting point to work with. This is entirely up to personal preference but nice to have the option.
It is then time to create an administrator user. If you enter nothing here and have selected the example website in the previous step, it will create an admin with the info shown below. If you'd prefer to make your own account (which we suspect you would) then simply fill in your details.
Once completed, you can proceed to the back end and log in with your previously specified credentials.
This is where Typolight really shines. The back end of the system is very well organized and it's quite easy to access the various menus. Be forewarned, however.. this CMS is definitely not for new users with no experience using content management systems (well, unless you are prepared to do quite a bit of reading first).
Pro's
- Typolight is very powerful and within the backend, one can make very elaborate and detailed page structures, content layouts and modules that can be positioned within the system.
- The system is clean, lean and well organized and finding settings is very straight forward (for the most part)
- The installation process is simple and easy to understand.
- The extension manager allows you to browse and install extensions without leaving the back end which is a nice feature.
Con's
- A large portion of the user base are in Europe and as such, there is a lot of non-english discussions (the english side of the forums is fairly active but not as active as the european) and as such, getting support is not as easy as it could be and it can be sometimes difficult to understand those who reply.
- While powerful, the module/page layout process can get very confusing and overwhelming quickly.. even though we've used this system previously, we still find we get hung up and performing tasks that otherwise should be fairly simple.
- Themes are not free and if you want one, you have to maintain the links of the designer or pay extra to remove them. (All of the themes are provided by the creators other business, iNetRobots). We found the pricing to be a bit high.
Overall, Typolight is a good system if you are a designer or have a designer who can work with you to develop a solid site. You also need to ensure you are comfortable taking the time to learn the system thoroughly before delving in.
To counter the learning curve, there are a number of books and videos available as well on the Typolight site that can help new users become more familiar with the system. They can be found here: http://www.typolight.org/books-and-videos.html
Agree? Disagree? Comments are open.
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9 Responses to “Typolight CMS 2.7 Review”
There is the standard template (Music Academy) that gets shipped with the TYPOlight core. Another free TYPOlight template is available at http://www.ena-webstudio.com/...-typolight-template.html
Creating your own theme is actually quite easy if you know CSS and understand the CSS-Framework of TYPOlight. I have to admit though, that the english informations on that topic are not enough yet. We are working on it. :)
I'd also like to add that you cannot compare commercial TYPOlight templates for example with Wordpress templates. The templates sold at the Inetrobots-Shop are not only packages of images/CSS. They are complete websites with all core-modules installed, configured and styled. That means:
- news module
- contact form
- events module (even different layouts)
- glossary module
- complete example for a password-saved area (extranet) with login-module, lost password-module, member data-login, etc.
- newsletter module
- etc.
There's A LOT of time put into these templates.
So in my opinion the price is very fair.
Thanks for your comments Nina and for voicing your opinion. I appreciate it.
I also wasn't aware of that free template so thanks for posting that as well.
Have you found a public svn repo? Don't start to search it, it does not exist.
Therefore I started a fork on typolight. Wanted to have a open developing process and backported released of typolight. http://github.com/opentypolight
The funny thing is, every one liked the idea but no one really wanted to contribute (so far).
That's a solid review, Mike. Thanks for taking the time to do that. I want to address some things in the first two "cons" listed near the end of the review.
#1 - Regarding the English community / forum, please realize that it is actually at http://www.typolight-community.org and not the abandoned forum linked to in the site header. This will remain for reference purposes but is not the active community. (Mike, I think you already know this, but I wanted to point it out for readers.)
#2 - There are two screencasts near the bottom right of this page (http://www.typolight.org/books-and-videos.html) that cover the basics of creating modules and a page layout to get things working ("How to create a page layout"). The one beneath shows "How to use a custom page layout", so you could take a pre-coded xhtml / css template and fit it into the system.
Rene - the lack of a public svn repository is the very reason TYPOlight is such a stable and bug-free application.
Nice review.
Actually, TYPOlight theming is much easier than other CMS's like Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3 or even Wordpress.
I tried implementing typolight in august 2009. To me it looked like a perfect canditate for small homepage CMS, BUT the user documents and manuals were outdaded. Escpecially about how to handle/create templates and styles. In the typo forums there was a discussion about update the manuals and they admitted that the english manuals were outaded and no longer valid. Keep this in mind if you think about implementing this sowftware.
I thought it was a really nice software and I'm going to trye it out again- when they update the manuals.
/m
ps:To my understanding the german manuals were up-to date.
There's been a relaunch of the official website (English and German version) in September. The online manuals are up to date now.
Only the videos aren't but we are working on that right now.
Users guide:
http://www.typolight.org/documentation.html
Developers guide:
http://www.typolight.org/developers-guide.html
Thank you for the information Nina.
I think I'm going to try TYPOlight again, it seemed like a really good and professional system.
thanks,m
ps: try it out it is really good, takes a while to get in but it's definetly worth it.