I'd like to show the progress being made on ForumCMS V2. I think the administration interface and module structure is considered 'done' so only the front-end and install to go! Progress has slowed recently as most of my time is being spent working on my dissertation, but please let me know what you think of these new screen captures.
With a huge choice of free blogs available it was a long process finally selecting one to power this website. Many open source applications are too fat or outdated and so like many I have often used Wordpress as a basis for many sites as it ticks most of the boxes you could want. However, as it increases in size (both file and user base) I find it is becoming less desirable for a small website application.
Developing with Wordpress has become too complicated for me. Finding what you need to modify can be a nightmare, usually needing a long trawl through a myriad of deprecated files and functions and the super-size community often means no response to your SOS plea. So as much as a fan of Wordpress' new interface and the flexibility it has I no longer enjoy working with it.
Pixie was built by Scott Evans of Toggle; a small UK based web, branding and packaging company. I chose it not because of its interface (which is good) or plug-ins but because it was easy to work with. The power is not found embedded within functions functions but as a simple file structure and code attractive to any intermediate PHP developer. It's an elegant structure I found worked well for my light blogging needs, without resorting to a bare-bones package and building up.
This site was built as a combination of Pixie and ForumCMS. The administration-side is Pixie and the front-end is my own which means I don't have to learn any new template commands and any extra functionality needs no reference to documentation. The site took around 1 week to build over a few spare hours and I didn't once get stressed.