Free CMS for a review site?

[movietub]

Hey all,

I'm after a free CMS (or CMS with suitable free extension) to build a review site. The idea is that I'm going to review several hundred products myself for a kick off and then see if the site takes off at all. Through my main business I have access to a constant stream of scratched/scuffed/used products coming back through the warehouse that I can play around with and review in detail.

There is no popular review site for this sector so it's worth a bash, and it's something I can play around with in the evenings.

The problem is the CMS to use, what do people use for review sites? I use Magento for e-commerce site, which is free if you know what you're doing... But I can't seem to find any equivalent quality open source software focussed on a review site.

NB: For this idea it is not appropriate to use review features of magento on the main e-commerce site. This needs to be separate and independent site fully focussed on reviewing only!

Any help on this one would be appreciated as I really am struggling to find the wealth of review CMS platforms I always assumed existed!?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Joomla is the obvious choice.

Depending on how you want the review to look, there are free components and chargeable, like Jreviews.

Have you an example of what you want your site to look like/be based on?

 

[movietub]

Joomla is the obvious choice.

Depending on how you want the review to look, there are free components and chargeable, like Jreviews.

Have you an example of what you want your site to look like/be based on?

To be honest trip advisor is the only review site I use myself as I travel a lot - and I don't need anything that advanced!

But I want people to be able to sign up and review a product by writing titles and blocks of text for each part of the review. So basically an e-form where they write a block of text for each applicable section for the product type, award stars/% rating for usability/value/quality etc.

Surely every review site needs to be tuned for a specific type of audience/product/service, so I hoped software would exist that would allow me to design my own review templates for users to complete along with selectable attributes etc.

 

[smbchamp]

Here is my suggestion.

Install wordpress in less than 5 minutes.

Start reviewing. There are review based themes and plugins available for wordpress as well.

You can also take reviews to the next level by taking video reviews and uploading them to youtube. make sure you embed the videos on your wordpress CMS

 

[webhostuk]

Go for Joomla, Drupal or wordpress.

 

[movietub]

Ok, with contributions on here and my own googling it's clear that the basic CMS of choice for review sites is Drupal Joomla or Wordpress. But what is the best/most popular reviews extension? I'm after flexability in operation and setup. I'm aware that basic features are easy to come buy, but I need attributes, user image upload, multiple ratings per product etc etc etc.

 

[miszel]

As for Drupal, I am not sure if there is a single module for doing that. Even if there is, you would be better off building a solution using a couple of existing modules as that would certainly give you more flexibility. You could practically build such a system with two modules: views for listings and fivestar for rating. Then you could add some other modules to extend the functionality.

 

[FreshPage Web Design]

Hi movietub, take a look at Joomla with JReviews for this, it should easily handle your requirements.

 

[martinbailey]

I'd go with Joomla as well, but stick with 1.5 for now. 1.6 has some security issues, and many components still do not yet work with it.

 

[Farbyte]

If your after flexibility and are prepared to put in some time developing the site, I'd recommend Drupal.
It's extremely versatile and can be used for just about any type of website you can think of with a little effort.

 

[nigel007]

Hi,

Though Joomla is a good option but according to me Magento will be more rocking in this regard.

 

[Digital Investments]

Start with Wordpress and let it expand. Wordpress also has some excellent review focused plugins that allow users to rate your reviews and rate the products that are being reviews