a hearty welcome to b2evolution @poorboy What you described is exactly what @fplanque aimed to avoid when he advanced this project (http://b2evolution.net/man/overview-of-the-software) and why b2evolution and Wordpress are uniquely different (http://b2evolution.net/about/b2evolution-vs-wordpress).

@poorboy wrote earlier:

My biggest concern so far is that the backend will be confusing for contributors, even/especially the editor.

b2evolution is like any other app in the sense that it needs to be explored, learned and familiarized. So the quickest way to overcome your concern about confusion for contributors is to get to work with it - the sooner, the better - and in so doing your opinion will change.

b2evolution has come a long way and the dev team is working hard at developing a platform that is intuitive. There are too may features to count that is part of the CMS core and to 'discover' them you will need to read up an the b2e Manual (http://b2evolution.net/man/), ask a slew of questions on the forum and keep on being adventurous by exploring.

On a side note, b2evolution has an amazing production workflow supporting authors, editors, moderators, publishers ect.. so, once you get it under the knee, you will never look back.

b2evolution is also at the brink of another major evolutionary leap with exciting features being released soon...

Well, I'm talking about very non tech saavy people. I just did a little gardening site with wp and used a menu editor plugin to hide everything that they didn't absolutely need and they were still bewildered so I ended up creating a front end form for them to add content in the form of a custom post type. I think some of it was timing. The discussion of this site was on a forum so obviously these people managed to sign up for and post to a forum all by themselves. However, they were trying to use a wikimedia site and I think some were burnt out trying to learn wiki syntax so the introduction to wp-admin just didn't go over well. The wiki was just a mess, with no template, every page looked different. I was just trying to help them out, volunteer work, but doing favors never seems to go well for me. The bad timing and/or laziness on their part made it not fun for me to help.

I probably wasn't clear but when I said editor, I was speaking of the editor I'm typing in, not the user role of Editor. This editor will blow some people away but I did see someplace where items in the editor can be deactivated for a certain collections. I also saw a TinyMCE plugin I think. 95% of people won't use Markdown, Codespan/Codeblock, BB Code and I've never even heard of GM code(check engine light on?) or Prism(now there's a pos GM/Chevy). Sorry, I'm an auto mechanic.

I'm just starting on another volunteer job with more non tech saavy people, 40-60 year old veterans,(glutton for punishment that I am) and a lot of b2's features would do well. Not sure if there will be time for me to learn b2 enough to implement the site and teach them how to add content but we'll see. I'm going to explore b2 today and I'll start asking questions on the proper forums.

The custom fields being built in is huge as is the ability to skin collections differently. I don't remember running across b2evo before which is odd because I thought I had tried them all. WP, drupal, joomla, modx, silverstripe, processwire, concrete5, typo3, tikiwiki, OC Portal/Composr and others. With most of them, you quickly end up having to know how to code if you want more than just the very basics. Sometimes it's php, sometimes it's some abstract construct native to the script. Every once in a while, I look for alternatives to wp and yesterday, I did so by looking at softaculous which is how I found b2evo.

WP is the exception but once you start realizing you desire certain things that you once didn't know existed, you end up using dozens of plugins which may or may not be around in a year. Either that, or you have to learn php. The plugin/theme situation is just maddening with the almost usable free editions and nagging to go pro. Almost none of them really clean up after themselves upon deactivation and deletion. They leave tables in the db and/or new user roles that show up later with other plugins. There's been one or two occasions where I finally settle on a theme and group of plugins, record that, wipe the site, reinstall clean and reinstall the theme and plugins.

My one paid job I did, I used a theme that later, removed a feature, breaking the site, and made it available only in the pro version. Now that's low. I ended up finding the code that was removed by looking at the previous version that I had on my hdd and I put that code back in the new version.

Back in the 90s, I was what you would call a webmaster. Html/cpanel/ftp and CSS was the next big thing coming down the pike. Stayed away from it for years and of course things are way different now. The only reason I got into it was because I was in an accident and laid up for a few months so I got a computer win3.1, then 95, 28kbps modem, aol dialup, and started learning with the help of code monkey. But I healed and went back to my blue collar job. I've never been an artist so I can't call myself a web designer and I don't know near enough code to call myself a web developer. I've just built enough sites to host them and have hosting pay for itself so I can have my own site(s).

I presume rambling is ok in this part of the forum? LOL

Hi poorboy

I'm thinking the best part of b2evo is that you can have multiple blogs, all connected to the same database and each blog can have different permissions and slightly different skins, so that some 'types' of members never see certain 'containers', widgets, categories, posts, other users etc.

Hope you are having making progress, I come from a similar background, Win 3 etc. when it all fitted on a 360K floppy