Building a CMS admin panel

Question

I would like to build a CMS/backend in PHP for my websites to manage different things like photos, albums, news and in general creating dynamic content.

For example I would like to make a website where the owner can create a list of all his products with different attributes (text, images etc).

I know I could make my own CMS with an admin panel and I will have all the problems like users manage, CRUD functions for objects etc.

What I'm looking for is something between a CMS (like drupal or Wordpress) and Yii or Zend Framework.

I don't want to use this (CMS) to build frontend pages in total, like how drupal and wordpress do, because when i will create the frontend i just want to include my cms and use his functions like include_once(cms.php) and then use objects created by this CMS like echo $object->title etc.

What is the best and fastest way to create this?

I like how drupal creates content types where you can choose how to build this content like insert an image field or a text field etc but I think I can't just include Drupal in my frontend and use echo $object->title and also I like how Yii creates modules with CRUD functions.

What do you suggest?

Should I start from Yii or Zend and then use this as an admin panel or should I start from drupal and then try to include and use its functions in "external" pages?

Answer 1

IMHO Fastest way is to get a working system and try to manipulate to make act like you want, add code to your needs. this way you don't have to worry about some common tasks but there is a little learning of how that system works part.

but if you have time, you can always start from the ground up and make your own, just add what you need is making a faster system, but there is a difference between a system that has small team of developers (or you alone), and a system that has large number of users and a community of developers behind it.

for starters I would suggest to work on a reliable system, and build on top of that.