Please share your experience with CARMA
 

I've been looking at it and it looks pretty sweet.

I've been very disappointed by the lack of functionality, lack of readable documentation, and slow support I've experienced with other CMS's, so I'm thinking of buying CARMA.

How easy is it to use/understand the manual?
How quickly does support respond to you when you have a question/problem?

Does it have all of the functionality you would need to build a site like Twistys? (Any CMS can do a "reality site" with numbered episodes....but a members area with a searchable model database with everything uber organized, with thousands of pic sets and vids, with total control of the layout of every single page...that's what we're trying to build)

Thanks in advance for any information you share

Oh also, if you've used Carma to setup limited trial members areas where the CMS controls what content they are and aren't allowed to view....how easy or hard was that to set up and does it work the way you want it to in that regard?

slow support is an understatement.

I talked a friend into going the nats carma route earlier this year, for some reason they have not ever been able to get it running on his server. I don't know where they stand on this as of this moment. But support sucked ass, he has done everything with his server they told him to, and still nada.

We've been using Carma for a few months now, and other then poor documentation (Which I'm told they're working on) and some hiccups with support it seems to be a solid product and very expandable.

Bummer, poor documentation is the problem I'm having now.

I'm not a programmer so I can't figure crap out on my own, I need a manual that tells me how to setup my pages and stuff like that.

If the docs are subpar then I have to ask for support all the time....combine that with slow support and that's the nightmare I'm currently living.

I personally love carma... been working with it for quite some time now.

For somebody with no/limited coding it will be trouble...

If you know your way around some basic code its a heaven sent.

My best suggestion to you is request access to their demo site and view the source to find out what functions they're calling on each page. I discovered the solution to a few of my problems that way.

We use carma and its a great system, ya it lacks the documentation but if you know php and smarty then your good to go

Who is this that you speak of so I can see what the story behind it is?

Doesn't that defeat the purpose? If the person knew PHP and Smarty he could code his own CMS. IMHO programming your own stuff is the only way to go. You will typically spend more money trying to buy an off the shelf app, messing with it and your sites are typically going to look like every other crappy site out there. The only way to give you complete control is if you do it your own way. But thats just me.

Anyone else?