[WSG] RE: New CMS / Framework

[Geoff Bowers]

Justin,

Building a comprehensive CMS API is a deceptively difficult task.  There
are so many open source frameworks, let alone commercial ones, to suit
every language preference -- I definitely recommend against starting
from scratch unless your requirements are very modest.
Building something for a client is a lot different to building something 
for use with any client.  It's an order of magnitude more time consuming 
to build something truly generic.

I speak from experience having been involved with the FarCry CMS 
architecture since its inception. With that in mind I thought I might 
take the opportunity to respond to Mike and perhaps add some general 
insight into CMS API's -- you'll have to forgive me for keeping this 
off-topic thread alive.

it very closely (I've got a lot at stake and some practical 
background with CMS)  and decided that if you want to do what the
developers of FarCry have designed in, it's a piece of cake.  IF you
want to do anything different, you better be willing to learn an
entire new vocabulary.
FarCry provides a set of services and an API to access them.  These
services provide functionality that the standard set of CF tags and
components does not.  In order to leverage an application framework, the
code needs to adhere to certain coding guidelines.  For convenience,
aspects of the API are given names and with any large code base this
establishes a new vocabulary.  All but the very simplest application
frameworks involve learning a vocabulary of terminology.
FarCry is designed to work out of the box as a solution -- its great to
hear people are finding it easy to use.  But extending the solution
requires learning the API "vocabulary" -- no way around that really.
I don't think it was ever designed with shared environments in mind, 
and finding out how to set it up for shared environments has been a 
long and wearying road for me.  I'm still not willing to attempt 
setting it up on my server.  There is a lot of the app outside the
site, and that is a worry in a shared environment.
FarCry is an enterprise solution converted to open source -- so your
right: low cost, shared hosting environments were not an initial
priority.  However, it's worth noting that there are now several
commercial shared hosting options for FarCry today -- including AusTiger
(Newcastle), FastHIT (Perth), and Paladin (US).
One of the main reasons for having a CMS is you want to allow
non-technical
people to update the site safely.   I tried my test app on a dozen 
non-technical people, and not one of them could find out how to add a
 page without having to be shown where it was.
FarCry is a very sophisticated solution -- logging in with all the
options switched on can be daunting without training.  That's why its
possible to reduce non-technical users' visible options to a minimum, or
even write your own "dumbed-down" administration interfaces.  However,
we have found over the years that clients generally prefer access to
powerful options and are prepared to do training to have them.
Hope that helps,

-- geoff
http://farcry.daemon.com.au/


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