Thanks Kepler & Greg for your analyses. It seems that we are in the "infant stage", with respect to CMS packages. The future looks bright as we progress forward.
Regards, Kevin. On 7/12/07, Greg Berlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That's a really good analysis of "CMS" systems Kepler... You're spot on about the different types. My current job involved researching CMS systems on which to migrate our company website.. We looked at only .Net systems, and my findings were that the real contenders - all the systems that offered the flexibility that we required, were in fact "Frameworks" on which custom applications can be built. We selected the open source Umbraco, which allows the creation of "Document Types", where you specify what field names you'd like to collect, what template to use to render the data, and what child-types that doc type is allowed to have. then you create templates to render the contents of the Doc Types, either 1 at a time, or using "Macros" generate lists using partial data from the doc types. Very powerful, very flexible, with endless possibilities and no being tied down to one pre-determined way to do things. Other systems we considered were EpiServer, Ektron, Sitecore & RedDot. All of these are "enterprise" CMS systems, and all are frameworks on which custom 'applications' can be written. I've used other "CMS" systems before too - Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke - all of these are more "Portals" than CMS systems, as they allow somebody to quickly and easily build a website, but customisation is very difficult (eg: try add an extra field to a Joomla 'article' - its pretty much impossible), and custom development (building modules etc) has a VERY steep learning curve. Plus, and "modules" that you use in these systems can't be customised, so IMO you're better off with a Framework - more work to get setup, but in the end it'll even out in the time saved trying to customise / extend available modules. I reckon somebody should write an article on what we're talking about here - would make a good one. :) regards greg -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 13 July 2007 11:39 AM To: [email protected] Subject: WSG CMS Digest Due to an upgrade of SmarterMail, digests are not working properly. Please bear with us. We are working on it with the software vendor. There is nothing that Peter or Russ can do about it except shut off digests altogether until it is rectified, which we are not going to do. If you want to take yourself off the digest, please do so and we'll let you know when it is fixed via the announce list. ********************************************************************* WEB STANDARDS GROUP CMS MAIL LIST DIGEST ********************************************************************* From: Kepler Gelotte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:37:23 -0400 Subject: RE: [WSG CMS] Selecting CMS > I was looking at EE as well for the ability to control 3 sites. And from the > other discussion, will try MODx on small sites. > It's just that there are so many around... oh well... I have been watching this thread with interest. I am a programmer by profession and have looked into a bunch of these different packages and have come to the conclusion that there are really many different categories of packages that are lumped into "CMS": 1) Standalone applications which started out to meet a specific need (WordPress for blogging, ZenCart for eCommerce). These have morphed somewhat to meet other needs using plugins or modules but they are best at doing what the original function was. The problem here is that they want to control your entire site. To use leave WordPress and switch to ZenCart while still remaining in your domain would require duplicating the template (look and menus) in whatever other application you were jumping into. 2) Comprehensive application which try to be all things to all developers. I think Drupal and Joomla fall into this category. They were built trying to anticipate the main functions a web application may need, such as eCommerce, etc. They usually have a way to extend themselves through modules and were designed from the start to be extensible. Core developers usually write the modules so the quality is higher. The problem here is that you have to use their eCommerce module even if it doesn't meet your needs. If you are a programmer you have a shot of extending it yourself but usually there is a steep learning curve for these packages. 3) Lightweight frameworks which are built with extensibility in mind but where only the basic functionality is built in. These frameworks are for programmers who don't want to code a ModelViewController from scratch. CodeIgniter is an example of this type of framework. There is a large number of plugins available contributed by other users. The quality of some of these plugins are better than others since the contributors have different experience levels. None of these approaches is ideal. Being a programmer, I opted for a lightweight framework (CodeIgniter) and have been building reusable components for it. One of the components I built was a portal which lets me install WordPress, ZenCart, or other standalone packages and pull them into my application. This is not ideal either since common functionality needs to pulled out of the individual packages like login, breadcrumbs, ... That is what I am working on now. I guess the bottom line is there are so many packages around because none of them meet all the requirements a web developer may have where each web developer has different levels of programming skills and each web site has different functional requirements. I suspect more "CMS"s will be created until someone figures out a better approach. Regards, Kepler Gelotte www.neighborwebmaster.com ************************************************************** Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************** the Arts Centre Tel: +61 3 9281 8000 Fax: +61 3 9281 8282 Web: http://www.theartscentre.net.au ******************************************************* The information in this electronic mail is privileged and confidential, intended only for use of the individual or entity named. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, copying or use of the information is strictly prohibited. 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