I actually ran across KeystoneJS a couple of days ago while looking for a boxed CMS solution to recommend for some projects I've been working on. It looked interesting enough, but fell short in the same areas as almost every other Node.js based offering on the market today (IMHO):
1) The example or tutorial if followed to the letter doesn't work when complete. If you clone the repo then it works, but following it line by line something goes wonky. I'd suggest just starting the tutorial with the cloning the sample code (actually just supply a download link to the zip from github) and then explain what it does. 2) The tutorial focuses almost completely on Jade. This is great if you want Jade, but sucks if you don't want Jade. I much prefer to use static HTML, JS, and CSS (read pre-compiled) rather than having the server do some magic for me. 3) It appears that KeystoneJS focuses on a single endpoint delivery system only (IE: One website per instance). Sure, most users will only have a single website that they want to support, but there are some of us that have to support 100's of sites all at the same time. It would be nice to have a CMS/F that made this type of hosting easy. Built in per-site and global user, content, and feature management while still being hosted under the "single instance" model. We currently use a custom platform built using cluster and the HTTP Headers to load content. 4) Lack of video tutorials. Text is great and needed, but sometimes seeing is so much easier, both of course is the best of both worlds :). For comparison its great to have a quick video you can watch so you can get a basic understanding of how "difficult" it may be. 5) Lack of documentation on extension or replacement of parts (for example what if I don't want to use Mongoose) 6) Forced static data structure even though your using MongoDB. Why force ORM/ORD if you use MongoDB? Minimal Schema would go much further and provide the same support in most cases. 7) Enforced storage engine. Would be nice if your storage engine could be switched out. We have clients who would like to play with FoundationDB, some that use Mongo, some like Redis. This is one of those things that would be difficult to retrofit into a solution, but would make lives like mine easier :) All of that being said, Keystone looks great. It isn't confusing like Calipso, overly complicated, or to focused on one single thing. Long story short it is in our shortlist of concepts outside of rebuilding our current solution. On the website you might think about having each blurb (Simpler Code, Form Processing, Email, etc) link out to an example/video focused on that topic. Thanks for all the hard work, and I look forward to seeing where you go with KeystoneJS as well as contributing back if I can :) - Jeremy On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 9:27 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I just wanted to introduce myself and a project I've been working on (with > a few collaborators) called KeystoneJS. > > It's an open source cms / web app framework built on express and mongoose. > > The idea is to make setting up node.js content managed websites easier, > and provide a beautiful admin system out of the box. > > I use the term "cms" loosely, because it's more of a content management > framework (unlike Ghost, which is a specifically blogging platform), and I > use the term "framework" loosely because we don't want it to be a > traditional framework, and because really, express is the framework. > Keystone is a collection of patterns on top of it that make it simpler to > set up for common uses. > > Many other languages have systems and frameworks that help developers get > productive (django for python, rails for ruby, etc). Node.js has a lot of > incredibly good packages thanks to npm and the community, but little to > help people get started or bring it all together. I'm not saying that this > is "django / rails for node", just that there's the potential for a > platform here that will hopefully help a lot of people, and we're hoping to > get it right. > > Node.js is a brilliant platform to work on, made even more so by the > incredible packages that have been published. If we can build something > that lets developers choose to start a project in node where they otherwise > might have used wordpress, drupal or django because they needed a cms, > that's the core of our vision. > > It's early days for Keystone. There's a lot to do to add documentation / > examples, make it modular and extensible, improve the Admin UI and build > all the features we've got in mind. But it's a start. > > Late last year I presented Keystone at SydJS (the Sydney Javascript meet > up) and as part of it, built a new site (http://www.sydjs.com) which is > currently the best demo of it in action (although my company has used it > for a number of larger commercial projects too). > > We'd really appreciate feedback and suggestions on where we're heading > with this. We'd also love to have people to start using it and providing > feedback, and contributing if you are able / interested in our vision. > > If you're interested, check out: > > http://keystonejs.com - KeystoneJS website and docs > https://github.com/JedWatson/keystone - KeystoneJS GitHub repo > http://demo.keystonejs.com - Demo website > http://www.sydjs.com - SydJS website > https://github.com/JedWatson/sydjs-site - SydJS GitHub repo > > ... and you can follow us on twitter for updates: > @keystonejs<https://twitter.com/KeystoneJS> > > Thanks, > Jed. > > p.s. some notes: > > - There are already a few Admin UIs out there that are created based > on your data models, for node.js and other platforms. Keystone's different > because it doesn't just understand the *structure* of your data; > through the rich field types and options, it also understands the > *intention* of your data. Because of this we can create a truly > beautiful, usable generated UI. > - Keystone plays nicely with Heroku and nodejitsu because it doesn't > rely on the local filesystem. To work around this we've integrated services > like S3 and cloudinary for file and image uploading. > - We don't want this to become a monolithic package, and are starting > to look at how to break it into modules, and allow people to plug in their > own field types / admin UI screens / etc. > - At the moment, Keystone is quite tied to Express and Mongoose. But > Koa and Sails look great, and MongoDB isn't suitable for every application. > Down the track it might be more decoupled, for now we've picked something > that works and gone with it :) > - There are quite a few features (Views, Emails, the UpdateHandler) > that aren't documented yet, but are used in the sample projects. > - We launched Keystone before Kraken was released. I doubt they stole > our logo, but we didn't steal theirs! > - Positioning Keystone has been challenging, because it's more than a > cms, but not a framework like express. Maybe it's a content management > framework, but it's been used for a data-analysis application, and as the > backend for a mobile app. Any suggestions? > > > -- > -- > Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ > Posting guidelines: > https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "nodejs" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "nodejs" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. 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