Maarten, Let me assuage some of your fears. Radiant is VERY active, people are using the CMS all the time to build websites, and I receive at least 15 messages a day on the mailing lists. Your perception of inactivity in the project may be because we release fairly infrequently, for an open-source project. I would say that's a combination of the limited time our core developers can devote, the overall quality of the code (fewer bug fixes) and our commitment to that quality (we try not to release broken code).
I would not fear using it for "serious business websites". If you want evidence of its usage in a "serious business website", look no further than redken.com (USA site) and redkensalon.com. Granted, we made heavy customizations to Radiant for that site, but the team I worked with assured me that all of the sites they have built, most of them with a PHP-based CMS, have required an equivalent customization effort. Regarding templates (layouts, actually), Radiant gets out of your way in that regard. Design whatever template you want, Radiant can serve it. If you want to know how to create a layout, it's best to bootstrap Radiant with the "Styled Blog" template and read its layout(s). They are actually a lot simpler than you might expect. Let me be clear. Radiant won't do everything for you, but most of your needs will be satisfied by the base installation: designing, creating and publishing pages. For other things, you will need to look into extensions. Sean P.S. Those lacking features made you MORE enthusiastic? Did I understand you correctly? Maarten Oelering wrote: > Hello, > > I'm a ruby developer and very enthousiastic about Radiant. The review > on http://www.a3webtech.com/index.php/cms-3.html mentioning the less > mature state of the project and the lack of an installer even made me > more enthousiastic. > > However I am still hesitant using it for a serious business websites. > I miss some critical documentation on creating templates for a decent > website, i.e. how to use the system in the role of webmaster. Reading > the documentation on radiantcms.org didn't help me much. Fortunately > the article in artofmission.com cleared up some things for me. > > Overall I get the impression that project is not very active, judging > on releases, the blog and the mailing groups. However I can't see > what's going on behind the scenes. Is Radiant still alive and kicking? > > Regards, > > Maarten Oelering > > _______________________________________________ > Radiant mailing list > Post: [email protected] > Search: http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/ > Site: http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant > > _______________________________________________ Radiant mailing list Post: [email protected] Search: http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/ Site: http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant
