[Web4lib] Content management systems

Thomas Bennett bennetttm at appstate.edu
Tue Mar 20 10:00:42 EST 2007


Packt Publishing gave a cash award to three OS CMS projects they considered 
the top three that were nominated at their site.  
http://www.packtpub.com/award
These top three were 
1. Joomla!- $5,000
2. Drupal - $3,000
3. Plone - $2,000

a fourth independent judge had to break the first place tie between Joomla and 
Drupal.  All of this to put a word in for Plone.

  Plone is a product that runs on Zope which is built on the Python language 
and runs on *nix, MS Windows, MAC and has run on others.  Plone gives you 
similar or same features as the others. You can add/edit files via 
ftp,webdav, or through-the-web(TTW).  The entire site (Zope) uses one data 
file with the option to connect to other or multiple database products  
(PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Firebird, ODBC, etc).  The one data file is an OO 
database and allows a one file backup for the entire site for restoring or 
moving to the same or upgrade Zope/Plone.  File history is accessible in the 
Zope level.  A copy of every previously edited page is saved back to the last 
database pack.  When you pack the database you select how many days back to 
keep the history.  There are built in workflows which can be customized to 
your own defined work flow.  Work flows can require an approval process which 
is the default for work flows.  That is documents, images, files, and all 
other objects have different states including unpublished, pending, published 
and others may be defined through custom workflows.  Search is built in.  
There are addon products for plone which include Wikis, Blogs, Calendars, 
surveys, chat, forums, etc.
see http://plone.org/products for more.
  Customizable css so all pages created can have the same look and feel.

Running apache with rewrite rules in front of Zope allows one to serve 
multiple Plone sites from one Zope instance.  And using the Zeo server that 
comes with Zope lets one set up load balancing and or failover support.  Zeo 
server serves the database objects to Zeo clients, Zope, so multiple sites 
may be set up to serve from one database. 
see http://www.faqs.org/docs/ZopeBook/ZEO.html for details.

Although we don't use Plone as a cms we do serve our entire site from Zope as 
we don't use a review/publish process.  We have and are looking at Plone for 
possible future uses.

Thomas




On Monday 19 March 2007 15:41, Jonathan Bloy wrote:
> I'm starting to look at adding a content management system to my
> library's website (yes, I'm still in the era of manual editing).  I'm
> aware of some of the biggies like Drupal, Joomla, etc., but I'm curious
> to know what people are using out there in the library world.
>
> What CMS are you using?  What do or don't you like about it?
>
>  - Jonathan
>
> --
> Jonathan Bloy
> Web Services Librarian
> Edgewood College
> Madison, Wisconsin
> http://library.edgewood.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/

-- 
====================================================================
Thomas McMillan Grant Bennett		Appalachian State University
Computer Consultant III			P O Box 32026
University Library				Boone, North Carolina 28608
(828) 262 6587

If it's not as simple as possible to try it, then the barrier to entry is too 
high.

Library Systems Help Desk: http://www.library.appstate.edu/help/
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