[Web4lib] CMS or something else?

[Andrew Hankinson]

If you want a very simple, extremely customizable CMS, look at  
Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com.)  In the back-end, it does a  
very good job of separating "Content" from "Presentation."  (The only  
tricky nomenclature is the "forms."  It's not forms as in text-entry  
on a website; rather it's bits of re-usable code that you can call in  
any of your templates.  It took me a few minutes to realize that one.)

For a more complicated site, I'm starting to dig Drupal.  It's got a  
steeper learning curve to set up, but it's not that bad once you get  
into it.  I like not having a "front-end" and "back-end" to a  
website.  I login, navigate to the page I want to edit, and click  
"edit."  I wish more CMS' were built this way.  I also like the fine- 
grained access control.  I believe it is possible to setup workflows,  
where one person gets notified of new content, and can then approve  
it for publishing.

A flat-file approach to websites is easy maintenence for a simple- to  
mildly-complex website; anything after that and you risk the website  
equivalent of "DLL-Hell."  Trying to maintain different versions of  
the same file, including the same menu on all of them, rolling out  
site-wide updates, all of these common tasks become very simple with  
a good CMS.

In a database-driven CMS, you also get the advantage of re-using your  
content for different purposes.  I have yet to come across a good  
method of generating an RSS feed from a flat-file website.  It's a  
further separation of Content and Presentation.

I'm guessing from your comments, however, that you are trying to  
avoid a database driven site, though.

On 3-Sep-06, at 6:32 PM, Keith D. Engwall wrote:

>
> The two product names that I've gotten out of the discussions on  
> this are Plone, Bricolage and Contribute.
>
> I installed Bricolage, but am totally unfamiliar with the jargon it  
> uses (stories, mason components, etc.), and have not had much luck  
> finding sufficient documentation to get me started, but it looks  
> like the learning curve on it would be rather steep (jargon-heavy,  
> etc.) for the librarians.
>
> I installed Plone, and while the interface is nice, it looks like a  
> CMS where the management is tied into the interface (there will  
> always be a login link on the page the public sees, and the page is  
> sort of pre-configured into a plone interface with plone's menus,  
> etc.).
>
> Contribute does not appear to run on Debian/Ubuntu (according to  
> the System Requirements).
>
> What I'm really looking for is a means for staff to edit and add  
> pages to an existing site through a web interface, but have the  
> site itself be completely independent from the editing interface.   
> The editing interface, for instance, would go through a different  
> port than the site itself, with authentication, and they'd be able  
> to see the directory tree under the document root of the web site,  
> and then be able to edit those files as well as add new ones.   
> Ideally, it would be nice to have an approval stage.  WYSIWIG would  
> be nice, but not essential.
>
> It may be that Bricolage can do this, but the interface is so  
> opaque (because of the jargon mostly) that I can't figure out how  
> to tell it where my website files are or how to import my website  
> files into its database, or whatever.
>
> If you know of any specific products that would help me do this,  
> I'd appreciate it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keith
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