Plone: An excellent cms. We would write a “cmsclient” class which would access the ZODB for content and possibly cache results.
Xaraya: Seems worth looking at. We would write a “cmsclient” class to access the xaraya database directly.
Midgard: Too heavy a footprint. Requires re-compiling PHP and adding lots of extensions. Spent two days trying to install it to no avail.
Our own CMS: Seems like a lot of work for a commoditized product.
Here’s the best option I’ve got so far:
Write a “cms client” class and manage the content in another, already built application.
The cms client would expose only a few methods:
1. get($id_or_path)
2. get_children($id_or_path)
3. get_parents($id_or_path) … would return the same as the PARENTS array in Zope.
Then, there could be different “cms clients” depending on what third-party content management software a user would use.
Well, prompted by Alan Runyan, co-author of Plone, we’ve been thinking a lot recently about Content Management lately.
Because E-commerce is more about content management than we originally thought.
If you take a look at some of the most successful e-commerce sites, you’ll find a lot of “content” (wine.com, proactive.com, etc.).
As much as these sites showcase a product catalog, they are far more about a lifestyle brand, and to effectively communicate that message, a company must have an easy-to-use content management system.
So, Robocommerce needs a content management system.
Well, we already have one. Our current strategy is to allow users to edit content via an ftp-style interface (Using WinSCP), where they have permissions over their content directory. That works fine for editing the site, but the approach has a few glaring gaps:
1. It does not support “properties".
2. It does not support sort order.
3. It doe not support titles for content.
4. It does not support content re-use.
5. It does not support an end-user triggering a commit into our version control system.
It’s strengths are:
1. It supports contextual editing (through a separate interface).
2. It leverages the file system.
In a future posting, I’ll outline the direction that we’re headed.
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