SitePoint: I Have Never Met a Boxed CMS I Like

Submitted by Bryan on November 22, 2006 - 4:45pm

Wyatt Barnett in his Sitepoint article, "I've Never Met a Boxed CMS I Like" makes some very valid points about content management systems straight out of the box. Take note that he isn't just talking about commercial products but also open source systems. His first complaint about "boxed" CMS:

The first issue is that the very nature of a CMS is not easily boxable, without creating an application that tries to do everything for everyone and fails at doing most things particularly well. The tasks required for content management are generic, but every organization has a far different focus when it comes to how that content should be managed and how it thinks about that content. I have lost days of meetings trying to help subject matter experts understand that an article, according to this system, is really a page. Trying to make a generic application to handle this for all comers is a very, very tricky prospect.

Sadly, his post doesn't really offer a solution. I assume building your own CMS is the only alternative to the boxed version. But I have to ask, who really has the time? I think there are some obvious reasons you see so many capable software developers are using open source software such as Wordpress, TYPO3, e107, Alfresco, and Drupal for their Web presence.

I am of the opinion that using a boxed CMS sure beats building your own CMS. I would rather worry more about pushing content than having everything perfect in a custom made CMS. That my two cents worth...

Edited Nov 22 2006: Added Drupal tag since there is a lot of focus on Drupal in the comment section.

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I'd definitely second e107!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 12:48am.
I'd definitely second e107! :) Great system right out of the box.

I like e107 too. However, I

Submitted by Bryan on November 22, 2006 - 4:49pm.
I like e107 too. However, I continue to find that when I need a CMS I'm constantly leaning toward the direction of Drupal or Joomla. Either way, I've heard a lot of good things about e107 from its users that I'm sure to find the right project for it someday.

I can see his point, if

Submitted by streaky (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 12:53am.
I can see his point, if you're a developer it really can be annoying working with such systems - and I'm a developer of one of the systems mentioned in your article. All the projects I'm working on at the moment don't use a canned CMS purely for one reason - they get in the way of development process, and I [personally] find that annoying. From our perspective we can't change our canned CMS in a big way because it will break everything, there's no better way to drive users away than break everything, so it's always incremental improvements. Next generation content management will be smaller scale, with emphasis on API not packing as many features into the box as possible, when such systems make their way into the market there will be a tidal change and you'll stop hearing about projects such as Joomla, Drupal and others, purely because their APIs aren't up to scratch and the way they work doesn't help serious web application developers, it just gets in the way. I believe that so much that I've already started building system, in two years it's going to be a 'change or die' situation for all the projects listed at the top left of this page, I can see it coming, question is, how late in the game will everybody else? My 2-cents anyway, for what they're worth.

Next generation content

Submitted by Bryan on November 22, 2006 - 5:13pm.
Next generation content management will be smaller scale, with emphasis on API not packing as many features into the box as possible, when such systems make their way into the market there will be a tidal change and you'll stop hearing about projects such as Joomla, Drupal and others...

This really could become an interesting discussion for figuring out the next generation of CMS will look like. I don't doubt that the quality of the API will be a huge factor for future CMS. However, I'm not so sure I agree that less features installed by default is the future for CMS. In the past, the biggest complaint from new Drupal users is the desire to see more features and more eye candy "in the box". In fact, many have cited going Joomla's direction because Drupal had less (though I've argued otherwise).

Streaky, do you see the lack of OO in open source projects (as stated in a later comment) to be more of an issues with PHP itself (say when compared to Java) or the lack of some open source projects not quickly adopting the latest version of PHP (writing for PHP4 and not PHP5)? This type of discussion has always sparked some interesting conversation among the PHP community. For an example, check out this PHP blog by Jeff Moore.

you'll stop hearing about

Submitted by Jeff Eaton (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 1:00am.
you'll stop hearing about projects such as Joomla, Drupal and others, purely because their APIs aren't up to scratch and the way they work doesn't help serious web application developers, it just gets in the way.
I can't speak to the internals of the other projects, but I'm curious why you'd put Drupal under that list. Its emphasis on exposing APIs rather than monolithic blocks of functionality is one of its strengths. There's always room for improvement, but it seems to me that those systems are leading the way in the move towards API-oriented CMS's, rather than being made obsolete. Admittedly, I'm biased as a hardcore Drupal guy, but I'm curious how your idea of the future differs from where it's going.

Drupal are stuck in a place

Submitted by streaky (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 3:14pm.
Drupal are stuck in a place where one of the projects I work on is.. It's there's no proper error handling in there whatsoever, it's a bunch of muted function calls.. Just picking a random one out.. if (function_exists('iconv')) { $out = @iconv($encoding, 'utf-8', $data); } The call to iconv() is muted by the '@' - there's no error handling there whatsoever, which is not the way serious developers work, basically, you're saying.. If it failed you have no interest in where or how - it's one of the overriding reasons why PHP isn't considered a serious development language. That's one random example, but Drupal and others (including one of the projects I work on) are full of them. Sometimes you have to know when to let go of a code-base and start from scratch. I personally think Drupal is ass-backwards too, but that's a long and complicated discussion. Another problem with Drupal is it's OO code, or comprehensive lack of. Depends what camp you come from I guess, but OO code is a proven benefit in many ways. Just looking at some of the code, I suspect they may have problems getting it to work with PHP 6 / Unicode also. Don't quote me on that one though. Basically, just because you have an API and it's documented, it doesn't mean it's any good for serious developers or that the internals are solid, though I do have allot of respect for Drupal, even if I'd never use it. Taxonomy is a synonym for content *mis*management IMO. Much more on topic with the original point though, I listed Drupal because it's another canned project with loads of features that you don't want as a *developer*, the old adage - 90% of the features for 10% of the users fits well. Next generation Open Source Content Management is going to focus on what it's supposed to be focusing on *managing content* and it's going to be targeting customers of people like RedDot, that was the main point which I was trying to make.

Hrm

Submitted by Jeff Eaton (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 6:48pm.
I listed Drupal because it's another canned project with loads of features that you don't want as a *developer*, the old adage - 90% of the features for 10% of the users fits well.
With all due respect, it's hard to believe you've actually used a recent version of Drupal, or know anything about its community if you're tossing around stuff like that. This is one of the frequent complains by new 'I just want to install it and run' users: Drupal doesn't do what they want it to until they start installing additional tools or writing some code. The consulting/development-oriented philosophy that most of its principla developers have is often a stumbling block when it comes to wider adoption in the Wordpress/Joomla! dominated market.
Basically, just because you have an API and it's documented, it doesn't mean it's any good for serious developers or that the internals are solid, though I do have allot of respect for Drupal, even if I'd never use it.
Curious. I chose Drupal specifically because I'd spent two years hand-rolling a CMS, evaluating others that are out there, and trying to find something that wasn't a pile of NUkelike ugliness. My experience was the opposite of yours. Perhaps it would be more productive to run down what things you feel make a CMS 'serious' -- it sounds like a mirror of the 'Real Programming Languages' debate. In any case, you don't want a flame war and either do I. It's just worth a chuckle sometimes to read someone dismissing a project because it doesn't do X -- when everyone else is complaining that it does. *grin*

Another thought

Submitted by Jeff Eaton (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 6:54pm.
Next generation Open Source Content Management is going to focus on what it's supposed to be focusing on *managing content* and it's going to be targeting customers of people like RedDot, that was the main point which I was trying to make.
Fair enough. I think tossing around the phrase 'managing content' could get a bit sticky, though. If you mean hardcore workflow and versioning tools, with an emphasis on professional environments like newspapers and so on, then I think you're right: most of the packages out there lack the robustness to do any of that without a lot of custom code. Most of the OSS 'content management systems' out there right now are actually 'dynamic web site engines' with some CMS functionality rolled in. And that, really, is what the vast majority of sites need. Beyond just 'using a language with error handling' or 'using OO', what kinds of differences do you think the next generation will really offer? I'm curious about that...

As a non-developers developer

Submitted by Caleb G (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 5:45pm.
I can kind of play the foil in this discussion, maybe. A boxed CMS gives a guy like me, someone with 10 years of front-end/graphic design, a marketing degree, and a lot of curiosity and patience - the ability to make much more amazing sites that I would be able to if I actually had to 'roll my own'. (a very ugly proposition indeed) Based on things I've seen in other fields, I wonder (but am not sure), how much "box envy" there is from developers who would just as soon prefer to see the building of high-function websites left to people with IT degrees. I'm really not try to start a flamewar - but I've thought about this stuff before based on my conversations with independent developers and just thought I'd throw it out there...

yawn

Submitted by sepeck (not verified) on November 22, 2006 - 6:33pm.
Yet another developer who wants to spend his time re-inventing the wheel instead of building on existing foundations. You see this argument all the time. The discussion points of some of the comments are very telling as well. The phrasing alone of the comments indicate a lack of understanding of long term sustainable support and development issue's. 'Messing with core'. If you are going to use a product (any product), then you have to invest the time in getting familiar with that product to leverage it to it's fullest potential. If you want to 'write your own' then you are going to want to be locking your customer into you as a solution. I have met more developers convinced that they knew more then 'those other guys' about 'everything important' that end up leaving the customer with a virtually unsupportable system or so completely reliant on them, that when they leave, the customer has to spend as much or more on fixing or upgrading their sites later. The 'out of the box' systems exist to fill a need because no one person (or small team for that matter) can be an expert on everything (web, rss, mail, design, information architecture). No one person should be able to lock a customer into them as a solution. That doesn't build a healthy eco-system for their customers or themselves. Perhaps the original author is such an expert but without 'out of the box' solutions, I would not be able to build my little sites I have built to date. The more I learn about my chosen 'out of the box' solution, the more I realize that I am leveraging about a tenth of it's capabilities. The nice part is that I have been doing this with my sites for 2 years and three major upgrades with the same content. Of course, my choice is Drupal. Streaky indicates by his comments that he is not entirely familiar with Drupal. Are their things in the code that can be improved? You bet. Are there going to be problems when going to php 6 that are real problems? Probably not. For a better read on the (and I also want to say this in an Operatic voice because the proponents all seem so single minded on it) OO stuff, read this article

A Common Definition of CMS May Be Part Of The Problem

Submitted by Scott Abel (not verified) on November 23, 2006 - 10:28am.
Part of the problem we see at Content Management Professionals (www.cmpros.org) is there is a big difference in what folks consider a CMS. Is a CMS a blogging tool (can it be?) Is a CMS limited to web content (should it be?) And what about Enterprise Content Management (what does enterprise mean?) We have found that many disagreements between folks with an interest in content management start becuase they have different definitions of content management and what a CMS should do (out of the box or otherwise). We are also seeing significant movement toward hosted solutions -- web-based CMS tools that are built to manage web, print, blog and wiki content. These are indeed exciting times for our industry as we begin to develop a sense of who we are, what we do, and what our common vocabulary will be. Content Management Professionals (CM Pros for short) is a membership organization that fosters the sharing of content management information, practices, and strategies. Learn more here: www.cmpros.org Scott Abel Vice President, CM Pros www.cmpros.org P.S. If you are a content professional, you might also enjoy my company blog, TheContentWrangler.com.

Endless road to defining a CMS

Submitted by Bryan on November 25, 2006 - 11:15pm.

Scott,

I think you're probably correct in that the definition of a CMS varies greatly among users, developers, and professionals. I think probably the greatest difficulty is that many people sometimes look at the software as the content management system. However, if you're looking at the problem/solution from that of an information system perspective it's quite clear that the CMS application is only the technical means for implementing the CMS. Obviously, I'm on the camp that a CMS is not limited to Web content (nor should it be).

In a professional report I wrote in graduate school, I once made the mistake of trying to define an information technology (IT) system. The draft for that paper received a lot if red with the professor arguing there is no such thing an an IT system. You can have an information system and you can have information technology, but there was not such thing as an IT system. The experience was an eye opener to me on the importance of how terms are defined and understand how each individual defines those terms.

Thanks for the links to your blog and organization. As of this writing I could access your blog but could not access cmpros.org. Perhaps, someone is tweaking your Web application not liking what they saw "out of the box". Wink I'll have to try the site another time...