Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Content Management Software - Build or Buy?

Posted by Cliff on from the cast-your-vote dept.

WallyHartshorn asks: "I'm the web coordinator for an agency (1,200 employees) with a web site consisting of roughly 2,500 static HTML pages, plus a few hundred Acrobat files, a dozen CGI scripts, etc. Currently, updates are done manually by a staff of 2 full-time web developers (including me) and 5 non-IT employees who have web page development as about 25% of their job responsibilities. We have been considering purchasing some web content management software, probably something on the lines of RedDot, eMPower, or Microsoft Content Management Server. We've also been considering using Zope or building something ourselves from the ground up. We only have two Perl programmers and nobody knows Python. Given the current budget limitations, we might have more luck getting permission to spend a few months writing our own software than we would getting approval to spend thousands of dollars on a pre-built package. On the other hand, I could also see a "build from the ground up" project turning into a maintenance nightmare. What experiences have people who run web sites of a comparable size had with building their own web content management software versus purchasing one? (Please keep in mind that we are not running a blog, a news site, or a community site, so something like Slash would not work.) Our content consists primarily of reference material and services.)"

7 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Zope by Big+Sean+O · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know, I know. "Nobody knows python". Zope is fairly mature, so you can run it and do a lot without getting under the hood and mucking with the source.

    Also, Zope allows you to write scripts in Perl or Python, so you can implement site logic you need in a language you already know. You can also use it to connect to existing databases.

    Plus, it wouldn't hurt to learn a little python.

    Zope will take out a lot of the busy work of rolling your own and you can concentrate on customizing it.

    The Zope Book is on-line and the software is free, so the initial investment is just you time twiddling with it to see if it meets your needs. I looked at it this spring, but it was overkill for the project I was working on.

    --
    My father is a blogger.
    1. Re:Zope by platypus · · Score: 3, Informative

      I second that.
      Plus, I would think about getting paid zope consulting to get you of from the ground and continue yourself later on.
      Let someone build the hard parts (business logic etc.) and do the easy parts yourself (presentation logic).

      Whatever sales droids of proprietary content management system may tell you, they don't work out of the box - at least not more than zope does.
      You'll always find things which don't work the way you want them to, making custumization needed, like adaption to your business' processes or whatever.
      In reality, many of the important CM makers make most of their money by consulting etc.
      Take a look at zopes content management framework which is an add-on more tailored to typical content management use cases - oh, and ignore the ugly side, something new is in the works.

      It all comes down to:
      $total_cost = $cost_of_license + $cost_of_consulting + $cost_of_own_time

      With zope, $cost_of_license == 0 at least, and I guarantee that zope gives a very good start to get the others quite low.

  2. Content management is a bear pit.... by PinglePongle · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was the development manager for a big site using Vignette as a content management system. What they don't tell you when you buy these products is that you will inevitably invest a huge amount of time in customizing the application for your requirements, and that - at the end - it will still not feel "quite right".

    Besides the purchase price, you have to assume you will need signifant training and/or consulting support, and you will inevitably end up rebuilding your site from scratch to fit into the new framework. The standard consulting fee seems to be roughly 10 times the cost of the software (amazing how that always seems to work out...).

    If your content creation processes are in any way complex, you will spend a significant amount of time and effort trying to create a tool that facilitates or at least accomodates this process; if workflow features are expected, you will have a serious amount of work to tackle.

    You will also need data entry time (or at least the ability to convert all the exising content into whatever format the Content Management Server expects) for all 2500+ pages.

    If what you're doing can be classified as business critical in any way, you will need at least one administrator for the Content Management System and whatever database it uses.

    Because content management systems involve a lot of "dynamic" activity when serving pages, it's common for them to experience performance problems, so you may need to invest in additional hardware to serve the same number of pages. You will definitely be looking at how to cache your content - this is a whole bundle of joy in its own right.

    In short - make sure you want to go down this route ! It may free you up from the tedium of cutting and pasting into a static HTML file and FTP-ing it, but instead you'll be feeding and watering this content management beast.

    Unless your company makes its living from its content, the costs are unlikely to be recouped.

    Of course, if you want to do it, I would suggest writing one from scratch; I'm working on a JSP/servlet based content management server right now, and it's a lot of fun.

    N

    --
    It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
  3. Perl solutions by m_ilya · · Score: 4, Informative
    Since you have programmers who know Perl it makes sense to go with Perl solutions. I don't know your needs so I'll give your several choises.
    --

    --
    Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)

  4. Re:It only takes one issue to kill you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Erm... backups? You'd have to be insane to trust 7 months worth of valuable content to a single copy sitting on a web server!

  5. Zope Community? by crisco · · Score: 3, Informative
    Have you tried the Zope community for help?

    I've found the mailing list and #Zope on the Openprojects.net irc servers invaluable for solving problems with Zope. Remember the Zope Corporation and other have used Zope for high profile projects such as CBS New York.

    As far as the article topic, Zope has the CMF project which might give a good headstart on what they are after.

    Aha, I see other threads are pimping Zope and the CMF so I'll leave it at this...

    --

    Bleh!

  6. Plone is a CMS built on ZOPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://plone.org/

    the Plone Content Management System built on top of ZOPE is very 'out-of-the-box'. Very little programming is necessary. Lots of customization (workflow, permissions, presentation, template modifications) are all done through-the-web.

    It is built on ZOPE so loads of the stuff is in Python but all-in-all its pretty elegant and looks marvelous! The higher the level you can program (Plone is very high level) the less maintenance you have to keep up with. Doing it yourself is a waste and some stuff is non-trivial. Working with languages that are object oriented will help.

    If you are PERL guy.. try bricolage or midgaard..
    I prefer PageTemplates and Python over mod_mason/perl (as they tend not to seperate concerns very well)