RFP For OSCOM.4 With ApacheTracks

Thalinor writes "The RFP for OSCOM.4 is now out. The theme of OSCOM.4 (Open Source Content Management Conference) is "Cross-Pollination". This will be a conference with assistance from the Apache Software Foundation for the ApacheTracks content. OSCOM.4 happens from Sept 29 - October 1, 2004 in Zurich, Switzerland. The deadline for proposals is July 15, 2004."

Comments

What is the best Free Software CMS?

[byolinux]

That can actually be used by non-tech users, easily?

I've played with most of them from opensourcecms.com and I've not liked them much. Plone seems alright, and Wordpress is perhaps the finest blogging tool in the world, but what else is there?

It must be able to produce XHTML that validates.

Re:What is the best Free Software CMS?

[lux55]

Our CMS, called Sitellite, is a newer addition to opensourcecms.com, so you might not have seen it before. We've been told (by non-technical users themselves) that it is extremely simple for them to use, but we've really strived not to sacrifice the capabilities of the system in making it so. I think we've struck a great balance myself, however being the lead developer I'm somewhat biased. ;)

If you did try it out already (or if anyone else reading this has), I'd be interested to know what you found difficult to use. If not and you're interested in taking a look at it, the web site URL is:

http://www.sitellite.org/

Cheers,

Lux

Re:What is the best Free Software CMS?

[Paul Bain]

I am posting an email that I sent to a mailing list devoted to CMSes, cms@lists.cms-forum.org, a few weeks ago:

At +0200Monday 5/31/04 01:52 AM, Khan wrote:

I'm looking for CMS that have great administration part. I'm not interested in site displaying, speed, HTML standards or anything like that. I just need stable administration part with modules: - News with archives;
- Blogs;
- Some users Can be administrators of blogs;
- Link directory;
- Navigation with multiple categories and subcategories;
- Different news for different parts of my web site;

Web site will be very large and it will have almost any module that you can find these days :)

I like XOOPS. I also have my eye on Mambo. A friend of mine told me that Drupal has best community and if not drupal that I should check [out] EZ.

Khan,

Keep in mind that the 'nukes (e.g., PHPnuke, PostNuke, Xaraya, Xoops, etc.) are not true CMS's because they are "hybrids," one-half CMS and one-half "community-ware," software that facilitates the building of web communities. For a lengthy discussion of Xoops (probably one of the better 'nukes), see the June, 2004 issue of Linux Journal (page 14). I call this line of software "the 'nukes" because they are nearly all "descended from," or forks of, PHPnuke. For example, PostNuke was founded by disgruntled users of PHPnuke who forked the source code of PHPnuke.

Also remember that CMS's and community-ware (e.g., phpBB) have different purposes, and software that tries to accomplish _both_ purposes almost always fails to do _either_ well. The 'nukes exemplify that failure. The 'nukes are neither good CMS's nor good community-ware.

For an example of Drupal in actual usage, see www.DebianPlanet.org.

Decide whether your primary purpose is to facilitate the management of web content or, instead, to build a web-based community. If your primary purpose is the former (rather than the latter), then you should probably choose a _true_ CMS, rather than hybrid software that tries to do both. The following are often cited as being among the best of the open source (OS) CMS's:

1) Plone -- written in Python and requires Zope, an application server.
2) OpenCMS -- based on J2EE (mostly servlets, including JSP) and XML, requires a servlet container (e.g., Tomcat).
3) Bricolage -- not a general-purpose CMS because it is best suited for newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals. Written in Perl and requires mod_perl, an Apache module.
4) Typo 3

FWIW, the amount of "buzz" that Plone is generating now in the OS community astounds me. I have been following OS for years now (I have been using Linux since '97), and I have _never_ seen an OS software go from inception to "red-hot" so damned fast (with the possible exception of Jabber, an XML router). Heck, Plone is generating more buzz than OpenCMS notwithstanding that Plone did not make its debut until 2002, years after OpenCMS. In the OS community, Plone seems to be generating as much "buzz" as Linux did back in 1995. That amount of buzz indicates that Plone is probably the OS CMS to watch, at least in the category of general-purpose CMSes.

Sincerely,
Paul Bain

Re:What is the best Free Software CMS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul,

Excellent articulation re: the shortcomings of the various Nukes. I agree with you re: 3 of your 4 selections, with the exception being OpenCMS. I found the installation of OpenCMS to be rather smooth, but I encountered an endless number of problems while trying to get it running; I encountered many people on the Web posting about similar problems as mine, without any true resolution offered from the Dev community. I never got it working the way it was supposed to, although I have heard from other sources that they have been quite happy with it.

I think that of the items on your list, Typo3 is actually the most robust and feature-rich out-of-the-box. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but it is as good as any higher-end commercial CMS I've looked at. Typo3 is lacking the true workflow that both Plone and Bricolage have, but it is being worked on.

Regarding Plone, my take on that has been that if you aren't an expert Python programmer, you better be happy with what Plone has out-of-the-box or what community members have built, because working with Zope is a pain in the ass. I also found that getting data from external sources into the ZODB, or getting data out, was rather problematic; if you are working with disparate data sources, or need to do some integration, it could be very problematic.

For workflow and publishing, Bricolage is actually pretty amazing. It should be pointed out, however, that Bricolage is _only_ a backend; you have to build the payload. Of course, that gives you a lot of flexibility, in that you can build it using any technology you want, but when there are systems like Plone and Typo3 that have a built-in delivery system with a (fairly) easy way to manage templating and design, it can seem to be a bit of a hassle if you are in a rapid-development mode.

If I was going to suggest just three true CMSs (my apologies to the guy talking about Sitellite, which I have tested out--it is on its way, but not there yet! Email me if you want some feedback, or I can post it here) that are fairly easy to get running and have the features that you would get from a commercial system (and sometimes more), I would suggest 1) Typo3, 2) Plone, 3) Bricolage.

Just a few of my thoughts...

Keith
Keith_Morrison At Dfci .Harvard .Edu

Re:What is the best Free Software CMS?

[LiquidShaneo]

Depends what you want to do with it. Like was mentioned, the 'nukes' are a blend of CMS and communityware. Plone is much more of a true CMS. Plone also has educational ports (EduPlone) and eCommerce ports (PloneMall) which definitely look interesting.

Personally I've been working with Plone for a couple months now and am pretty impressed by its customization potential. For communityware, it isn't there yet primarily because their forum software is no where up to snuff with features compared to phpBB and others. Granted there is a large learning curve, but if you can get past that you should be set. I bet I spent the first two months teaching myself the basics of Zope, ZPT, Python, CSS, and Plone in order to really customize it. There's also a huge repository of Products that can be plugged into Plone to do pretty much whatever you want. Plone produces valid XHTML and is very standards compliant. See the footer of the plone.org website for the standards they conform to. Once you've got Plone customized, admining it is pretty straight forward through the PMI and ZMI. Only the sysadmin really would ever do anything in the ZMI.

There's also Silva (http://www.infrae.org/products/silva) that has a lot of potential as well. The document creation and management interface is amazing along with workflow management. All documents are stored in future-proof XML. Check both of them out if you have a chance.

Request for Packaging?

[S. Baldrick]

You're confusing all the Debian users.