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Re: [LUG] Web Content Management

 

Simon Avery wrote:
> I don't know of a guide, but I've found the same problem you have. Too 
> bloggy and difficult to make it look like anything else.
> 
> Drupal sites are intrinsically drupally, I think. Not 
> nececessarily a bad thing unless you're trying not to look like a drupal 
> site and if you're doing that, you have to wonder why you're using drupal...
> 
> One tip when considering - are there tools to convert your CMS data to 
> another CMS? Can end up quite important if you decide after a few months 
> that it's not what you wanted after all.

Considering that all the CMSes have very different database structures I 
highly doubt that it is possible to convert any of them to anything else 
unless you write your own (or do it by hand).

I've actually started writing my own filebased system. Maybe it's a bit 
pointless, as there are other filebased systems around, but I don't like 
those either. nanoCMS, microCMS and razorCMS looked promising (I think 
they're all forks of each other actually), but they're still too much 
code for my liking. For some reason, when it comes to web coding I just 
don't trust anyone. I think there are 2 reasons for this:
1. They are usually difficult to read monolithic lumps of code with no 
API or other documentation.
2. They have to stand up to more attacks, and yet have a reputation for 
not being secure.

The irony is that my own system will probably be worse on both counts above!
Though that's given me an idea- maybe I should write it like a software 
library with a good API and get the web designer to make use of it like 
a library rather than control everything like most CMSes.

That's mainly the reason I'm writing my own I guess- I want something 
that is a simple as possible and stays out of the way of the web 
developer, requiring very simple function calls, whilst allowing 
less-savvy users to edit the content.

One slight issue I haven't decided how to fix is extra parameters. Do I 
embed the parameters in the html file in some way, hoping that wysiwig 
editors are smart enough to leave them alone (maybe this is what the 
META tag is for?)? Or do I store them somewhere else (this somewhat 
defeats the object)?

Any thoughts?

Simon

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