Open Source content publishing methods

Recently we've been exploring more open source CMS solutions and a couple of e-commerce sites have also come into the Code Required workflow.

We've looked at loads (I mean dozens and dozens of them!) and there simply are so many options we've decided to drop further development for Roots and start working on building components and extensions for some of the applications that already exist.

I mean... Why fix something that isn't broken? Our site currently runs with a combination of Blogger feeds (you're reading one now!) plus some static pages and some dynamic php stuff too... But we've been playing with WordPress recently and have started to be swayed from Blogger over to WordPress in fact we've also started to developed a few extensions for Wordpress already! We'll also be looking into some Dreamweaver plugins to add development of themes.

Most of you reading this also know of our preference to working in LAMP based systems - hence the mention of WordPress, Blogger and a couple of others we like in SilverStripe and Magento for commerce based sites but the Open Source solutions come in a mass array of formats - recently we've used DotNetNuke which is an ASP.net CMS solution... We've also been made aware of the rather exciting option of Umbraco recently.

We certainly won't write off commercial systems (Microsoft Sharepoint, for example, is often something that we are asked to develop on/for) but with so many great solutions out there why re-invent the wheel? Why waste time developing something when we can enhance an existing solution?

We'd love to hear more about your experiences with Open Source solutions so please email us and let us know of your experiences with any of the aforementioned or indeed an exciting new CMS you've been developing!! ;-)

Alternately if you are interested in hiring Code Required to work on your website, be it implementing a CMS, full ecommerce solution or just a spring clean do get in touch!

Introducting RootsCMS...

We've been busy beavering away over the last few weeks (hence the lack of posts!) building our new CMS system - RootsCMS...

Built around the Smarty template engine RootsCMS is intended as a very simple and easy to plugin content management system - in fact anyone with basic HTML knowledge can plug RootsCMS into their website within minutes - it really is that simple!

Many commercial CMS applications are either incredibly expensive to licence or incredibly complicated to to integrate into an existing website - this is the barrier we are striving to overcome with RootsCMS - think Adobe Contribute but without the delays of FTP uploads - RootsCMS runs on the back of your web server on a simple sql-driven database (whatever you have available).

RootsCMS is no slower than executing a basic PHP request!

With the use of the Smarty templating system the overheads are also minimal - the majority of CMS systems compile each page request as it's made - not RootsCMS...

On publication of a page RootsCMS compiles the template with the content updates and caches the result so the end user only ever receives the final compiled version - which means very simple archiving of content for: rollbacks; archiving; or even event based content publication.

RootsCMS is currently in user testing on a couple of websites but it currently publishes to XML, XHTML, HTML, CSS & PHP (we'll also be porting it to other languages when we have a stable version to release for beta testing). RootsCMS uses a WYSIWYG editor for ease of use for site editors and can be customised to use your favourite editor... TinyMCE, FCKEditor... Whatever you prefer.

Anyway we'll be releasing updates over the coming months and hopefully we'll have a release for you to try in the next couple of months!



*RootsCMS is in the early stages of development but we appreciate any comments people have on content management systems they have had issues with (so we can make RootsCMS even better), people interested in seeing it ported to other platforms etc etc... Basically if you have something to say - email us

Adobe Contribute CS3 content management system

So we finally got round to building a site in Adobe Contribute CS3 at long last... So what's the verdict?

Well let's face it not much has changed in the latest version of Contribute... You still use Dreamwever templates to manage content but with the new support of CSS* and web standards developing, a Contribute managed website, is how can we say it? A lot more "ethical".

Another great feature is the support for blog posting directly from the Contribute user interface so that you only need to train users on one system. Currently this supports Blogger.com, Wordpress and Typad - although in theory you can add any blog server we've only tested these three (in fact this post was created in Contribute and posted directly to our blog which utilises Blogger.com in case you didn't already know).

Anyway the point is that if you're looking for an expensive, user friendly CMS for your site - this is definately worth a look. We've built big corporate sites based on DotNetNuke and Drupal in the last few months but for the more basic sites (i.e. no commerce) Adobe Contribute is definately up there with those guys.

We'll let you know as and when we play and discover more exciting features but if you're looking for something cheap, effective and reliable for a "non-dynamic" site - look no further as Adobe Contribute is the best we've worked with so far.

* CSS-wise: We've noticed a few unexpected bugs with floats and absolute layouts that we are looking to find solutions too so if we find any solutions we'll be sure to let you know on here as soon as we do.