XOOPS

TBD; details in XoopsEvaluation

The project was initiated by the needs of my websites and the http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/ How to evaluate a content management system paper by http://www.steptwo.com.au/ Step Two designs. I would also like to include ideas from "analysis report by Ariga":http://www.ariga.cz/saa1.html about requirements on CMS systems as well as look at "Jeffrey Veen's famous article":http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000622.html .

The project was initiated by the needs of my websites and the http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/ How to evaluate a content management system paper by http://www.steptwo.com.au/ Step Two designs. I would also like to include ideas from "analysis report by Ariga":http://www.ariga.cz/saa1.html about requirements on CMS systems.

http://www.mamboserver.com/ Mambo

a strong workhorse, esp. when beefed up with plug-ins, but ouch the templating; details in MamboEvaluation

The CMSes Dissected (The Results)

So far (9/2004), I have had a deep look at the following (a-z order): Mambo, PostNuke, Textpattern. Yet to come are: Drupal, WordPress, type3, XOOPS.

http://www.mamboserver.com/ Mambo

a strong workhorse, esp. when beefed up with plug-ins; details in MamboEvaluation

http://www.textpattern.com/ Textpattern

simple effective solution for smaller (mainly personal) sites; details in TextpatternEvaluation.

http://www.drupal.org/ Drupal

TBD; details in DrupalEvaluation.

Below the Bar

http://www.postnuke.org/ PostNuke

known and popular ... and skipped. I do not want a CMS from people who are not able to create an understandable, accessible and navigable website... Details = the accessibility test story: I want to try the thing - where is "download" from the title page? [answer is "under pnNews"...] Where is the installation manual? Not in the distro... Maybe in pnSupport, huh! the first article there is "PostNuke? tutorial in Indonesian language", eh..., no link in pnSupport Main Menu either (why do they call it "support"?)... Back to title page...wait a minute, how do I get back? the "Postnuke" logo is not clickable... aha, see the tiny tiny pnNavigator?... Finally I found the installation manual under FAQ, heavy with the "click here" syndrome and - surprise - on an external website... That was the give-up point for me.

Background note: how I got to this eval

Having authored HTML in vi for years (started in ca 1995), I learned the benefits of good editors like dreamweaver and have used them for about 5 years now. But (1) the web should be editable in itself [todo: find link to supporting docs from TBL], (2) dreamweaver grows in features, weight, startup time, consumed screen space etc, and yet 95% of time I use it just as a WYSIWYG editor for simple markup, (3) for other web content authors, which I co-operate with, dreamweaver and similar are a bit too complicated -- all they need is just to put pieces of information on the web.

So I tried WikiWiki?, and I like it for its near-purity of hypertext idea implementation, but (1) it is a flat system, not a hierarchy, and most websites are not flat, (2) it mostly promotes open access to the authored content (for a good reason), but sometimes you really need only those responsible for the content to have write access.

The project was initiated by the needs of my websites and the http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/ How to evaluate a content management system paper by http://www.steptwo.com.au/ Step Two designs.

Prerequisites and Standpoint of the Evaluation

Before reading the results, please have a look at the following so that you know what to expect:

• EvalCMSWebsites Types of websites? considered for the evaluation, i.e. what kind of web structures I'd like the CMS to support, were primarily company/departmental presentation with tree organization and mostly "permanent" content;
• EvalCMSCriteria Evaluation criteria? used to rank the CMSes? include ease of installation and use, content structuring and templating system, as well as quality of generated output and avoidance of simplification of website structure;
• LAMP(Linux-Apache-MySql?-PHP) platform with open source availability was a must-have feature.

This approach resulted in a pre-selection of some CMS systems, and the ranking of the evaluated ones as shown just below.

Background note: how I got to this eval

Having authored HTML in {{vi}} for years (started in ca 1995), I learned the benefits of good editors like {{dreamweaver}} and have used them for about 5 years now. But (1) the web should be editable in itself [todo: find link to supporting docs from TBL], (2) dreamweaver grows in features, weight, startup time, consumed screen space etc, and yet 95% of time I use it just as a WYSIWYG editor for simple markup, (3) for other web content authors, which I co-operate with, dreamweaver and similar are a bit too complicated -- all they need is just to put pieces of information on the web.

So I tried WikiWiki?, and I like it for its near-purity of hypertext idea implementation, but (1) it is a flat system, not a hierarchy, and most websites are not flat, (2) it mostly promotes open access to the authored content (for a good reason), but sometimes you really need only those responsible for the content to have write access.

The CMSes? Dissected (The Results)

So far (9/2004), I have had a deep look at the following (a-z order): Mambo, PostNuke, Textpattern. Yet to come are: Drupal, WordPress, type3, XOOPS.

Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/)

a strong workhorse, esp. when beefed up with plug-ins; see MamboEvaluation

:Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com/: simple effective solution for smaller (mainly personal) sites; see TextpatternEvaluation.

Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/)

TBD; see DrupalEvaluation.

Below the Bar

PostNuke (http://www.postnuke.org/) -- known and popular ... which I skipped

Summary - I do not want a CMS from people who are not able to create an understandable, accessible and navigable website... Details = the accessibility test story: I want to try the thing - where is "download" from the title page? [answer is "under pnNews"...] Where is the installation manual? Not in the distro... Maybe in pnSupport, huh! the first article there is "PostNuke? tutorial in Indonesian language", eh..., no link in pnSupport Main Menu either (why do they call it "support"?)... Back to title page...wait a minute, how do I get back? the "Postnuke" logo is not clickable... aha, see the tiny tiny pnNavigator?... Finally I found the installation manual under FAQ, heavy with the "click here" syndrome and - surprise - on an external website... That was the give-up point for me.)

An Evaluation of Selected Open Source CMS Systems

Přemek, April 2004

For some of my websites, I need a CMS (content management system). This page summarises my experiences and feelings about those that I have come across and maybe even thoroughly evaluated.

The project was initiated by the needs of my websites (departmental presentation and personal website types of sites) and the http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/ How to evaluate a content management system paper by http://www.steptwo.com.au/ Step Two designs.

Types of websites

The types of sites that drove the evaluation are, ordered by scale:

1. personal (personal or family website) -- mostly simple hierarchical structure with 1-2 levels, mix of static and standard dynamic content (e.g. image gallery) + blog; one or two content authors with access to the whole website.
2. community -- mostly simple hierarchical structure with 1-2 levels, some static content, some blogging, plus standard dynamic content (file uploads/sharing, polls, discussions, galleries); includes intranet accessible only for a defined set of users, one or two editors + a bunch of content authors.
3. news (news site, webzine) -- mostly simple hierarchical structure with 1-2 levels, frequently updated content consisting of multiple articles in each node of the hierarchy, article comments and rating, additional standard dynamic content (galleries, polls, forums, ...); one or two editors + a bunch of article authors.
4. shop (web shop) -- quite rich hierarchical structure with many levels, a bit of static contents, some standard dynamic content (search, news), plus heavy use of domain specific dynamically generated + updated contents, may include added functionality for registered set of users; requires backend accessible only for a defined set of users, one or two content editors/managers.
5. company (SME company or departmental presentation) -- quite rich hierarchical structure with 2-3 levels, a lot of static contents that needs to be updated at times, but otherwise should not move or change very often, some standard dynamic content (polls, news), plus quite a lot of domain specific dynamically generated + updated contents, may include shop and news; includes intranet accessible only for a defined set of users, half a dozen of content authors/managers with responsibilities for (mostly disjoint) parts of the website.

Criteria for Evaluation (aka EvalCMSCriteria)

As a general approach to the evaluation, I firmly believe the key of the web (as information repository) are sites with permanent contents, not quick-publish-and-disappear blogs or shops.

For that kind of website, one needs the following generic structure: tree hierarchical organization, the first level nodes are "sections", each section has an index page (intro text, configurable contents) plus a set of content pages (static or dynamically generated content) inter-linked via their contents (hypertext, remember that?). The node's index page is static content, not a concat of all section's pages like in a blog. The content pages can have content and structure either static, blog/articles based, or application-specific.

This approach resulted in a pre-selection of some CMS systems, and EvalCMSCriteria a set of criteria? used in their evaluation. The pre-selection primarily involved the LAMP(Linux-Apache-MySql?-PHP) platform, open source availability, and avoidance of simplification of website structure.

The CMSes? Dissected (aka The Results)

So far, I have had a deep look at the following (a-z order): Mambo, !PostNuke?, Textpattern. Yet to come are: Drupal, WordPress?, type3, XOOPS. The summary of the evaluation is the expression of suitability for the above site types; for each, scale is [useless/twisted/partly/quite-well/perfect-fit/overkill] + comments on plug-ins or changes necessary to get to that level:

Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/)

Summary: TBD. Details: DrupalEvaluation.

Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/) -- a strong workhorse, esp. when beefed up with plug-ins

Summary: personal [perfect-fit/overkill], community [perfect-fit], news [quite-well], shop [partly], company [quite-well]. Details: MamboEvaluation.

!PostNuke? (http://www.postnuke.org/) -- known and popular ... which I skipped

Summary - I do not want a CMS from people who are not able to create an understandable, accessible and navigable website... Details = the accessibility test story: I want to try the thing - where is "download" from the title page? [answer is "under {{pnNews}}"...] Where is the installation manual? Not in the distro... Maybe in {{pnSupport}}, huh! the first article there is "PostNuke? tutorial in Indonesian language", eh..., no link in {{pnSupport}} Main Menu either (why do they call it "support"?)... Back to title page...wait a minute, how do I get back? the "Postnuke" logo is not clickable... aha, see the tiny tiny {{pnNavigator}}?... Finally I found the installation manual under FAQ, heavy with the "click here" syndrome and - surprise - on an external website... That was the give-up point for me.)

Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com/ -- simple effective solution for smaller (mainly personal) sites

Summary: personal [quite-well], community [quite-well], news [quite-well], shop [partly], company [partly]. Details: TextpatternEvaluation.

Background note: how I got to this eval

Having authored HTML in {{vi}} for years (started in ca 1995), I learned the benefits of good editors like {{dreamweaver}} and have used them for about 5 years now. But (1) the web should be editable in itself [todo: find link to supporting docs from TBL], (2) dreamweaver grows in features, weight, startup time, consumed screen space etc, and yet 95% of time I use it just as a WYSIWYG editor for simple markup, (3) for other web content authors, which I co-operate with, dreamweaver and similar are a bit too complicated -- all they need is just to put pieces of information on the web.

So I tried WikiWiki?, and I like it for its near-purity of hypertext idea implementation, but (1) it is a flat system, not a hierarchy, and most websites are not flat, (2) it mostly promotes open access to the authored content (for a good reason), but sometimes you really need only those responsible for the content to have write access.

Comments

Feel free to put your comments to this evaluation below; please date and sign them. Thanks, Přemek.