Off the shelp CMS w/o the layout?

[Peter Becker-6]

Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
layout?  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our
site using Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work
for the business to create and update content but not get in the way of
our page design/implementation, code promotion and environment
management.  Any guidance here is greatly appreciated

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[Mitch Pirtle]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...> wrote:
> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do layout?
>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
> guidance here is greatly appreciated

Check out silverstripe, which might do what you are looking for. It
takes a page-centric design attitude which definitely sits well with
designers.

http://www.silverstripe.org/

-- Mitch
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[inforequest]

Mitch Pirtle mitch.pirtle-at-gmail.com |nyphp MAIN ONE dev/internal
group use| wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...> wrote:
>  
>> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do layout?
>>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
>> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
>> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
>> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
>> guidance here is greatly appreciated
>>    
>
> Check out silverstripe, which might do what you are looking for. It
> takes a page-centric design attitude which definitely sits well with
> designers.
>
> http://www.silverstripe.org/
>
> -- Mitch

I always look at Mitch's recommendations, so I just dl'd and installed
Silverlight and put up a test site. Nice and easy. But... sadly, not SEO
compatible out of the box, and not simple to fix.

The immediate core issue for me is the way it parses the URL on a slash...

Practically speaking,  this causes duplicate content issues for
spidering search engines e.g. the aboutus page is accessible at
www.example.com/aboutus/ but also resolves at
www.example.com/aboutus/whatever
and www.example.com/aboutus/whatever/whatever/

You don't get a 404 until you go three slashes out... chalk it up to the
sapphire framework's front controller.

I'm looking to see if I can clarify this for the sapphire dev forum, or
if it has been addressed already in the roadmap....

-=john






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[Ajai Khattri]

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Peter Becker wrote:

> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
> layout?  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our
> site using Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work
> for the business to create and update content but not get in the way of
> our page design/implementation, code promotion and environment
> management.  Any guidance here is greatly appreciated

Maybe Steer CMS http://www.steercms-project.org/

???

--
Aj.

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[PHProx]

While not technically a CMS, the wiki component in the Vork framework
(http://www.Vork.us) provides full control over the layout and can be
utilized as a basic CMS to create/edit/remove pages, log/revert changes and
enter data in either a WYSIWYG-textbox or standard textarea with WYSIWYG
live-preview. Vork tools all output valid XHTML 1.1, including the WYSIWYG
tools.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Becker" <peterbsemail@...>
To: <talk@...>
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:26 PM
Subject: [nyphp-talk] Off the shelp CMS w/o the layout?

> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
> layout?  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site
> using Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for
> the business to create and update content but not get in the way of our
> page design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.
> Any guidance here is greatly appreciated
>
> _______________________________________________
> New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
> http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation 

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[Mitch Pirtle]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:41 PM, inforequest <1j0lkq002@...> wrote:

> Mitch Pirtle mitch.pirtle-at-gmail.com |nyphp MAIN ONE dev/internal group
> use| wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
>>> layout?
>>>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
>>> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
>>> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
>>> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
>>> guidance here is greatly appreciated
>>>
>>
>> Check out silverstripe, which might do what you are looking for. It
>> takes a page-centric design attitude which definitely sits well with
>> designers.
>>
>> http://www.silverstripe.org/
>>
>> -- Mitch
>
> I always look at Mitch's recommendations, so I just dl'd and installed
> Silverlight and put up a test site. Nice and easy. But... sadly, not SEO
> compatible out of the box, and not simple to fix.
>
> The immediate core issue for me is the way it parses the URL on a slash...
>
> Practically speaking,  this causes duplicate content issues for spidering
> search engines e.g. the aboutus page is accessible at
> www.example.com/aboutus/ but also resolves at
> www.example.com/aboutus/whatever
> and www.example.com/aboutus/whatever/whatever/
>
> You don't get a 404 until you go three slashes out... chalk it up to the
> sapphire framework's front controller.
>
> I'm looking to see if I can clarify this for the sapphire dev forum, or if
> it has been addressed already in the roadmap....

Would be cool if you flagged them about it - chances are it is
something they could fix, if they understood it to be a problem.

    http://open.silverstripe.org/

-- Mitch
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[Edgar Reyes]

You can try http://modxcms.com/ 

ER

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces@... [mailto:talk-bounces@...] On
Behalf Of Mitch Pirtle
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:41 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nyphp-talk] Off the shelp CMS w/o the layout?

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:41 PM, inforequest <1j0lkq002@...>
wrote:

> Mitch Pirtle mitch.pirtle-at-gmail.com |nyphp MAIN ONE dev/internal group
> use| wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
>>> layout?
>>>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
>>> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
>>> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
>>> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
>>> guidance here is greatly appreciated
>>>
>>
>> Check out silverstripe, which might do what you are looking for. It
>> takes a page-centric design attitude which definitely sits well with
>> designers.
>>
>> http://www.silverstripe.org/
>>
>> -- Mitch
>
> I always look at Mitch's recommendations, so I just dl'd and installed
> Silverlight and put up a test site. Nice and easy. But... sadly, not SEO
> compatible out of the box, and not simple to fix.
>
> The immediate core issue for me is the way it parses the URL on a slash...
>
> Practically speaking,  this causes duplicate content issues for spidering
> search engines e.g. the aboutus page is accessible at
> www.example.com/aboutus/ but also resolves at
> www.example.com/aboutus/whatever
> and www.example.com/aboutus/whatever/whatever/
>
> You don't get a 404 until you go three slashes out... chalk it up to the
> sapphire framework's front controller.
>
> I'm looking to see if I can clarify this for the sapphire dev forum, or if
> it has been addressed already in the roadmap....

Would be cool if you flagged them about it - chances are it is
something they could fix, if they understood it to be a problem.

    http://open.silverstripe.org/

-- Mitch
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[David A. Roth]

Hi Peter.

I see you've gotten responses suggesting other CMS'es to use. I'm most
familiar with Joomla for a CMS. When it comes to having non-technical
people be able to update their own content, Joomla is very good in
that aspect I think. With Joomla you can write modules and prevent
non-technical users from changing it and keep it out of their way
entirely. There are admin pages and templates for the design to make
things easier for the programmer. I'm asking to increase my
understanding of the requirement. How is the layout in a CMS an
obstacle? I have seen mention of using only the Joomla framework
itself, but if you have what sounds like a need for non-technical
people to manage their own content it sounds like Joomla as a CMS
already has that available.

David Roth

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...> wrote:
> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do layout?
>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
> guidance here is greatly appreciated
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[inforequest]

Mitch Pirtle mitch.pirtle-at-gmail.com |nyphp MAIN ONE dev/internal
group use| wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:41 PM, inforequest <1j0lkq002@...> wrote:
>  
>> Mitch Pirtle mitch.pirtle-at-gmail.com |nyphp MAIN ONE dev/internal group
>> use| wrote:
>>    
>>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>> Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
>>>> layout?
>>>>  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of our site using
>>>> Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work for the
>>>> business to create and update content but not get in the way of our page
>>>> design/implementation, code promotion and environment management.  Any
>>>> guidance here is greatly appreciated
>>>>
>>>>        
>>> Check out silverstripe, which might do what you are looking for. It
>>> takes a page-centric design attitude which definitely sits well with
>>> designers.
>>>
>>> http://www.silverstripe.org/
>>>
>>> -- Mitch
>>>      
>> I always look at Mitch's recommendations, so I just dl'd and installed
>> Silverlight and put up a test site. Nice and easy. But... sadly, not SEO
>> compatible out of the box, and not simple to fix.
>>
>> The immediate core issue for me is the way it parses the URL on a slash...
>>
>> Practically speaking,  this causes duplicate content issues for spidering
>> search engines e.g. the aboutus page is accessible at
>> www.example.com/aboutus/ but also resolves at
>> www.example.com/aboutus/whatever
>> and www.example.com/aboutus/whatever/whatever/
>>
>> You don't get a 404 until you go three slashes out... chalk it up to the
>> sapphire framework's front controller.
>>
>> I'm looking to see if I can clarify this for the sapphire dev forum, or if
>> it has been addressed already in the roadmap....
>>    
>
> Would be cool if you flagged them about it - chances are it is
> something they could fix, if they understood it to be a problem.
>
>     http://open.silverstripe.org/
>
> -- Mitch
>  

yes thanks for the link.. put it on my do list after this crushing week
is over. I prefer to take time to find a nice way to participate, so I
don't come across as a critical SEO Dbag ;-)
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[Mitch Pirtle]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:57 PM, inforequest <1j0lkq002@...> wrote:
>
> yes thanks for the link.. put it on my do list after this crushing week is
> over. I prefer to take time to find a nice way to participate, so I don't
> come across as a critical SEO Dbag ;-)

*spacemonkey slaps hand over mouth

Just giving you a hard time John ;-)

Actually I chose to skip my usual Joomla pitch for this specific case,
primarily due to the need to implement a vast assortment of core
output overrides and additional extensions needed for proper META and
so on...

However I am biased, and would always be happy to see yet another
website using Joomla!

-- Mitch
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[Peter Becker-6]

OK, So thank you so much for the input, but now here's the funny part Mitch....the first prototype site that we somewhat inherited and are completely redoing from scratch (nearly), used a combination of Joomla and PHP :-))  This was less to get away from anything in particular, just that we know a lot more about what we need to do now and the business is smart enough to let us do the right thing (so rare these days). 

There are some great things about Joomla, but the site implementation felt somewhat schizophrenic in that there was the Joomla half and the PHP half.  I'm sure there's better ways to integrate between the two than was done, but we had no deep expertise in Joomla and managing the site between/across dev, staging, preprod and prod, became quite onerous with separate instances of Joomla on dev, preprod and prod.  Felt almost like it was defeating the whole purpose of a CMS.

As we're at the beginning stages of spec'ing out the new site, nothing is off the table, and maybe there is a clean way to integrate Joomla into Zend (and this is a consideration), but it seems like a lot of overhead for things we just don't need....ergo trying to do a more clean break between the style (handled through Zend) and the content (handled through ?).  The challenge with most of the tools/frameworks out there is that they want to make building a site as easy as possible which usually means mashing the 2 together.  But there always seems to be that point of diminishing returns where you start spending more time on the work arounds than you ever saved in the beginning - ahh the trade-offs.

Anyway - really appreciate the input and the team here had not heard of the other suggestions that were made, but are now looking at and evaluating.  Thank you, this really is a great group and think I (or my team) may have even met some of you at Code Works 09 in Manhattan.  We're going to try and get down to the next local meeting if we can (we're in CT).

Peter

Mitch Pirtle wrote:

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:57 PM, inforequest 1j0lkq002@... wrote:
  

yes thanks for the link.. put it on my do list after this crushing week is
over. I prefer to take time to find a nice way to participate, so I don't
come across as a critical SEO Dbag ;-)
    

*spacemonkey slaps hand over mouth

Just giving you a hard time John ;-)

Actually I chose to skip my usual Joomla pitch for this specific case,
primarily due to the need to implement a vast assortment of core
output overrides and additional extensions needed for proper META and
so on...

However I am biased, and would always be happy to see yet another
website using Joomla!

-- Mitch
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[Mitch Pirtle]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Peter Becker <peterbsemail@...> wrote:

> OK, So thank you so much for the input, but now here's the funny part
> Mitch....the first prototype site that we somewhat inherited and are
> completely redoing from scratch (nearly), used a combination of Joomla and
> PHP :-))  This was less to get away from anything in particular, just that
> we know a lot more about what we need to do now and the business is smart
> enough to let us do the right thing (so rare these days).
>
> There are some great things about Joomla, but the site implementation felt
> somewhat schizophrenic in that there was the Joomla half and the PHP half.
> I'm sure there's better ways to integrate between the two than was done, but
> we had no deep expertise in Joomla and managing the site between/across dev,
> staging, preprod and prod, became quite onerous with separate instances of
> Joomla on dev, preprod and prod.  Felt almost like it was defeating the
> whole purpose of a CMS.
>
> As we're at the beginning stages of spec'ing out the new site, nothing is
> off the table, and maybe there is a clean way to integrate Joomla into Zend
> (and this is a consideration), but it seems like a lot of overhead for
> things we just don't need....ergo trying to do a more clean break between
> the style (handled through Zend) and the content (handled through ?).  The
> challenge with most of the tools/frameworks out there is that they want to
> make building a site as easy as possible which usually means mashing the 2
> together.  But there always seems to be that point of diminishing returns
> where you start spending more time on the work arounds than you ever saved
> in the beginning - ahh the trade-offs.
>
> Anyway - really appreciate the input and the team here had not heard of the
> other suggestions that were made, but are now looking at and evaluating.
> Thank you, this really is a great group and think I (or my team) may have
> even met some of you at Code Works 09 in Manhattan.  We're going to try and
> get down to the next local meeting if we can (we're in CT).

What a small world - I was a morning speaker and talked a little about
Dojo and Thin Server Architecture; and might have met some of you
while hanging out...

As always, the devil's in the details. You have to balance the
advantage of having a CMS that gets love from an active community
(free updates and maintenance) versus the flexibility of a do it
yourself approach (which would call rather for a framework like Zend
or KohanaPHP).

Joomla is a great platform, as long as what you are doing can be done
within Joomla. You start to lose the benefits of a full platform when
you start coding outside of it, which you obviously noticed ;-)

To take advantage of a full platform like Joomla you do need to
approach your implementation the Joomla Way(TM), otherwise consider
eschewing a CMS and go one level lower to a glue framework that gives
you the flexibility you need.

-- Mitch
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[Kristina Anderson]

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Becker" <peterbsemail@...>
> To: <talk@...>
> Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:26 PM
> Subject: [nyphp-talk] Off the shelp CMS w/o the layout?
>
>
> > Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
> > layout?  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of

our site
> > using Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work
for
> > the business to create and update content but not get in the way of
our
> > page design/implementation, code promotion and environment
management.
> > Any guidance here is greatly appreciated
> >
>

I just started on a new project, redoing a CMS for a weekly magazine's
website, and we are currently doing a proof-of-concept for an
architecture consisting of Silverstripe CMS, solely for the back end
data entry/CMS functions, and CakePHP for the presentation layer (to
avoid the SEO issues with Silverstripe).  Both frameworks would be
hitting the same database which would be defined and modified within
the Silverstripe data class code.

I will keep everyone posted on how this goes.  

Kristina
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[edward potter]

ummm, from my experience, in the end it is REALLY easy to just write your own CMS. You can trash 98% of what the bloated CMS packages out there give your. You just don't need it. It's so overkill.

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Kristina Anderson <ka@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Becker" <peterbsemail@...>
> To: <talk@...>
> Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:26 PM
> Subject: [nyphp-talk] Off the shelp CMS w/o the layout?
>
>
> > Is there even such a thing as an off-the-shelf CMS that does NOT do
> > layout?  We are just beginning to design and spec the next rev of
our site
> > using Zend Framework.  We're looking for a something that will work
for
> > the business to create and update content but not get in the way of
our
> > page design/implementation, code promotion and environment
management.
> > Any guidance here is greatly appreciated
> >
>

I just started on a new project, redoing a CMS for a weekly magazine's
website, and we are currently doing a proof-of-concept for an
architecture consisting of Silverstripe CMS, solely for the back end
data entry/CMS functions, and CakePHP for the presentation layer (to
avoid the SEO issues with Silverstripe).  Both frameworks would be
hitting the same database which would be defined and modified within
the Silverstripe data class code.

I will keep everyone posted on how this goes.

Kristina
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[Kristina Anderson]

>
> ummm, from my experience, in the end it is REALLY easy to just write
your
> own CMS. You can trash 98% of what the bloated CMS packages out there
give
> your. You just don't need it. It's so overkill.
>
>
>

The ease of doing it from scratch varies depending on the complexity of
both the site's front end, and the internal editorial/content approval
processes that need to be provided, and of course as usual you have IT
managers who are convinced that "doing it with frameworks" will save
tons of time and money.

I've also had the experience of debugging and stabilizing some
extremely poorly designed written-from-scratch PHP CMSes which lacked
basic stuff like proper edit-mode handling and whose UIs were almost
impossible for the end-users to understand...

So while rolling your own CMS is certainly a viable option, these
frameworks offer a lot of advantages even if they are somewhat bloated
with idiotic features.  I'm also in a position where this architecture
was "decided upon" by persons with no actual experience doing things
this way...which is where the proof-of-concept comes in.  We may do a
180 if required.

Kristina
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[Joey Derrico]

Contrary to popular belief of many there is no perfect solutions. Other then my blog (wordpress) I have never used a non custom CMS. However, despite the potential annoyances/problems of CMS (and frameworks) there is one big advantage normally that I can see...the communities that form around them which have people who are (normally) willing to help in some fashion.



Kristina Anderson wrote:

ummm, from my experience, in the end it is REALLY easy to just write 
    

your
  

own CMS. You can trash 98% of what the bloated CMS packages out there 
    

give
  

your. You just don't need it. It's so overkill.



    

The ease of doing it from scratch varies depending on the complexity of 
both the site's front end, and the internal editorial/content approval 
processes that need to be provided, and of course as usual you have IT 
managers who are convinced that "doing it with frameworks" will save 
tons of time and money.

I've also had the experience of debugging and stabilizing some 
extremely poorly designed written-from-scratch PHP CMSes which lacked 
basic stuff like proper edit-mode handling and whose UIs were almost 
impossible for the end-users to understand...

So while rolling your own CMS is certainly a viable option, these 
frameworks offer a lot of advantages even if they are somewhat bloated 
with idiotic features.  I'm also in a position where this architecture 
was "decided upon" by persons with no actual experience doing things 
this way...which is where the proof-of-concept comes in.  We may do a 
180 if required.

Kristina
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[webmaster-314]

Hello Joey,

Sunday, October 25, 2009, 12:21:05 PM, you wrote:

However, despite the potential annoyances/problems of CMS (and frameworks) there is one big advantage normally that I can see...the communities that form around them which have people who are (normally) willing to help in some fashion.

I totally agree with this one. I think all the major CMS / Frameworks have huge communities with people who are willing to lend advice and assistance though I have noticed that most have no shortage of pedantic core developers who are more than happy to tell you how stupid your ideas are or like you often get from Micro$, technically and perfectly correct and totally useless answers, LOL. 



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[Peter Becker-6]

OK, so this last conversation begins to touch on the one I've had with my development team.  I know how easy it is for programmers (I'm more like a lowly PM / IT director) to claim that there's not too much to just writing your own, and then watch as revs get burned debugging and getting to the point of real usability by anyone but someone that knows all the quirks (undocumented functions in some lingo, hehe).  And that's about when I have to ask whether the time spent writing a CMS tool actually moves our business forward (part of our core competency) or not.  And here the answer is usually no.

In summary I've got the following list below to check out (thank you again), and Mitch, thank you for your candor as I know how "religious" some folks can get over their technology of choice, particularly if it's theirs.
 
And one last question to Kristina, why CakePHP and not Zend?  Is it that your team already knows Cake or is their some technical preference?

http://www.silverstripe.com/

http://modxcms.com/ 

http://www.Vork.us

http://www.steercms-project.org/

Kristina Anderson wrote:

ummm, from my experience, in the end it is REALLY easy to just write 
    

your
  

own CMS. You can trash 98% of what the bloated CMS packages out there 
    

give
  

your. You just don't need it. It's so overkill.



    

The ease of doing it from scratch varies depending on the complexity of 
both the site's front end, and the internal editorial/content approval 
processes that need to be provided, and of course as usual you have IT 
managers who are convinced that "doing it with frameworks" will save 
tons of time and money.

I've also had the experience of debugging and stabilizing some 
extremely poorly designed written-from-scratch PHP CMSes which lacked 
basic stuff like proper edit-mode handling and whose UIs were almost 
impossible for the end-users to understand...

So while rolling your own CMS is certainly a viable option, these 
frameworks offer a lot of advantages even if they are somewhat bloated 
with idiotic features.  I'm also in a position where this architecture 
was "decided upon" by persons with no actual experience doing things 
this way...which is where the proof-of-concept comes in.  We may do a 
180 if required.

Kristina
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[Ajai Khattri]

On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Peter Becker wrote:

> And one last question to Kristina, why CakePHP and not Zend?  Is it that
> your team already knows Cake or is their some technical preference?

For me, Zend is less framework and more like a library, so its at a lower
level than many frameworks.


--
A

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[Kristina Anderson]

> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> > And one last question to Kristina, why CakePHP and not Zend?  Is
it that
> > your team already knows Cake or is their some technical preference?
>
> For me, Zend is less framework and more like a library, so its at a
lower
> level than many frameworks.
>
>
> --
> A
>
Peter, I asked and the answer I got was that "we already have a lot of
code from the last guy in Cake".....

i.e., there isn't a really good reason, it just is the way it
is...well we'll see if the proof-of-concept pans out...

There seem to be concerns that the database-access classes in Cake
aren't agnostic enough to work with Silverstripe's database, but I
think there are workarounds that will be effective.  (Silverstripe
rebuilds its database based on enumerations of fields in the data
classes and has its own naming conventions.)

Kristina
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