Re: CMS Site Structures

Hi Julian,

It used to be pretty much every CMS had different interfaces for 
management and presentation.  However, over the past couple of years, 
more and more systems have adopted an "in-site editing model" where 
authenticated users with sufficient permissions could edit a site as 
they browsed it.  This solves a lot of problems in usability because 
users  can review a whole site and make corrections on the fly.  There 
was no need to jump off to a "preview" area.  However, this model also 
introduces several limitations:

First of all, in-site editing makes the presentation layer code more 
complex.  So if you want to change the look of your site, you will have 
to sort through more code.  Secondly, in-site editing creates tight 
coupling between the management of content and the presentation of 
content.  This tight coupling makes it difficult to substitute a 
component of the system.  For example, it is difficult to swap out the 
presentation tier with something else.  Tight coupling makes content 
reuse problematic because content is created in the context of a page 
and therefore more difficult to re-purpose.  Thirdly, workflow and 
approvals can sometimes get confusing because it is difficult to convey 
the state of an asset.  If an author makes a change, is it live?  Who 
else can see it?  What steps need to be taken to publish?

There may also scalability considerations.  If you are running a high 
traffic site, you may want to deploy your site across multiple servers 
for load balancing.  The data model behind your presentation system may 
also be more optimized for rapid reads (de-normalized and containing 
only "live" content") than your management system (normalized and 
versioned).

I hope this is helpful.  Let me know if you want to discuss more.

--Seth

Julian Voelcker wrote:

>I am currently re-developing my home grown ASP.Net based CMS 
>application and am debating changing the way that I structure the admin 
>system.
>
>In the past I have used two sites, one for displaying the content and 
>then another using a different URL for the content administration, 
>however there are some drawback relating the file uploading/handling.
>
>I am now considering moving the administration site into a sub 
>directory of the main site, which will get over some of the drawbacks, 
>but could present other issues.
>
>How do most other CMS applications structure their sites.
>
>
>Any pointers or views would be appreciate.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Julian Voelcker
>
>
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