Re: Standard list of WCMS features

Ilkka Huotari wrote:
>>Same here. We did a ton of research, finally purchased a product, and
> 
> threw
> 
>>it away after 2 weeks of use. We're now building our own system with half
>>the features, but the features it will have will work. ;o)
> 
> 
> It amazes me that still these days companies are building their own CMSs
> from scratch. That's risky business too, it may become costy if something
> goes wrong... Well, maybe it's less risky that the days of C/C++ when you
> could chase memory leak errors for months. But still,isn't there a suitable
> CMS available with which you could start from?

Taking a CMS application and tearing it down isn't necessarily faster or 
safer than taking a good toolkit and building it up into a CMS.

For any web application there exists a definition of "CMS" that 
encompasses that application.  With such fuzzy terminology, and such an 
expansive domain, it's all too easy to think that features are 
transferable, when perhaps they are not.  All the while, there are 
features like "simplicity", "understandability", and "maintainability" 
that are the inverse of all other features -- these are features that 
are compromised whenever you add other features.

> What's wrong with a tool like Plone with which you are supposed to be able
> to do anything?

If it's that general, then it's just a development platform.  Is it the 
right development platform for you?  Does it offer features which you 
can leverage in your own development?  Maybe or maybe not.  Code is a 
liability -- and not just in-house code, but any code.  Just because 
someone else wrote the code doesn't mean that you can ignore that 
liability (especially in an open source product).

   Ian