Re: High Volume Open Source CMS Sites

J Graham Zahoruiko wrote:
> I think that "in-context" "edit this page" editing is completely the WRONG
> approach!
> 
> While browsing and/or searching a staging or production site to find the
> desired content to edit has significant ease-of-use and productivity value,
> subsequently editing the content within that context, however, has many
> pitfalls and false economies.

I agree. We (http://livestoryboard.com) use staging environments like so:

* editorial/dev - this is where editing occurs, pages/folders are 
created/ordered/edited, content is assigned to folders/pages, 
generations are created, etc...

<optional>
   * qa - a place to assure the quality of the generation

   * cert - a place a certified generation can live
</optional>

* live - the live site. This could be on our servers or the client's.

These could all be on the same or different machines depending on the 
needs. Most clients do not use qa or cert. The XML/XSL transformations 
occur on the editorial/dev vhost. That is promoted (copied) to next 
stage, for example qa. Once quality has been assured, the qa generation 
is copied to cert. cert is a place where there should only be a valid 
version of the site, which can be picked up or copied to live.

For simplicity, a directory structure that lives on the same machine 
would look like:

- projectName
   |- work: unique client assets* necessary to build/manage the site
   |- dev.domain.com
   |- qa.domain.com
   |- cert.domain.com
   |- domain.com

I make note of 'unique client assets' because, since we are an ASP CMS, 
the client can fallback to our defaults in a number of these, usually 
XSL they do not need to touch. Any of the *.domain.com vhosts could be 
deleted. Everything necessary to generate the site (including images, 
CSS, etc) lives under the work directory.


> 
> These pitfalls / drawbacks include:
> 
> - In a properly implemented CMS, a viewable page on a Web site may actually
> contain many content assets. A single asset may be reused many times on a
> Web site. 

yes. I am surprised how many CMSes do not have the concept of multiple 
content pieces on one page. Usually these tend to be the ones offering 
wysiwyg HTML editing. We offer XML Schema validated, ~wysiwyg~ XML 
editing. Of course there is not such a thing as wysiwyg XML editing 
because content is separated from presentation, but more often than not 
clients like to see their content as it will look when it is in its live 
environment (usually the web).

<snip why="further agreement"/>

best,
-Rob
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