Re: [OSCOM] New whitepaper on open source CMS

Thanks for the work, Seth.  I typically like to assess
how vibrant the community is around a product, when
helping an organization and I'm glad that you made
that a a key factor in your evaluation process.  I
think your work on such a broad set of tools should be
useful to others.

After reading your assessment, I'm left with the same
feeling that I went into it with - that if an
organization is looking for a system that does
everything (structured content, well-defined
workflows, versioning, functional blogs, forums,
syndication, etc.) there is no tool that does all of
that completely the way we'd like.  That we probably
have to live with shortcomings here or there, augment
with custom modules, or integrate a best of breed
solution (combining multiple tools - the best for each
function.)  This is true for commercial tools as well.

I think that some tools are closer than others at
offering the kitchen sink, of course, especially those
with a large inventory of add-on modules to address
those needs if they aren't in a product's core.

I know that there are hundreds of tools out there, but
since you pointed out a few of the best-of-breed tools
in each of the areas you focused on (i.e., phpBB is
strong on forum functionality, Twiki and MediaWiki are
strong on wiki features - but that's about all they
do), I'm somewhat surprised to not see WordPress
reviewed.  It might not handle workflow, versioning,
etc., niether do some of the tools you reviewed, and
yet WordPress is even more of a 'killer app', I
believe.  Note:  I'm not a WordPress developer, just
user.

I also think that there needs to be more refinement in
what 'we in the industry' refer to as 'Content
Management Systems'.  If phpBB, WordPress, or Twiki
are CMS tools, then perhaps so is my email client and
the 'system' I use to store important emails into
folders.  Sure, at some level this is true, but
shouldn't there be some base level of functionality
before we call something a Content Management
'System'?

I think that a forum tool is a forum tool, that a page
publishing tool is just that, that a blog tool like
JRoller is just that - and not a CMS.  This isn't a
criticism on you or the whitepaper, but on the
vernacular we throw around in discussions.  By
referring to such feature-specific tools, we're really
confusing people about what a CMS is.  This is
probably for a different thread, but it's something to
consider I think.

This ambiguity is what causes a client to say they
think they need a CMS, when they're really just
looking for a weblog - they don't need workflow,
structured content types, etc.  All of these web-based
feature-specific tools (forum, blog, RSS/syndication,
podcasting, del.icio.us tagging, etc.) are
applications or application modules that are on the
website delivery or website audience interaction side
of things, and other than providing a means to
moderate and sometimes archive, are involved very
little in the 'management' of content (versioning,
permissions, checkin/checkout, etc.).

Am I concentrating too much on semantics?  I
personally think we could benefit from defining what a
CMS is versus tools that allow users to simply
modify/contribute content (Are Notepad and an FTP
client a CMS?)  What do others think on this?

Also, the phpBB summary table seems to have
information from the Alfresco summary that you likely
want to edit away.

Thanks again for the nice work, and sorry for the
tangent,

Ken Wasetis
[email protected]


P.S.  Good point on Wikis and being sure you trust
your contribiting audience - I went to the archived
pages of the 2005 O'Reilly Conference and instead of
seeing last year's materials was presented with links
to adult sites instead.  Obviously, besides workflow
and moderation 'during' the content publishing
process, some management of archived content must be
done as well.  In O'Reilly's case, the conference wiki
should have had editing disabled at some point, or it
needs to be continually monitored.

This is a good illustration of why it's important to
set that metadata (in this case aneExpiration date) on
your content!  ;)

--- Seth Gottlieb <[email protected]> wrote:

> I just published a whitepaper that talks about
> selecting an open source 
> CMS and summarizes 15 open source CMS projects.   My
> blog has a summary 
> and a link that will not ask you to register.
> 
>
http://contenthere.blogspot.com/2006/01/content-management-problems-and-open.html
> 
> Feedback is welcome.
> 
> --Seth
> 
> -- 
> Seth Gottlieb
> Optaros, Inc.
> 60 Canal Street
> Boston, MA 02114
> e: [email protected]
> v: 617.227.1855 ext. 107
> f: 617.227.1755
> m: 617.852.2956 
> b: http://contenthere.blogspot.com
> 
> 
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