Plone and its competition: choosing a CMS - Martin Aspeli - 0 views
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Plone and its competition: choosing a CMS
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Martin Aspeli
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Jul 06, 2009
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evaluate a whole slew
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eye-opening
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quite Plone-oriented
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vendors' marketing materials decidedly do not help
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if you're paying someone by the day to come up with a recommendation
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Vendor Subway Map
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features they have in their product arsenal
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Plone sits on the intersection of the "Web content management", "Social software & collaboration" and "Enterprise portal" lines
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cost (both licensing and likely implementation costs), fit with your existing IT architecture, and usability/end-user experience become a lot more important
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focus on getting a list of requirements for your end solution
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Vendor demos have a tendency to gloss over the warts
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The word "CMS" - Content Management System - is quite overloaded
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Plone is really a Web CMS
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vendors sometimes focus mainly on content production
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Other vendors include a dedicated presentation server
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Some systems, like Plone, accommodate both in a single server
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away from tight integration
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towards federation of services on heterogeneous platforms
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The "federated" view of IT is more realistic as an option these days
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better support for standards
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more use of higher level "glue"
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Deliverance
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plone.org, for example, "deliverates" Plone and Trac
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federated architecture that presents a unified user experience
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In the Java world, there are more formal standards (notably JSR168 and it's successor JSR186)
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in theory
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built once and deployed onto different portal containers
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An intranet or public website should largely present
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a stable, well-thought-out information architecture
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a richer, more bespoke, less application-like user experience
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a shift away from this one-platform-to-rule-them-all mentality
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some of the "platform" arguments are red herrings
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External Editor
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training your in-house staff
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pick a solution that is supportable
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specialist vendor
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Most modern systems are so complex that you can't just expect your IT staff to be able to support them without at last some investment in training
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Bake vs. fry
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Assets vs. content
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In Plone, there is a structured hierarchy
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content tree
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mirrors how files are managed on the desktop
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Folders and taxonomy
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Plone is comparatively weak
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Pages and fragments
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Managing code and content
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Zope and Plone communities have done a lot of work to move development out onto the filesystem
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The contenders Below is a list of systems I think are worth looking at and learning from.
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Usability is king
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Even Open Text/RedDot, which says in every "datasheet" that Gartner calls its usability "legendary", is confusing to use at times, and many of the other systems - especially the older ones - are downright shocking
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just to install the system and click
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most enlightening evaluation
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If I can't figure it out easily, it's not good enough
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What Plone can learn All in all, this evaluation exercise has confirmed my belief that Plone can hold its head high in the web content management world.
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support for the "bake" model
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file representation of all content
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upload content easily
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browse the site via WebDav
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IT support staff need to be able to feed and water the servers your CMS runs on
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Morello has an interesting take
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integration with Microsoft Office and the desktop
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dragged from the desktop and dropped into the CMS
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Open Text/RedDot has a nice model
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RESTful web services
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integration with other systems much easier
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group workspaces
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already decent add-on products
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dashboard
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first thing users see
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content notification
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"star" content they care about
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content re-use
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support for taxonomy
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multi-site support
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through-the-web content types and templates
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page composition
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Deco system
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Conclusion
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Plone UserVoice forum