Sent by Jon Marks on 8 August 2003 10:10
Chris,
Firstly, I'd just like to say that I think it is posts like this that makes
this mailing list as valuable as it is. It is great to get a posting with
real substance like this one. It is a pretty that the commercial companies
cannot easily post papers like this without giving away too many ideas.
I also get quite frustrated with some of newer, very slick, extremely
"bottom-up" CMS'es on the market. I think that you give a very elegant
critism of that approach.
I have been the architect of the framework that my company uses to build
systems for clients. Our system is very similar to what you propose in many
respects. Things that struck a chord in particular are:
* COMPLETE separation of content creation and delivery. Often different
people.
* XML content with XSLT pipeline (although lots do this now)
* What you call WPCML, we call loosely "Our site structure language". The
idea is that we implement an interface ISiteStructure, and the most useful
implementation to date has been driven by an XML file. It has turned out to
be very powerful, especially on the granuarity of security. A single
<permissions> tag and a simple XSLT transform can give different users a
completely different view of the site.
Things I don't think I agree with:
* I don't see why the framework needs to impose your 3 level "Site, Section,
Page" structure. I believe this should be an arbitrarily deep heirarchy. If
I understand you correctly, this a a CONTENT hierarchy, not a SITE STRUCTURE
hierarchy. In our system, we use the terminology:
- MODULE: Something that returns XML content. We have over 90 modules (e.g.
Articles, Navigation, Votes) etc
- MODULE COLLECTION: A group of parameterised modules.
For example, to simulate your three levels, the COMMON collection (which
might map to your SITE top level) could include the security module,
advertising module and navigation module. The SPORT collection could inherit
from the COMMON collection, and include a Sports Vote and a Latest Scores
Ticker. The CHESS collection could again inherit from the SPORT collection.
I don't think I've explained this very well!
For a better example, if you look at our corporate site without the XSLT
transforms it shows you the modules on the page:
http://www.aspectgroup.co.uk/?afw_no_transform=1
As our system is now being used on over 40 live sites, we have learned a lot
of valuable lessons. It is very interesting to see some of one's great ideas
turn out to be a distaster for reasons one never dreamt of :-) If you are
ever in London, it would be great if you could pop into one of our
london/pub/cms sessions and share your wisdom.
Once again, thanks for an interesting post
Jon
----------------------------
Jon Marks
Systems Architect
Aspect Group
Clerkenwell House,
67 Clerkenwell Road,
London EC1R 5BL
Direct dial: +44 (0) 20 7504 6886
Mobile: +44 (0) 796 858 2626
Office: +44 (0) 20 7504 6900
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7504 6901
[EMAIL-REMOVED]
http://www.aspectgroup.co.uk/
--
http://cms-list.org/
more signal, less noise.
