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CMS features

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:48 pm
by alex.barylski
Just curious but what kind of features do you look for in a CMS?

I have yet to date, found a CMS which pleased me 100% there either bulky or to complicated, poor design and usability, etc...

What is it you want or expect from a CMS (please no links to CMS) in point form???

I'll start:

- Easy to install
- Easy to learn or at least get off the ground quickly and learn progressively
- Nice GUI not to candy-ish (Mambo) and not to plain (CMSMS)
- Permissions or Role based - what do you prefer?
- Asset resource manager (documents, images, etc)
- Threaded articles with sub-paging support
- CVS for articles or resources (mentioned above)
- Template builder (WYSIWYG or not?)

I find most CMS use a verbose WYSIWYG editor to almost compensate for funcitonality. Personally this was really appealing to me at first but later became obvious that most users would just shoot themselves in the foot with such power (nasty tables, awkward colored text, misaligned elements which screwed up remainging markup, etc)

Basically it's really bad for accessibility...and clean markup :P

Anyways...here is my short list...what can you add to it...?

What are some standard, professional or even enterprise features you would like to see in a CMS from a developer standpoint? What would I have to to do inorder to make it appealing for the everage developer?

Does a product being branded as a business, rather than simply another open source solution have an impact on whether you use it or not commercially?

Personally I prefer open source products so links don't take clients to a potential competitor's web site, but if the software was good enough or they offered re-branding...I may reconsider...

Opinions, input, comments, suggestions, etc???

I feel the same way

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:34 am
by jimthunderbird
Hi Hockey,
I feel the same way too. Currently there's no perfect CMS in my mind also. What they are trying to do is build a system that will doom to be bulky since they try to fullfill all requirements. I recently try drupal and joomla and I feel they will one day grow to the point like linux and windows.
For typical small sites ranging from 20-100 pages, I think CMS Made Simple or Type3 is a good fit.

I think a good CMS, at this moment, should have the following features:
1. Easy to install, best having a installation wizard.
2. The user should be able to write his first test page sucessfully within 10-30 minutes or even less after the installation.
3. Should have 4 basic groups of user in mind:
1) front-end user --- public and registered members
2) content editor ---- the person who is responsible for editing the contents
3) site designer --- the person who is responsible for managing the site templates
4) site administrator --- the super guy who is in charge of 1),2) and 3)

I think WYSIWYG editor like FCKEditor is too big and should be "pruned", it should have features with content editor in mind only.
What I feel about FCKEditor is this guy try to develop an online dreamweaver.

The site administrator should have the logging system like drupal(I had to admit that drupal did a good job at this, CMS Made Simple had this feature but just way too simple).

At the end, from the developer point of view, the CMS should be well documented and best to have an API set, thus allowing other developer to develop on top of it instead of just plugging-in countless modules.


With my best,
Jim

Re: I feel the same way

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:16 am
by alex.barylski
jimthunderbird wrote: What I feel about FCKEditor is this guy try to develop an online dreamweaver
LOL

That was funny :P good one...

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:51 am
by MrPotatoes
i agree with ya Hokey. that's why i'm building my own. i've decided to redo my request/response model so it should be better.


here are my thoughts on the subject:

- security
- speed. LOT OF IT. it should never hang and it should never do unnessissary operations
- permissions upon roles uppon groups. it's really not that complicated. i created one actually
- full WYSIWYG editor. well, BB parsing and all that junk. doesn't need to go overboard
- 'good' install. i'm pretty good with PHP now that i don't need to have my hand held when i do an install. but, for most people it's pretty needed
- easy template/forms system
- extensability
- nothing is built into the core that shouldn't be. for instance, you should not have a gallery/blog/news system built INTO the core. it should be something that is put ontop of the core for extensability
- easy to write code for. really easy. stupid easy. i shouldn't have problems writing a template or a module for it
- full admin feature set. control everything. from the way that the site looks to the way that it performs and handles
- config files. this is for speed (lesss DB Quiries). this way i can have my settings to the system in a PHP file. .ini if it were secure *sigh*
- geting templates and test or production modules should be simple as pie. i shouln't have to google it

what jimthunderbird about making a test page. should be quicker thoguh

i think that's about it. most of that i plan to put into my Framework :thumbup: