4 ms·

It’s a system. That manages your content. What would you prefer we call it?

Terretta 8y ago
The term “manage” should imply more than CRUD. See https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io and check out some MVP content “management” options in e.g. TextPattern. Notice the user roles: https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-primer/ https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-primer/
- didgeoridoo 8y ago
  So we have different definitions of CMS. To me, it’s just a system that allows CRUD ops on content by non-technical personnel. It often does other things too, like access/role management and editorial workflow, but I personally don’t see these as core to the definition. Can we maybe agree to call this a “static CMS”? Just saying it’s “not a CMS” feels like we’re taking away a useful way of talking about tools like this — in exchange for some vague sense of semantic purity.
  - Terretta 8y ago
    Not semantic purity. Business need. Once your company is big enough to have some people who tell other people what to do and sign off on it, you have management, and the M in CMS is about being able to mirror that management. I think you’re describing not a CMS, but a web UI for content authoring for a static site generator. That product category is described by Prose.io, a web UI for Git-backed static site generators: “Prose provides a beautifully simple content authoring environment for CMS-free websites.” http://prose.io/#about http://prose.io/#about Notice the phrase “CMS-free”, as in, if you just want to author and edit content, you don’t need a content management system. Forestry understands this distinction, the first paragraph on their “Managing Content” docs talks about Roles. If you jump to pricing, and follow across, you see identity and access “Management” is the feature that grows with price. https://forestry.io/#/ https://forestry.io/#/ https://forestry.io/docs/editing/ https://forestry.io/docs/editing/ https://forestry.io/pricing/ https://forestry.io/pricing/ // Footnote: My interpretation is based on having built a commercial private label web-based CMS in late 90’s, predating Red Dot’s web based live editing released in 2001, and following static site gen ever since. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring
    - tabtab 8y ago
      There is no standards body who formally define and enforce terms like "CMS" or "WCMS". It's probably not worth battling over such terms, other than in a speculative sense. I've spec'd out potential CMS features, and there are a lot of features that various orgs may or may not need for their Internet sites and/or intranets. I don't see any solid line(s) between CMS and "CRUD": it's often a fuzzy boundary. CRUD tends to be for a specific domain need, whereas a CMS is intended to be more general purpose: for different departments or groups in a org. What's a show-stopper in terms of missing features for a given org depends on the org. Slapping CKeditor on top of a database or dynamic file/folder creation system can get you a quick-and-dirty self-rolled CMS. You can add groupings and org hierarchies as needed using typical relational modelling. But in the longer run, one tends to end up reinventing wheels already found in formal CMS's, I find.

The term “manage” should imply more than CRUD. See https://www.enterpriseready.io https://www.enterpriseready.io and check out some MVP content “management” options in e.g. TextPattern. Notice the user roles: https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-primer/ https://blog.arvixe.com/textpattern-admin-tab-a-primer/

didgeoridoo 8y ago
So we have different definitions of CMS. To me, it’s just a system that allows CRUD ops on content by non-technical personnel. It often does other things too, like access/role management and editorial workflow, but I personally don’t see these as core to the definition. Can we maybe agree to call this a “static CMS”? Just saying it’s “not a CMS” feels like we’re taking away a useful way of talking about tools like this — in exchange for some vague sense of semantic purity.
- Terretta 8y ago
  Not semantic purity. Business need. Once your company is big enough to have some people who tell other people what to do and sign off on it, you have management, and the M in CMS is about being able to mirror that management. I think you’re describing not a CMS, but a web UI for content authoring for a static site generator. That product category is described by Prose.io, a web UI for Git-backed static site generators: “Prose provides a beautifully simple content authoring environment for CMS-free websites.” http://prose.io/#about http://prose.io/#about Notice the phrase “CMS-free”, as in, if you just want to author and edit content, you don’t need a content management system. Forestry understands this distinction, the first paragraph on their “Managing Content” docs talks about Roles. If you jump to pricing, and follow across, you see identity and access “Management” is the feature that grows with price. https://forestry.io/#/ https://forestry.io/#/ https://forestry.io/docs/editing/ https://forestry.io/docs/editing/ https://forestry.io/pricing/ https://forestry.io/pricing/ // Footnote: My interpretation is based on having built a commercial private label web-based CMS in late 90’s, predating Red Dot’s web based live editing released in 2001, and following static site gen ever since. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText#Content_authoring
  - tabtab 8y ago
    There is no standards body who formally define and enforce terms like "CMS" or "WCMS". It's probably not worth battling over such terms, other than in a speculative sense. I've spec'd out potential CMS features, and there are a lot of features that various orgs may or may not need for their Internet sites and/or intranets. I don't see any solid line(s) between CMS and "CRUD": it's often a fuzzy boundary. CRUD tends to be for a specific domain need, whereas a CMS is intended to be more general purpose: for different departments or groups in a org. What's a show-stopper in terms of missing features for a given org depends on the org. Slapping CKeditor on top of a database or dynamic file/folder creation system can get you a quick-and-dirty self-rolled CMS. You can add groupings and org hierarchies as needed using typical relational modelling. But in the longer run, one tends to end up reinventing wheels already found in formal CMS's, I find.