CMS Recommendations

[Peter D Bethke]

Hello all,

I’m moving to Rails from another OO language where I’ve built my own extensive CMS systems - and I’m the kind of guy who learns by breaking things and figuring out why they broke. Strange method but true - I guess I’m just the impatient sort :)

Since I’m most familiar with CMS architecture and multi-level user/group/authenicated access systems I thought it logical to start with a Rails CMS app to see how its put together there. Naturally I’m at a loss where to start because there seem to be a lot of them.

Initially I was interested in BrowserCMS because of its in-page editing (neat) and group-based access model, but although it says its Rails 4 compatible, when I load the gem it downloads a whole slew of Rails 3.2 gems to support it - leading me to believe its not truly Rails 4 ready. Maybe I’m mistaken.

Now I’m considering Comfortable Mexican Sofa because its really seems to be actively developed and does seem to function as a plug-in instead of a self-enclosed system (leaving me more to mess around with), though it seems to lack a robust user system (though from what I have read “there’s a gem for that”).

I’ve looked at Refinery (seems really out of date) and locomotive and a few others. Comfy seems the only one that is making an effort to stay up with the latest rails. I may be wrong - just an initial impression. 

Any thoughts? Just looking for an impartial recommendation for an “experienced newbie” as it were.

Best,

Peter Bethke

[Scott Eisenberg]

Patrick Peak spoke at the dcrug meet up just last month.  He (and his company BrowserMedia / nclude) are actively finishing up the Rails 4 version.  I think he’d be pretty interested in feedback and perhaps some contributions.  BrowserMedia uses the CMS for a lot of their projects so I have no doubt that Patrick will get it Rails 4 ready.

Maybe message him at peakpg on github.

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Locomotivecms has a good website to go with it with some real docs and videos and an active google group so it seems like platform that might have some continued development moving forward.  The wagon / engine dichotomy had me a bit confused in the beginning (wagon is only a front end tool, not the entire app)

I did not even see comfy…sofa on my pass through rails CMS’s a few weeks back.  The group seems much less active than comfy.  I’ve also had some trouble even finding a few comfy demo sites to review.  Doc is very tech-y.

Overall, locomotive seems the most polished for now.

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[Frederick Cheung]

On Monday, March 31, 2014 9:26:34 PM UTC+1, Peter D Bethke wrote:

Now I’m considering Comfortable Mexican Sofa because its really seems to be actively developed and does seem to function as a plug-in instead of a self-enclosed system (leaving me more to mess around with), though it seems to lack a robust user system (though from what I have read “there’s a gem for that”).

I've used  comfortable mexican sofa (although it wasn't me that did the review of what else was available at the time). When we were looking for a cms to use we mainly wanted something not too massive and that was reasonable easy to customize (for example with comfortable mexican helper you can whitelist normal view helpers for use by the cms content, so it's easy to add dynamic content to cms generated pages).

Fred

[masta Blasta]

Peter D Bethke wrote in post #1141605:

I think you're approaching this question the wrong way. The CMS is not
for you, it is for your content managers. In my opinion, to properly
choose a CMS you must ask these questions:

What type of content will be hosted by our CMS?
How dynamic is the content?
What type of people will be managing this content?

Ruby is great, and because of our love of Ruby we may be inclined to go
with a Ruby based CMS, but none of the Ruby ecosystem solutions are that
great from a content management perspective. There are other ecosystems
that I feel are more mature when it comes to content management.

Case and point is wordpress. I hate everything about its backend. After
doing any kind of development with it i feel like i have to take a
shower. But it's fantastic from a UI point of view. You can get a full
site up and running in days. There is practically zero learning curve
for users.

In regards to the question of "How dynamic is the content?", what i mean
by that is that CMS by their definition, like static content. A user
types a bunch of stuff, and that stuff is served in different places. If
on the other hand you have a lot of dynamic relationships, covered by
complex business rules, then a homegrown solution might be your best
bet. If you find yourself constantly coding new things, and looking for
ways to circumvent default CMS functionality, then you've made a bad
choice.

Other than that, I also vote for Browser CMS. It is a solid, well built
CMS, with a very good google group. Don't worry too much about the Rails
4 stuff.

P.S.
Also pay attention to data stores for these. Some are SQL some are
NoSQL.

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