Trying to Understand CMS
June 22, 2008
I know that CMS stands for Content Management System, but I don’t know what that means. In order to understand what a term describes, it’s often helpful to try to understand what the term doesn’t describe. So, in order not to be a CMS, something has to lack one of the following attributes.
- Content. I find it hard to see the interest in anything content-free. I suppose that there might be a social network so purely about connection as to be unencumbered by content, but…
- Management. I find it hard to see the point of something that can’t be managed, especially if we have an eye to the business market as well as to the consumer market.
- System-ness: but let’s not get into what that might mean.
Since I don’t know what a CMS isn’t, I can’t claim to know what a CMS is. But I do claim to recognize one when I see one, which is perhaps good enough for Web 2.0 (whatever that is) work.
I do understand the argument for free/open source software, in CMSs and elsewhere. So do Forrester, who just wrote a report on what they call WCM (web content management) and open source. Clients are looking at OSWCM (may as well go all the way with the alphabet soup) “as a way of controlling software costs and increasing their access to product-specific expertise in the marketplace.”
The Forrester page doesn’t provide much detail, but there are quotes elsewhere. For example:
For an open source WCM vendor to be relevant, it must have a satisfactory product offering, proven enterprise-level implementations, and a large–and passionate–community of developers and service providers. Currently, enterprises interested in open source should keep an eye on two offerings–Alfresco Software and Drupal.
That quote from the report was posted by Matt Asay of Alfresco. He of course likes the report. So does Jeff Whatcott of Acquia, who wrote that:
Forrester analysts… highlight Drupal (with Acquia backing) and Alfresco as the most “relevant”. Among a wildly crowded field, Drupal+Acquia and Alfresco stood out for strong technical architecture, active communities, and strong commercial backing that make the technology more accessible. Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
By the way, Jeff is among those in the CMS world who don’t like the term CMS. We even find discussion of problems with the term at the site called CMS Report.
Having identified “free is good” as one of things I do understand about CMS, I find it hard to see good prospects for a CMS that is neither free/open source nor free of charge. Nevertheless Markup Factory just launched exactly that.
I have to agree with Mashable Paul that Markup Factory will turn away quite a few interested users who would otherwise quickly become adopters with its paid subsciption model, starting at $14.95/month and with no apparent option of a free trial. Given that, I’m puzzled that it got featured at Mashable, which I believe features only a subset of the launched products it’s told about.
Puzzling place, this CMSland. Rather more complicated than Blogistan.
Choosing Between Drupal and WordPress
April 16, 2008
That choice was the theme of a talk recently given at a conference in San Francisco. You can see a video of the talk at the blog of either of the presenters. Andy uses Blogger, Selena uses WordPress. I found the video via Kieran, who uses Drupal.
Here’s my summary of the 18-minute video.
- Preamble. We’re not trying to pick a winner, but to highlight the differences between D and W.
- Getting site started: W+.
- Managing site as it grows more complex: D+.
- What does the software want to do with data? D: whatever you like. W: publish it.
- Who’s the focus of the community? D: developers. W: users.
- Wrapup.
OStatic: GigaOm on Open Source
March 4, 2008
Yesterday, Om Malik announced Ostatic, the newest member of the GigaOm family of blogs. Here’s how editor Sam Dean introduced the site: “OStatic’s mission is to be the most comprehensive web destination for information and insight on open source software and services.”
Mike Arrington asked, is Ostatic built on open source? The answer is yes: it’s built on the Drupal platform. I think that it’s the first of the GigaOm properties not to be built on WordPress.
I can see two reasons to use Drupal, rather than WordPress, for OStatic. First, the site, including much of the content, was developed by Vox Holdings, rather than by GigaOm, so the GigaOm preference for WordPress wasn’t as strong a factor as it might have been.
Second, Ostatic differs from existing GigaOm sites in that it’s more than a blog. It includes a database of open-source projects. Hence Drupal, a content management system (CMS), may well have been considered a better fit than WordPress, which is more of a blogging system with some CMS-like features.
I certainly don’t think that Om’s choice of Drupal for OStatic reflects any lack of confidence in WordPress, or any lack of open-source-ness on the part of WordPress. WordPress (like Drupal) is under the GPL.
I wish all the best to Om and to OStatic, even as I disagree with his description of it as a blog – it’s more than that, in so represents a bigger step for GigaOm than might at first appear.
Talking of LiveJournal and Drupal…
December 20, 2007
After posting thoughts on LJ, it occurred to me that few of the blogs to which I subscribe are on LJ. The only two that occur to me are science-fiction-related. One is the group blog theinferior4+1. The other is Nicholas Whyte’s From the Heart of Europe, which has a fair amount of personal and political content as well as the sf.
I think that Universal Hub is the sole Drupal representative in my feed reader. I have recently found myself at another Drupal-powered site: Green Plastic, a site dedicated to Radiohead. The most recent post there is two weeks old: Anyone out there familiar with Drupal? If you can help, please email us.
Most of the sites to which I subscribe are powered by one of: WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger. The order is some kind of approximation to the representation each has in my subscriptions.
Acquia: Drupalmattic?
December 20, 2007
Acquia is a startup that will provide complements to Drupal. Drupal, in turn, is a content management platform supporting a variety of web sites from personal blogs on up. Drupal is free/open source software, released under the GPL.
One of the questions in the Acquia FAQ is: “Are there other open source companies that Acquia is modeled after?” Part of the answer provided is that: “Just like Red Hat, Acquia’s business model is based on an existing open source project with a broad base of existing GPL’d open source code.”
Acquia strikes me as rather similar to Automattic. Drupal, like WordPress, is a GPL’d platform on which blogs and other “social web” sites can be built. The lead developer of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, will be the CTO of Acquia; Matt Mullenweg is in effect CTO is Automattic. Each firm has an experienced CEO who sold his previous firm.
Of course, there are also many differences between Acquia and Automattic. Acquia has started with rather more venture capital: $7 million, as opposed to the million or so with which Automattic got under way.
If the name Acquia makes you think of a series of map-in-front fantasy novels (The Annals of Acquia?), then check out Mark Hopkins’ post at Mashable. “Only a few days ago did Dries Buytaert,” he starts, and goes on to remark that Drupal “has grown to no small respectability.”
