Re: [libreoffice-website] CMS requirements / suitability testing

On Oct 11, 2010, at 10:43 PM, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
> > What is our current list of CMSs? I believe it is at least these: Drupal, SilverStripe, Plone,
> > WordPress.
>
> Well, WordPress is not on my (personal) list, it has been mentioned in
> the wiki thread, but in my eyes, it is a blog platform, with addon
> features, again judging solely from the demo available at
> opensourcecms.com
> Good for a site with fluctuating contents (blog, etc), but less so for
> a site like ours.
> And noone is actively advocating it as far as I can see.

Agreed. I don't think our site is a use-case for which WordPress was designed. 
> > (From emails sent to this thread.) I have worked a little bit with all of these except 
> > SilverStripe--in fact, this is the first time I have heard of it.
> >
> > Christian L: Have you built any sites on SilverStripe before? Has anyone on this list?
>
> No. The demo site I setup was the first I did. And it was a pleasing experience.

One demo just isn't enough to be sure! I think trying out a new CMS is a major project risk.

> > I think that past experience with a CMS is going to be even more important than setting up a 
> > demo, because there are always "gotchas" that you don't anticipate unless you're working with a 
> > system you've used before.
>
> Well, I disagree. If it is so complicated to get right, then maybe its
> not the right one..

I was not referring to Drupal here. I was referring to all CMSs, indeed to all software. If 
SilverStripe is so simple, then it's probably got limitations you have yet to run into in your 
testing, but we'd likely encounter when trying to build a large and complex site.
> > Major sites using Drupal include:
> >
> > spreadfirefox.org
> > whitehouse.gov
> > economist.com
>
> Sites using silverstipe include
> http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/ (public transportation in Melbourne)
> the 2008 Democratic Convention website
> Well, I won't duplicate complete http://silverstripe.com/our-work/ here :-)
>
> so http://www.silverstripe.org/community-showcase/ might be more relevant here.
>
> > [...]
> > I would love to install a demo Drupal site, but I don't realistically have the time to
> > do so this week.
>
> Too bad - time is what we don't have. Several groups are eager to
> start migrating/testing stuff out, even if it would mean
> "beta-testing" a site. So I guess the first batch then will be a
> silverstripe setup, maybe even this week.

I think this would be a major mistake. My recommendation for Foswiki did not seem to get any 
serious attention because someone just went ahead and installed MediaWiki. Now in conversations 
we're talking about ways to work around feature limitations in MediaWiki that would have been 
provided by default in Foswiki (specifically its "Webs" feature that helps divide a site up into 
logical content areas). 

It seems the same is happening again here. You're advocating SilverStripe and have already got 
people installing and testing it. Have you also insisted they do the same with Drupal, in order to 
thoroughly compare and contrast the two? If not, that should be a high priority.

> > I looked at its homepage and it looks very nice--but we cannot discount the
>
> Oh, I'm not to account for the design itself, I merely used copy and
> paste with a few tweaks here and there :-)

I wasn't referring to the design, but rather to the features as explained on the site's homepage.

> > human factor. Do we have people who know it well already involved in our
> > project?
>
> That's the nice thing about silverstripe: it is pretty
> straightforward. For those maintaining the pages themselves, there
> shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Same with Drupal from the editor / content creator side. However, I was referring to the sysadmin 
side of the software. Working with a CMS that people, including sysadmins, already know means we 
can avoid surprises and breakdowns.

> > Do we have backup contacts we can ask for help from if need be?
>
> And surely I won't be the only one involved in setting up the real site.
> Currently a couple of peoples from the german-lang project are giving
> it a try (both as user of the system, as well as server admin)

They need to try both Drupal and SilverStripe (at least). If you aren't encouraging them to do 
that, then we as a group are not performing sufficient due diligence in researching the appropriate 
CMS for the site going forward. (Testing only one possible option is just not enough.)

> > Has it been used on huge websites and proved its stability and effectiveness yet?
>
> See above, there are a couple of high-profile sites in their showcase.
> Of course those featured in their "our work" section involve other
> stuff, but they dive a brief summary on what they did for those sites.
>
> But as silverstripe is able to create static pages very nicely,
> performance should not be an issue. In the worst case one would have
> to seperate the editor's area and what visitors see to different
> machines and have stuff copied over via rsync (already available)

I think the static pages question is a red herring. With memecached and similar technologies, 
there's no performance benefit to static pages.

-Ben

Benjamin Horst
bhorst@mac.com
646-464-2314 (Eastern)
www.solidoffice.com


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