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Earlier today I had the chance to talk with Simon, who represents Zikula, about his CMS solution. I did the interview on IRC on #fedora-docs so it could be seen by all on IRC and so I could record the conversation for everyone to read.
I created a wiki page[1] on Zikula and asked most of the information that was requested (my time was short). Simon provided good answers to all the questions which went a lot further than the check marks that I used on the wiki. I invite everyone to read the transcript[2] and pose additional questions or comments to the list. Simon has subscribed to the list so he can probably field questions by email.
All CMS options are on the wiki[3]. Of course this is the only one that has come to light with a lot of energy. If anyone else would like to suggest a CMS solution please complete a CMS template[4] so we can make an informed decision.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zikula_CMS_Option [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zikula_IRC_Chat_Interview [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_CMS_Option [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_CMS_Template
Thanks, Eric Christensen Fedora Docs Project
Fedora Talk: 5102043 Phone: 919-424-0063 x 5102043 E-Mail/SIP Address: sparks@fedoraproject.org IRC: Sparks on freenode.net
GPG Fingerprint: CA02 4ACA EB6C 1A76 F0D6 1127 7D04 D240 BD0C 14C1
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 03:01:12PM -0500, Eric Christensen wrote:
Earlier today I had the chance to talk with Simon, who represents Zikula, about his CMS solution. I did the interview on IRC on #fedora-docs so it could be seen by all on IRC and so I could record the conversation for everyone to read.
I created a wiki page[1] on Zikula and asked most of the information that was requested (my time was short). Simon provided good answers to all the questions which went a lot further than the check marks that I used on the wiki. I invite everyone to read the transcript[2] and pose additional questions or comments to the list. Simon has subscribed to the list so he can probably field questions by email.
All CMS options are on the wiki[3]. Of course this is the only one that has come to light with a lot of energy. If anyone else would like to suggest a CMS solution please complete a CMS template[4] so we can make an informed decision.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zikula_CMS_Option [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zikula_IRC_Chat_Interview [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_CMS_Option [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_CMS_Template
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
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Paul W. Frields wrote:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
I completely agree. Herlo talked to someone about WordPress earlier this afternoon (review should be coming later the weekend). The more information we have about the choices out there means we'll be better prepared to make decision.
If anyone knows someone with these other CMSs it would be good to talk with them and ask them the questions.
Thanks, Eric Christensen
Fedora Talk: 5102043 Phone: 919-424-0063 x 5102043 E-Mail/SIP Address: sparks@fedoraproject.org IRC: Sparks on freenode.net
GPG Fingerprint: CA02 4ACA EB6C 1A76 F0D6 1127 7D04 D240 BD0C 14C1
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 05:35:27PM -0500, Eric Christensen wrote:
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Paul W. Frields wrote:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
I completely agree. Herlo talked to someone about WordPress earlier this afternoon (review should be coming later the weekend). The more information we have about the choices out there means we'll be better prepared to make decision.
If anyone knows someone with these other CMSs it would be good to talk with them and ask them the questions.
It's interesting you bring up WordPress, because I think there are Fedora folks (and maybe Red Hat folks too) who have prior contact with people at Automattic. I do know there are sites out there using WordPress as a CMS when the required workflow is the right fit. I've been using it since 2002 myself and I can see where it would be a good fit. It's also already packaged for EPEL and Fedora, actively maintained, and has a thriving community.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 05:35:27PM -0500, Eric Christensen wrote:
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Paul W. Frields wrote:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
I completely agree. Herlo talked to someone about WordPress earlier this afternoon (review should be coming later the weekend). The more information we have about the choices out there means we'll be better prepared to make decision.
If anyone knows someone with these other CMSs it would be good to talk with them and ask them the questions.
It's interesting you bring up WordPress, because I think there are Fedora folks (and maybe Red Hat folks too) who have prior contact with people at Automattic. I do know there are sites out there using WordPress as a CMS when the required workflow is the right fit. I've been using it since 2002 myself and I can see where it would be a good fit. It's also already packaged for EPEL and Fedora, actively maintained, and has a thriving community.
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The guy I talked with lives in Utah and works at Automattic, he's quite knowledgeable but admits he's not on the core team. If we decide to go this route, (or at least when it's whittled down) if WordPress still fits, I can ask him to bring in a core dev.
Clint
Paul W. Frields wrote:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
One of the things I didn't know until I did some browsing around their website is that Zikula started off as PostNuke but that they changed the name in June. So they are a long term player in the CMS market.
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
I was impressed by a few of the things I've learned since this morning :-) The answers to how Proactive the security is was a nice change from the usual thoughts I've seen:: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zikula_IRC_Chat_Interview#t12:20
Here's my naive search of cve.mitre.org for issues reported in 2008. Note that some people would say to exclude plugins from this but my view is that we're going to be running plugins as part of our deployment and we'll want to know if we can expand our capabilities by pulling in functionality via plugins without compromising security. So knowing this does a little towards understanding whether the Core provides an API for writing secure plugins and the plugin community is security minded as well as Core developers. And like I say, this is naive :-)
91 Joomla -- Lots of plugins a few in core 79 Drupal -- Lots of plugins a few in core 60 Wordpress -- Lots of plugins, a few in core 53 Mambo --Lots of plugins, at least one in core 4 zikula + postnuke -- 1 in Core, 3 in plugins 1 midgard 0 zikula 0 enano
For reference, mediawiki, which we think has an acceptable security-to-benefit ratio, had 8 vulnerabilities reported in 2008 using the same naive count.
-Toshio
As the representative of Zikula on this list I wanted to follow up the discussion I had with Eric yesterday.
From what I could see, the area to focus on is the content publishing workflow, and to that end I've been evaluating some content management modules for Zikula. I've narrowed it down to a couple of options, both of which have revisions control and may suit you to a greater or lesser degree. If neither option suits we could either modify and existing module or create something new.
The first 'PageMaster' allows the creation of custom document types. These can contain any number of fields (e.g. you could add a multi select box for applicable versions or a document upload box for a PDF version, in addition to title and content fields etc). It's also possible to insert images and documents inline from a number of the media management modules mentioned later. There is also full revisions control.
The second module is 'Content'. This module allows you to construct pages with various components according to pre defined templates. Components can be blocks of text, images, headings, tables of contents, slideshows or a whole host of other things. Adding more component types is also easy, and all pages have a full revisions control and a translations interface for adding multilingual versions of pages.
Both these modules come with a choice of visual editors - we have one module that provides a choice of Xinha, TinyMCE, FCKeditor, openWYSIWYG and NicEdit - you can use different editors in different modules if you wish.
On the media management side, there's MediaAttach, which provides upload and storage capability for all sorts of different media types, many with preview functionality. These can then be embedded into content using the Xinha visual editor. There's also CoDoc, which allows you to upload a document to a category, and then upload new revisions of it. Like the two content modules, revisions are tracked by username and date/time, and there's locking functionality for when someone is working on a particular document. There's no easy way to embed CoDoc items into other content though. Lastly, there's Relay, which is a port of a file management script written in javascript. Nice and simple way to manage files in a given directory without resorting to FTP. There are also a selection of gallery modules for displaying screenshots if that might be useful.
I'm in the process of setting up a demo site over at Zikula which you'll be able to use to test these modules out if you feel that's helpful - just let me know.
Simon
Hello,
If it's of any interest to you, there's a history and timeline about the Zikula project at http://zikula.tv/zikula-postnuke-history.html
The timeline tracks all the security advisories since the project's beginning, and would let you gauge our attitude to security, etc. Plus there's lots of other info there too (although it's a work in progress...)
If I were to venture why Zikula would be so good for Fedora Docs, I'd suggest:
1) The people in the project all believe fervently in Zikula as a product. We love it for its power and flexibility. We love it because you can do anything with it.
2) Our devs have the imagination and the skill to help you not only fulfill your presently-known needs, but also to help you examine and explore new possibilities for the future. Our platform is sufficiently powerful, well-designed and flexible to provide your future platform without having to change to another product.
3) Every member of our team would *love* to have you as our client. We would all be strongly involved in making sure that you achieve what you want.
Hope this helps, and hope very much we'll be working with you in the future,
Hi:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game, if there are people available to deploy and maintain them. Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
+1 to your statement regarding maintenance. There are too many choices for CMS under three major platforms PHP, Python, JAVA, Ruby on rails etc., Enlisting some here that I have supported/ maintained:
1. JAVA based
Apache Jackrabbit, Liferay
2. Python based
Plone, Django framework
3. PHP based
Mediawiki, Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla
As Paul mentions, each of these CMS come with their own "features"/ "necessity for extension" which of course is based on what we need as a group as in, how to:
- structure content - can be viewed from maintenance (or) usability perspective - involve volunteers - customize the framework - maintain - volunteer base and their associated knowledge of choice of platform - localization concerns
Am still catching up on all IRC logs/ email archives so some of the listed were perhaps already reviewed and addressed :)
None of this has any bearing on the quality of Zikula, which I'm sure is excellent.
Zikula looks cool indeed.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 05:25:22PM -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
I think we should also be considering the other major players in the CMS game,
It's not they aren't being considered, but ...
if there are people available to deploy and maintain them.
Yeah, that's the catch.
Drupal and Joomla! immediately come to mind, the latter especially because it actually has some DocBook XML support. Features aren't particularly compelling, though, if we have no one around to help with the maintenance.
To be honest, the whole process for evaluating a tonne of CMSes to weed them down to a short list and a complex matrix ... sounds like work. A lot of work. The kind of work many of us have been paid to do. In the end, we are then paid to implement the solution we picked.
In this case, none of us are likely to be the actually implementers of the solution. Talking with Toshio one night, it was suddenly obvious that we needed to approach this from the angle of getting the people, and then getting the solution.
So, if a team of web developers wanted to just run a CMS and go through the complex matrix picking process, more power to them. But to ask this group to do a deep evaluation of systems with no actual task involved that moves us any closer to a real, installed CMS ... sounds like madness to me.
To be honest, I haven't contacted anyone from Joomla or Drupal yet. I can probably find the person from OSCON who dropped me his business card about Drupal; we'll find out if they want to chat.
But to be honest, if they didn't respond from posts on fedora-list, fedora-art-list, and fedora-devel-list, plus traffic in fedora-docs-list and posts on Fedora Planet ... well, I reckon whoever "they" are, they're not Fedora people already.
- Karsten
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