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?
Yet another CMS
Think twice about it
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Stefano Verna
@steffoz
2012 Ruby/ObjC developer at Cantiere Creativo
2010 Partner at weLaika
http://stefanoverna.com
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Content management system (CMS) •
1 (noun) a software application used to
upload, edit, and manage content
displayed on a website. A CMS can
perform a variety of different tasks for a
website, enabling less technical
individuals to manage content on a
website easily without having an
extensive coding background.
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“I’m working on a
new CMS that...”
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No content
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10
20
30
40
50
60
Wordpress Joomla Drupal vBulletin Typo3 PHP Link Others
22.2
1.9
2.0
3.7
7.0
8.9
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Alexa’s top million sites CMS usage
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10
20
30
40
50
60
Wordpress Joomla Drupal vBulletin Typo3 PHP Link Others
22.2
1.9
2.0
3.7
7.0
8.9
54.3
Alexa’s top million sites CMS usage
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10
20
30
40
50
60
Wordpress Joomla Drupal vBulletin Typo3 PHP Link Others
22.2
1.9
2.0
3.7
7.0
8.9
54.3
Alexa’s top million sites CMS usage
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2.500
Open-source CMS projects
~
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250
Commercial CMS products
~
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0
Do it yourself
CMS
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15.000?
Grand total (mostly in PHP)
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15.000
unique solutions to a problem?
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“I’m working on a
new CMS that...”
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Why?
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1Vendor
lock-in
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Branding
strategy
2
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3
Inexperience
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No content
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90% of complexity
is here
90% is easy stuff
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“When you throw away code and start
from scratch, you are throwing away all
that knowledge. All those collected bug
fixes. Years of programming work.”
Joel Spolsky
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{
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http://railsyardcms.org
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Refreshingly new!!
pun intended
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Ruby
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3 years ago
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3 complete
rewrites
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Railsyard 1
an (internal) experiment
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Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
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Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
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Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
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Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
Users
Articles
Pages
Translations
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Railsyard 2
naïve open project
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a couple of mentions
and committers :(
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Railsyard 3:
a serious bet
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Generalist CMS
are complex
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Clients need
extreme
simplicity
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No content
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No content
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Cra a back-end experience that fits
the clients mental model of how
the website should be edited
Deliver on time and within
budget
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Cra a back-end experience that fits
the clients mental model of how
the website should be edited
Deliver on time and within
budget
and
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Content
Management
System
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Content
Management
Framework
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Front-end is not your affair.
This is what web frameworks
are made for.
Routing
Controllers
Views
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Content to be managed is
different 100% of the time.
Don’t bother thinking about
“standard usage cases”. They
don’t exist.
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CMS must have no
interface by default?
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No content
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Make it dead easy to build
an “editing module” for each
possibile type of content.
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How?
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For each type of content:
Create a DB table
Listing of existing resources
Creation of new resource
Editing of existing resource
Removal of existing resource
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A form is just a composition
of basic editing fields:
Text input
Text area
Checkbox
Select/Dropdown
File upload
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Artist
Artist
Artist
Artist
Name Bio Country Homepage
Text input Textarea Dropdown Text input
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List resources
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Railsyard.register
Artist
do
list
do
column
:title
column
:created_at
end
end
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Create/edit
resource
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No content
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Railsyard.register
Artist
do
form
do
field
:name
field
:bio
field
:country
field
:homepage_url
end
end
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90% of complexity
90% is easy stuff
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No content
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Version A
Version B
Remove res.
Edit resources
List resources
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Plugins
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No content
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Railsyard.register
Genre
do
list
do
as_tree
sortable
column
:name
column
:created_at
end
end
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Data-export
Image galleries
Search
Translations
Authentication
Image resize
Authorization
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Resource relations
Artist
Award
Award
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Resource relations
Artist
Award
Award
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No content
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Railsyard.register
Artist
do
form
do
#
previous
fields
here
has_many
:awards
do
field
:name
field
:year
end
end
end
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No content
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Railsyard.register
Artist
do
edit
do
field
:bio,
as:
:wysihtml5
end
end
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File uploads
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field
:cover,
as:
:upload
Upload field
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No content
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has_one
:cover
do
field
:image,
as:
:upload
field
:alt,
:title
end Upload field
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has_one
:cover
do
field
:image,
as:
:upload
field
:alt,
:title
end Upload field
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image_metas
:cover
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Do you still want to
create a CMS? :)
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Gain traction
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Open-source marketing
Let the community drive
your effort
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Minimize the perceived
risk of the product
Document everything
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README
Website
Tutorial/Getting started
Demo
Support
Tests
...
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Recap.
Think twice about creating a new
CMS (open-source project) yourself;
Classic CMS is not meant for web-
agencies;
CMF is a promising solution to the
need of tailored backend UIs;
Don’t forget what matters to the
community.
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thanks!
Stefano Verna
@steffoz
(http://railsyardcms.org)