CMS to manage a web site

Introduction

A Content Management System is a fancy word to refer to a tool, usually residing on a server, to manage the bits that make up a web site. The idea is to create contents one bit at a time, and keep contents and display totaly separate.

As a practical example of why you should use a CMS even for a very basic, personal web site, perform the following tasks using your favorite editor, either plain-text or a WYSIWYG HTML editor like FrontPage or Mozilla Composer:

  1. Create ten separate HTML pages
  2. Build a home page that presents a clickable list of those documents
  3. Go back, and add a header and footer to each and every web page that make up this little site. The header should contain a basic navigation bar like the one you see at the top of this very document, while the footer should include a copyright note
  4. Once you're done, go back and add a new item in the header bar

Pretty tedious, ain't it? And just imagine what it'd be like handling even a small intranet at work. You just understood the need for a CMS, ie. a piece of software that lets you create contents and handle all the layout for you.

Unfortunately, the current state of the art is not satisfying. Most CMS run on a web server, and expect you to type content through a web browser in, at worst, a basic, ASCII-only, textarea widget, or, at best, a JavaScript-written basic WYSIWYG widget.

Considering how unstable and fat web browsers are, it puzzles me why no one has yet come up with a good, light (ideally, a no-brainer, two-second install) multipurpose, dedicated WYSIWYG client that would enable users to manage their contents by talking to their CMS server through an open and basic protocol like XMLRPC. In essence, a word processor for the web. I know of a couple of dedicated applications to add entries to a blog, but that's about it. Even finding an embeddable WYSIWYG HTML editor proves to be difficult.

A different approach, taken by CityDesk, is to have the CMS run on your client host, offering a WYSIWYG interface, generate a static version of the site before uploading this to your web server through FTP. Not bad, but I'd rather use an open-source product, and have it be client-server, so that I can use this solution either as a personal, desktop tool, or have the server part live on a server so many people can contribute articles.

Things to check out when choosing a CMS

Desktop CMS

Thingamablog

BetaWebzz

Fluid CMS

Etomite

Orb Spinner

Web Update Builder

suPerlative: The ht Preprocessor

nthWave Elements

WebMake

CityDesk

http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/

Cute Site Builder

http://www.cuteftp.com/cutesitebuilder/

SiteBreeze

WebContent 4 all

News Updater

http://www.xmlssoftware.com

zeta producer Desktop

http://www.zeta-software.de

Dedicated blogging clients

Thanks to standard protocols like XMLRPC or SOAP, some clients are finally available to connect and edit entries from a desktop, dedicated applications.

wBloggar

Zempt

PowerBlog

Mozblog

Frequency

BlogBuddy

BlogApp

BlogApp is a Mac OS X (Jaguar Compatible only) shareware application ($6) that allows users to easily post to their weblog.

iBlog

Jericho

Jogger

Ecto

WYSIWYG Editing Widgets

This is a list of WYSIWYG editing widgets that you can embed in a dedicated application to turn it into the poor man's DreamWeaver. They generate either HTML or RTF, or both. The few widgets I know of are either free/cheap but feature-poor, or quite expensive but offer more features. I didn't find any good, open-source solution.

MS DHTMLEd ActiveX Control/MSHTML Active Document

Here's to browse an HTML page, and edit it within a VB app:

  1. Create a new project, and add the MS Internet Controls to a form
  2. Browse a web page

    Private Sub Form_Load()
        WebBrowser1.Navigate2 "http://www.microsoft.com"
    End Sub
     
  3. Edit the page currently displayed by the Web browser object

    Private Sub Form_DblClick()
        Dim doc As Object
        Set doc = WebBrowser1.Document

        If doc.DesignMode = "On" Then
            doc.DesignMode = "Off"
        Else
            doc.DesignMode = "On"
        End If
    End Sub

The DHTMLEd OCX lets you save the document to a local file, but I don't yet know how to do this.

KTML

FCKEditor

SoftPae XEditor

Think HTML

XStandard

PBear HTML Components for Delphi

HomePage Software's Webster Pro DLL

SimplyHTML

IONEdit

Ektron eWebEditPro

Namo ActiveSquare

MS RichEdit Control

This DLL (and the OCX that comes with VB to make its use easier) generates RTF. Here are the different versions of this DLL:

HTML Editor

Scrooge XHTML for Delphi

Stephen Lebans' Rich Text ActiveX control

AngelWriter

Mozilla

CuneAForm

vbAccelerator RichEdit Control

Edanmo's RTF Widget

HTML Label

EZTools Web On Windows (WOW)

QHTM

NVU

SautinSoft HTML-to-RTF

Richtext Editor

RTF to HTML

http://www.easybyte.com/

TinyCME

"TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB."

widgEditor

"widgEditor is an easily installed, easily customisable WYSIWYG editor for simple content. It replaces existing textareas with an improved editing pane using JavaScript, therefore if you don't have JavaScript (or your browser doesn't support HTML editing) it degrades gracefully."

CMS Servers

Mambo

See here.

Drupal

See here.

PhpCms

Php-update

Pivot

JAF CMS

Guppy

Blog:CMS

Lodel

Bricolage

eDock Server

Sitellite

Komplete

http://www.interaktonline.com/products/KompleteLite/

HardCore Web Content Management

http://wcm.hardcoreinternet.co.uk

Feedstream Fluid

Squiz.net MySource

Rikle CMS

http://www.rilkecms.com

BigMedium

CMSimple

WebAPP

Convea

ThinkCMS

http://www.thinktechnologies.com

$14,999.00

Rodin

Simple Web Content Management System

Ariadne

WebGUI

Resources