Developing an asset/node based CMS

Question

I'd like to develop a CMS for fun/personal using asset-based architecture rather than page-based (why, is the purpose of this question), but I can't find much information on the subject. All I've found barely scrapes the surface (there's a good chance I'm searching with the wrong terms).

An asset-based CMS stores information as blocks of text called assets. These individual assets are then related to each other to automatically build pages.

What are the (dis/)advantages of such a system? What are the primary principles of asset-based architecture? What should and shouldn't be an 'asset'? Where can I read more?

Any and all information would be helpful, thanks! :)

Answer 1

You could very quickly scale this up using the CakePHP framework. It uses an MVC pattern and it provides classes called elements that may be inserted into layouts and can load whatever content you want based on the page, user, moon phase, etc.

---

<page>
 <element calls methodX>
 <element calls methodY>
 <Default Content relies on Controller Action(view/edit/add/custom)>
 <element calls methodZ>
</page>

Answer 2

I think you might be describing a CMS backed up by a content repository.

The repository itself is implemented by Apache Jackrabbit based on JSR 170:

The API should be a standard, implementation independent, way to access content bi-directionally on a granular level within a content repository. A Content Repository is a high-level information management system that is a superset of traditional data repositories. A content repository implements "content services" such as: author based versioning, full textual searching, fine grained access control, content categorization and content event monitoring. It is these "content services" that differentiate a Content Repository from a Data Repository.

For a CMS working on top a content repository, look at Nuxeo.