Is there a standard site structure format?

Question

Is there a standard site structure format? The use of this would be for export and import into a CMS or framework to define the urls, content, metadata for a website. Something tool agnostic would be the goal.

JSON, YAML, XML, whatever. Maybe something like:

{
  'baseurl': 'http://example.com',
  'site': [
    {'slug': '/', 'title': 'ExampleCo. Inc.', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/about', 'title': 'About Our Company', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/services', 'title': 'Our Services', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/products', 'title': 'Products', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/products/purchase', 'title': 'Purchase Products Now', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/products/downloads', 'title': 'Downloads', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'},
    {'slug': '/contact', 'title': 'Contact Us', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}
   ]
}

My thinking is that it would allow you to quickly populate a content management system or framework with a generic site navigational structure.

Does something like this exist?

Answer 1

There is a proposed industry standard for a data exchange/interop format for WCMS (trying to find the link), however IMO it will not take off. Regardless, it is guaranteed that whatever data you're thinking about porting right now will be beyond stale by the time a format might arise, so you're best off just making one that solves your problem.

Answer 2

I have come across a tool called zen which does something similar to what you're describing.

As for an already existing standard, no. CMSes are different beasts than layout/content specification languages which is what XHTML/CSS are.

As for uploading content into a CMS, most of them have an XMLRPC interface so you might just be able to use that.

Answer 3

Don't know if it really answers your question but there is a standard called CMIS that basically is a specification for syncing and exchanging content between CMSs. Alfresco, KnowledgeTree and a bunch of other commercial CMSs support it. Drupal supports it too through a contrib module. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services

The spec has just been ratified less than a year ago i think.

Answer 4

Pretty much any CMS has a database interface so I would suppose an SQL dump would be pretty close to a generic format. You could then write some tools to map table/column names and datatypes between various CMS systems. If you used postgres you could even create views to mimic the structure of various CMS systems without actually changing any data. Of course the catch is that like CSV and XML, the format isn't as much of an issue as the data structure.