Creating a specialised CMS by extending a desktop web-dev app. Options?

Question

Background

We need to develop a specialised CMS (internal use only) to support a technical writing team producing specialised long-form content for web (i.e. text with pictures, interactive features). To protect the writers from the nitty-gritty of web development (and to improve output consistency) we'd like to augment a regular WSIWYG html editor with parameterised placeholders for more specialised content (e.g. interactive page elements). The placeholders will be expanded into html/js/css/flash/etc by a seperate pre-publication process.

Content generation is the raison d'etre of the business and productivity of the writers is paramount. If we go with a web-based CMS the writers will mutiny, I'm sure of it.

Wishlist

• basic web development design surface
• cross-platform (mac/windows)
• source control integration
• ability to add/edit placeholders using a GUI
• ability to indicate placeholders on design surface
• ability to build our own reports into the UI (e.g. spell-check)
• offline editing (i.e. on a plane, at a trade-show)

Options so far

The likelihood of something being flexible enough out of the box is unlikely. So we'll most likely have to extend an existing product. To get offline capability and rock-solid editing we're thinking of extending a desktop app. Here are our options so far:

• Dreameaver CS4 (pros: familiar, cross-platform. cons: limited extension api)
• Visual studio (pros: good extensibility. cons: intimidates writers, mac users will need VM)

Please tell me I have more options than this!

Answer 1

Neither Dreamweaver or Visual Studio is a CMS. They are tools.

You need a CMS like EPiServer (.NET), AxCMS.net (free), Drupal (php) or Wordpress (php)

It's very normal to customize a CMS to meet your needs. The CMS is just a framework. You will have to make the templates you need, and customize them for your needs. Like e.g. adding fields for attaching documents, flsah files or other types of files.

All CMS has a WYSIWYG editor. Many use the tinyMCE, which is a very good editor.

Your Wishlist can be met with all the CMS'es I mentione above.

If you want something quick and simple, go for the Wordpress. I'm using that one for my own website Norwegian Fashion. All tempaltes are custom made. Easy to use, easy to set up and easy to understand.

Drupal is a very good (and free) CMS, but pretty dificult to learn.

If you are familiar with the way Microsoft has built its template system, then I would use the AxCMS - developed by MS and it's free.

EpiSer ver is a very good CMS. But you have to pay at least $10.000 US for a licence.

But why buy a Porche when a Volvo can get you there :)

Hope this helps you. Good luck with your choice.

Answer 2

Plone is very customizable and easy to use web CMS. It uses a WYSIWYG editor, but you can also edit HTML directly, or you can use external editor like DreamWeaver or Emacs/Vi to edit content.

Answer 3

I interpret the question to mean that he wants a standalone editor that the authors can run on their workstations, and not have to use the web interface to write content.

I don't know very much about this area, but I have used Contribute (Adobe, was Macromedia). Not entirely stable on a Mac, but never lost any data IIRC. I think it can do some of what you want, including working offline then uploading to the site later.

Answer 4

What you will need is a tool (not a CMS, holy cow!) that does all the items in your wishlist. I came across a good writing tool with absolute extendability:

Windows Live Writer

It fits in your wishlist for items:

• basic web development surface
• offline editing

The other items in your wishlist can easily be added by using the extensibility points:

• ability to add/edit placeholders using a GUI (use SmartContentSource)
• ability to indicate placeholders on design surface (application support this if you're using SmartContentSource)
• ability to build our own reports (use ContentSource if no interaction required)

There's no source control integration, but the tool saves each writing into a separate file, which then can be managed by your favorite source control tool.

The only thing that it doesn't have in your wishlist is Mac support (of course, this can be easily 'fixed' by using virtualization).

I have many years experience using the tool (since it's first beta as far as I remember), trust me, it's the tool you've been searching for.

Answer 5

This was a slightly unfair question to put on stackoverflow as it's so closely tied to our particular requirements (in my defence I imagine many large web publishing outfits face similar decisions).

In the end we went with an IDE-agnostic design using xhtml as our interchange format and a frequent (n minutes) scheduled task 'building' authored input into publishable output(s).