Lussumo CMS

obsidian

my only issue with writing something this large in a language like RoR is not for the users, but rather for the lack of server support that is currently available. PHP is almost an understood thing with any good web server out there. the turnaround is that RoR is almost as easy to integrate with MySQL and PostgreSQL that database control would be a cinch either way. i would, though, love to see a good open source CMS that is FULLY customizable, too. i could offer what little freetime i have to helping with the OOP stuff since that's what i do all day every day anyway, but i don't know how much time i could offer. let me know if anything ever comes of this one.

jos

Yeah, well take page, then make a sub page for it, then try to place the sub page link somewhere else than right under the page link ;)

That's exactly what I've done on a site. Just get the id of the current page and put this where you want't the subpages to appear:

wp_list_pages("child_of=$current_page_id&depth=1&title_li=");

Kosmo

obsidian: I agree, in the current state, the RoR CMS will never become so popular as any PHP CMS would be. But I think that we are the pioneers now, just like when PHP came. If we don't make a CMS that will blow you strainght out of the water, RoR will never be considered anything more than just a novelty. I mean, these backpacks and what evers are neat and all, but they are just sites. But think about a popular open source RoR application that makes people want to have that RoR support from their host. At this time, there are no RoR applications that I would go to my host and demand RoR support. jos: That is cool, must be pretty new addition tho. That just makes the WP tad better in all the important areas than TXP in my books. It handles everything like a CMS should, separates posts, static pages and has something of a navigation control.

jesusphreak

Kosmo, I think you misunderstand the point of RoR.

RoR makes it so easy to write apps that it doesn't make sense to write a CMS with it. Any CMS you make is invariably gonna fall short of exactly what someone needs.

RoR makes it to where you can write an app quickly and easily that will fit your exact needs.

If we don't make a CMS that will blow you strainght out of the water, RoR will never be considered anything more than just a novelty.

RoR isn't really considered a novelty by anyone in the industry any longer. Its only been out for a year and it already has massive headway. PHP originated in 1994 or so and only became popular around 2000. Give it a bit more time and RoR will get the hosting support it needs: I don't think any one app (especially not just a CMS) is going to convince people to include RoR hosting.

3stripe

Take heart in the fact that major hosts like Dreamhost now offer RoR as a one click install...

jesusphreak

Yep, Site5 offers RoR support as well, although its not an automatic install.

Kosmo

Jesus you missed my point for building the CMS. RoR maybe fast enough to drop the need of some programs, but the point is that even if you are able to fast and easily make a complex program there still is a need for set of tools. Wouldn't you rather take existing program that fits for 90% of pages and write modules for it in a blink of an eye to make it suite 100% for your project? It's absurd to say that RoR alltogether takes away the need for CMS or any other programs. There are PHP Frameworks too you know, and still PHP CMS and other programs are as popular as ever.

Minisweeper

I really need to do some ror coding...

corwin

I know PHP (not well, ASP better), but I must honestly say that RoR is completely new to me. Can anyone tell me why I should care about RoR? back ontopic A CMS that can do anything AND is simple to use is very hard to create. What you do essentially is abstracting the code layer and present is as a GUI to some extend. if you make this "shell" around the code too 'thin', the GUI is often too complex, and a shell that is too 'thic' will more likely be easy to use, but have often more limits in possibilities. You need a programming god and a really good interface designer too create the ultimate CMS, cause being a good programmers is not enough. [some complaining about GUI's in general] on a side-track....look at linux, the OS architecture is completely different from windows, but why on earth did they make al these GUI's like windows? There is nothing against being inovative from a UI's perspective, yet almost no one seems to care. (few exceptions offcourse, like Alias|Maya's HOTBOX..great!) Now if a total noob would ask what linux is...you would say....."it looks like windows....but underneath it's actually completely something else"... instead of... "It's something totally new, can't really compare it to windows" in fact, the very reason I like vanilla is because the GUI is a breath of fresh air. [/some complaining about GUI's in general] So there you have it. An all-purpose CMS is a GUI thing. coding can be done sooner or later.

outbreak

i always felt that a CMS should utilize includes so that you could drop whatever you need on any page.

in the backend area, you'd be given the choice of how to structure the admin pages. for example, if you want to make one page like a blog, you'd choose a text field, a text box, maybe a drop-down menu (that you would fill in with whatever was necessary), and a date thingy and place them in the order of your preference. for a photo gallery, you'd add a text field, maybe the option to add a couple of upload functions, etc...

once thats all done, you'd be able to go into the admin interface with your custom designed back end and then use include functions to place those dynamic sections anywhere on your site.

does this make sense to anyone? i've had this idea for a long time, but i've never been able to bring it to life because i dont have the patience to write such code. i always felt like it would be the best solution if possible, but maybe its not even feasible.

Kosmo

Actually that is one of the best ideas I have ever heard outbreak. When I was making my very first public commercial sites, I made the whole site using includes and some if/else variables. It would be very cool to have a set of fields like title, date, author, excerpt and content that you could control yourself in an AJAX inteface. I have to think about this some more.

outbreak

shit, maybe i shouldnt have typed it then! i could be making millions!!!

leason

Outbreak's idea is similar to a module for PostNuke called Pagesetter. In pagesetter you define document types. Each document type is made up of several fields having a label and and a field type (eg, date field, HTML field, string, boolean...ect, and a special one called 'list'). Then you create instances of that document type - these serve as the content for your website. To the end user it looks like this: http://www.eestables.com (pardon the design) In that site I have several document types; one for the news articles, one for the horse biographies, another for general articles (not visible yet) and one more for sale ads (also not visible right now - nothing for sale). You can check out some demos and documentation of how it works at http://elfisk.dk -- might be a good source for inspiration. He's doing all kinds of interesting things with it nowadays. -Lee

leason

Oh yeah, the other two document types you can see on my site are the services and the videos. Each document type has several templates you can define for it - one for listing in those blocks on the homepage, one for the summary (the news articles), and one for full display. The videos page demonstrates this ability pretty well. When you click videos you see the summary view. Clicking a video title takes you to the full page view. Okay, enough from me now - I'm done. :)

jesusphreak

RoR maybe fast enough to drop the need of some programs, but the point is that even if you are able to fast and easily make a complex program there still is a need for set of tools.

The set of tools that you need is RoR.

Wouldn't you rather take existing program that fits for 90% of pages and write modules for it in a blink of an eye to make it suite 100% for your project?

And there is a common thought process that goes with this: the first 90% of your site is always the easiest, its the last 10% that takes the most time. Building a CMS might mean that someone can create most of what they need for a site, but they still will have to rewrite certain parts or add certain parts to get it to do exactly what they want. Often with RoR its just easier to write the thing yourself from ground up because you know exactly what you are looking for, and with RoR, it doesn't take a whole lot of time to do that.

There are PHP Frameworks too you know, and still PHP CMS and other programs are as popular as ever.

There are, but PHP is a language rather than a framework (like RoR), and Ruby is generally an eaiser language to learn and use for most people.

Anyway, an RoR CMS (with most of your ideas Kosmo) has been thrown around the RoR community for awhile know but its almost always rejected. This link explains why CMSs aren't really popular within the Rails community and also might give you some ideas. Here are David Heinemeier Hansson's (the creator of RoR) thoughts on the whole issue.

Kosmo

Oh fine Jesus, I won't make the CMS... Just kidding. I would do the CMS with PHP if I could code more than <?php include''; ?>

jesusphreak

Oh fine Jesus, I won't make the CMS...

Just kidding.

Lol, I know that I'm not going to talk you out of it, and its not like having an extra CMS hurts anything. That's why I included the link that might give you some more ideas.

And again, Drupal is definitely worth checking out for ideas.

Kosmo

I tried to use Drupal for my current project (lauch date should be january) but it confused me, and I thought that it is way too much a community tool to be used as a serious CMS like company websites for example.

emergent

I'm a big fan of www.phpwcms.de, a php/mysql content management system with a huge focus on navigation and editorial content. A lot of the sites on my portfolio were built with it. - www.emergentmediagroup.com

tcline

I tried to use Drupal for my current project (lauch date should be january) but it confused me, and I thought that it is way too much a community tool to be used as a serious CMS like company websites for example.

I've used Drupal for virtually every client project in the last 6 months.
It is beautiful underneath, beautiful.
Developing corporate sites with it is a cinch -- it's well suited for community sites but little-to-no modifications are required to make a slick non-community site.
Has an inital learning curve but if you can read you can understand it.

Incredibly flexible.