Content Management Systems Research

The Mission Australia Organisation in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia runs a number of Comunity Work Projects. Some of these projects are part of the Federal Government 'Work For The Dole' program. One of these projects in Wagga is the Computer Refurbishment and Web-design project. Computers are donated by the community and are refurbished and then donated back to the community. As part of this project, we are going to be creating a web-site, preferably one that will allow input and interaction between participants in the project, organisers and the community.

To this end we need to evaluate a suitable Web Content Management System, or 'GroupWare' system to deploy. Since a large number of these systems, many of which are licensed under the GPL or a similar license, currently exist (12 Dec 2003), the main difficulty is in locating the one most suited to our needs, and which will require the least amount of manual coding of pages and functionality. This page documents this research process.

;http://www.zope.org/: A web-application server (written in python and c). This is very powerful but quite complex.

;http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/: Visually attractive. This is not really 'wiki' oriented. That is users are allowd to submit comments but not edit pages directly. At one stage (version 0.8) this system was based on the phpnuke [*] system but now (version 0.9) there is no common code. However, it is likely that the functionality and philosophy would be similar. This is a CMS developed by the Apalachian Statue University. The Faq's are slightly annoying to read because they are overly 'chunked' and require too much clicking.

Features-- | built-in wiki: No | documentation: Not bad. | End-user documentation: http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/manual/html/ | language: php | User comment posting: yes | Faq management: Sort of |Sql database Required: Yes

;http://phpnuke.org/: I dont particularly like this, especially the insistance on copyright mesages on all pages.

Features-- | Restrictions: A copyright Php Nuke label appears on all pages | built in wiki: | documentation: | language: php (v 4.x required) | User | comment posting: | Faq management: | Sql database Required: Yes

http://www.back-end.org/ Features-- | built in wiki: ? | documentation: poor | language: php

This is a php-based system which is apparently based on phpSlash. The documentation for this system appears to be poor

http://axkit.org/: | built in wiki: yes (?) | documentation: | language: php

This is a system to publish XML content in a variety of formats. It has a similar sort of functionality as the Apache cocoon project [*] but it seems to take a slightly less 'general' approach to the problem. It does not appear to be Java based. The question is: is this too 'powerful' a solution for the purposes of the Wagga Computer Refurb and Web-dev Project?

;http://www.drupal.org/: Another seemingly comprehensive CMS, perhaps on a level with 'zope'

Blogs usually allow people to 'comment' on diary entries, but this is not a feature which I need or particularly want for my purposes: which is to allow my self to keep a diary of my work for the current project. Perhaps comments which are displayed 'in' the diary page would be all right...

I need to be able to edit entries from a web-browser interface

; [*]: Requires MySql: yes, php4

; [*]: Allows columned and boxed page layouts. Requires a database: No

;http://retrincos.net/prog/yabe/README.html: small simple blog, no comments, No SQL required,

;http://www.blosxom.com/: simple. But does it do web-editing of entries? No it doesn't seem so. Also you seem to have to use unpleasant html to create links such as <a href= etc> oh dear. No sql required. Editing is done in a text editor

;http://www.pivotlog.net/: An apparently visually attractive web-site with a 'Blog' (web journal or diary) emphasis. Does not require a database. Does not have its own wiki (it uses the 'Erfurtwiki' [*]) Documentation: not bad

;http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html: A list of blogging tools

; [*]: A (small) php4 mySql based weblog system. The documentation appears very sparse.

; http://www.theconnexion.net/cgi-bin/blogwiki.pl: A wiki which discusses blogs!

; [*]: A good php wiki. | Sql NOT required | support auto table of contents | No access control

; [*]: Perl | support table of contents with <toc> | Diff | Good documentation | Perhaps the 'canonical' wiki | Sql NOT required

; http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FacetWiki: This page has an example of number multilevel hyperlinking of headings (I think this is the 'usemod' wiki)

: [*]: A very small perl wiki,

; [*]: Small simple perl wiki | Sql NOT required | renaming of pages | administrator blogging | Search | Quite good documentation |

; [*]: This is a perl wiki for Apache, seems to have a slightly prettier display than 'kwiki'. Online Documentation is sparse | Cpan module

; [*]: This is the wiki you are reading or using. Perl | One script file | numbered 'footnote' type links | Sql NOT required | search | Good Documentation

;http://erfurtwiki.sourceforge.net/: This is a php 'wiki' which apparently is easily integrable into an existing site. Contained in one script file.

;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines: A list of wiki engines on the original wiki site. Very comprehensive, sorted by language.

;http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr03/mattison.shtml: An article about some of the competing CMS systems, Twiki, Qwiki etc

;http://www.geocities.com/matth3wbishop/docs/wiki-systems.html: This is a previous document which I wrote on the subject of 'wikis' which is a primitive type of CMS system

;http://www.geocities.com/matth3wbishop/docs/web-collaboration-review.html: And this is a more general document with a focus on 'forum' software which is not what we really need in this case

;http://retrovox.com.au/product-data/docs/wiki-systems.txt: This is another very short document

;http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/: A site which appears to have interesting essays about the 'soap' protocol, name spaces, rss etc

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