[Glastonbury] demo CMS sites for members

[tim hall]

Thanks for this recap Martin, having missed the last meeting I can now catch 
up. :-)

Last Wednesday 08 December 2004 13:33, Martin Wheeler was like:
> To recap, I would use:
>
> - DRUPAL (quick'n'easy to install) for collaborative document generation
> by a small team (2-6) of editors, where everyone has equal editing powers;
> [e.g. let's write a book on a single topic we all know about -- everyone
> can edit/blow away anyone else's work]

Not what I need, the demo looks foul.

> -ZOPE CMF (hideously steep learning curve to get your head round Zope as a
> publishing environment) as a simple clean interface for a larger group
> (e.g. government department size) wishing to publish members' individual
> contributions to a many-faceted community project;
> [e.g. let's produce a bunch of papers on related or themed topics where
> each of us is an area specialist -- everyone edits only their own work]

Looks vilely corporate.

> - ZOPE PLONE as a seemingly bog-standard, wishy-washy, "the visual
> interface sends me to sleep" content management system of the type much
> more excitingly implemented by PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, et al.
> [e.g. train-spotting community's friendly CMS. Yawn.  Single overall
> editor, but community members can control their own pages]

I think I'm going to throw up, just to add some colour and excitement to it!

> - PHPWEBSITE (easy to install and set up) for large community projects
> with multiple editors (or even teams of editors), covering many disparate
> areas of interest.
> [e.g. town or local government *interactive, community* website, split
> into lots of individually edited sections]

Phew, this one looks almost useable! Does it involve much fiddling around with 
horrid PHP code?

> As soon as I got home from the last meeting, I set up demo versions of
> each of these packages for group members to play with (plus a few others,
> like various wikis and weblogs, etc.); and until such time as we can get
> these on the group website (we need root access), they're currently
> accessible on my trusty desktop server:
>
>            http://startext.demon.co.uk/

Great. Thanks.

> [NOTE: there is NO "www" in the above.  If you have a 'user-friendly'
> browser which automatically inserts this for you -- shoot it.
> "www" is soo-o-o fin de siecle dotcom; know what I mean?]
>
> Oh -- you also have to read the //whole// index page.
> To my chagrin, I find that most readers hardly ever bother to scroll down
> the text with their web-browsers -- they usually just read what's visible,
> as it first appears on screen, then move on to the next page.
> [///True///  I watch the buggers doing it constantly in the classroom.]

Over 50% of people don't actually LOOK at the page they've just surfed up.
The vast majority of people won't look at anything that requires further 
action unless you can somehow inspire them to do so. This may in fact turn 
out to be a Good Thing [TM] Why would you want the ignorant buggers to go 
wandering around these wonderful and not-so wonderful demo sites that you've 
gone to the bother of setting up and not appreciate what they've seen or 
worse, inadvertently messed up. These people certainly are not ready to 
install content management systems, with all the best will in the world.

> Another discovery I've made since the meeting is ZMS -- another Zope
> product intended for scientific, medical and technical publishing, and a
> massively welcome relief from the blandness of plone.  And easier to set
> up and edit from a web-browser.
> I've put a copy of that on the site too, so feel welcome to play.
> (I like it so much, I'm probably going to replace publishing with the
> Movable Type weblog with publishing under ZMS.)

Now yer talking. I like it. Lots.

I also had a look at your wikis. On a pure visual I could be interested in 
Usermod. I don't particularly care for MediaWiki, having used it on several 
occasions. http://demudi.alioth.debian.org/ is using 
http://www.edgewall.com/trac/, which is aimed at software developers, eet 
look vairy nice! Also http://3ca.org.uk/home is using http://xoops.org/ - 
anyone else had any experience with that?

I may have a closer look at ZMS, PHPWebsite and Xoops, if one of them can do 
what I want then I might not bother with a Wiki as such. Thanks for narrowing 
down the choices Martin. I don't really have enough time to thoroughly 
research CMS right now, but if I can find one good system that will fit my 
needs, it could save a considerable amount of time.

cheers

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk