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There is an old php base website which provides a single service and is working for many years. Now we have decided to change the website itself to become more modern and faster and at the same time providing an app for it and we are going to hire some people for that. As I'm a developer myself (a c++/go fan and mostly in machine learning area) I want to know what are the best options to choose when such thing is needed. I personally think that the whole back-end should work as a RESTful API and then probably something like react and react-native in front for both web and mobile but I'm not sure if this is the best decision we can make.
I want to know what other people with same requirements have done ? Some people recommended us meteor but it seems to be changing very fast and we really need some stable and mature solution without too much maintenance.
Looking forward to hearing your suggestions
I'm a big fan of the REST API + front-end JS framework architecture.
One option would be to build an API with Ruby on Rails. The "rails generate new" command includes an --api option for generating a Rails application that lacks views and serves JSON. You can learn more about building APIs with Rails on the rails-api gem GitHub page. (Keep in mind the rails-api gem has since been rolled into Rails proper.)
Overall, Rails is a fast way to get a services layer up and running. It's fairly simple, and might be a good option for your app, which as you said, provides just one service. However, Rails is also powerful enough to support a much more substantial API.
If you want a REALLY simple Ruby-based services layer, you should check out Sinatra. You could also go full Javascript with Express. It's about as simple as Sinatra.
If you have a background with C++ and Go, you may not want to jump headfirst into these web-heavy technologies. Consider using Java Spring for your services layer. (I would link but I don't have enough rep. Haha)
As far as the front-end goes, you're on the right track with React and Meteor. I'm personally a fan of Angular (specifically Angular 2). It's a really popular JS web app framework -- great for asynchronous Javascript and single page applications. Granted, Angular has a steep learning curve to start, but if you're willing to climb, it pays off.
Let me know if you have any specific questions! Good luck.
Meteor is a bit heavy if all you want is a web site. It depends how much interactivity you want - if it's more of an app, then it's worthwhile doing, and if you want to do ios and android apps, then Meteor is pretty fast to get up and running.
I would recommend to choose a technology that either you are keen to learn, or you have some skills in already. Learning curves mean longer projects.
If you need native mobile application and interactive site than react and react-native with pure API server is a really good solution. I developed several similar services and very satisfied with this combination.
First of all you can share API access layer and part of business logic between both clients.
Second you are using identical technologies on mobile and web. However mobile application has real native UI because React Native don't use browser.
Thirdly server becomes more simple, maintainable and scalable.
Personally I prefer WebSockets as network protocol (look at amazing Go gorilla websocket implementation). But if you need support old browsers or prefer more classic REST API than it's ok also.
Answering based on my comment above, this is all opinionated, but I find that Node/JavaScript tends to be about the best bang for the buck, if all you are trying to do is get through proof of concept stage, and possibly scaling from there. Depending on your back-end needs, you may want to migrate parts, or whole to Go or Python.
On the Front end, using web tooling (mostly centered around node and npm), I would build the primary UI with React and the material-ui components... Targeting a web/browser interface... you can then extend this, in order to support more native-like features. You can build "native" versions using Cordova for Android and iOS. You can use electron as a base for desktop versions.
For the backend, node is a nice place to start, and I feel RethinkDB is a great database for many use cases (despite the changes from commercial to open platform happening now). Mongo is another option, and there are hosted/managed options through a few providers. Alternatively, I'd probably lean towards PostgreSQL via Amazon.
The API server, I'd definitely do a first pass with Node, and then, as needed rewrite whole, or in parts with Go or Python... Go will have better performance and scale without compromising some of the ease of development aspects. Python has very rich tooling, if you need more flexibility than performance for some areas. There are other options, C# is becoming a very good cross-platform option, which I happen to really appreciate as a language. The performance there is very good, though you may find some constraints less appealing than JS or Python.
YMMV with any of these choices.
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Closed 9 years ago.
My company is planning on developing a brand new web front-end application.
Some background:
It must "sizzle" i.e. a nice marketable look and feel.
Our development team has no Java experience, with limited experience in Silverlight, Javascript, JQuery or CSS.
Time to market is a factor.
We need to stream large amounts of data from an Oracle database.
It must support 500 - 1000 concurrent users
It will be hosted internally behind a firewall.
We need mapping (geo-spatial) capabilities.
Someone has recommended using GWT instead of Silverlight or Traditional technologies(Javascript, jquery, CSS etc.).
I am not sure if this is the right way to go? A lot of the GWT news is from 2007/2008. It makes me think that this technology is old and maybe dying.
If you had a choice would you choose GWT?
unfortunately two of your statements are mutually exclusive in this context:
Our development team has no Java experience
Time to market is a factor
I'm a Java programmer who has picked up GWT over the last year or so. It's immensely effective being able to write direct to the browser using a compiled language & mature development tools. I can fly through web-development faster than ever before (using ASP, JSP, ExtJS ...).
But, as the other commenters have said: if you've no Java experience you're going to find it a real challenge picking up both technologies (Java & GWT) in a short time. If you do manage to make it to market in a reasonable time I could only imagine the code base would be in very poor condition (since you'd be learning as you go) - which would be a very poor foundation for your organisation's shiny new venture.
There again, you don't have a 'lot' of skills in the other related skills you listed either.
I suspect there's a more effective solution. As some wise old goat project manager said:
I have three variables to delivering your project: time, cost and quality. Pick any two
In your situation, if the organisation wants a quality product in a short time, it's the cost factor that must compensate - your organisation should buy in some interim GWT expertise to give you a sound software architecture and to mentor your team for the next few months. After that you'll be ready to take the reigns, inheriting a quality codebase by 'standing on the shoulders of giants'.
As others have said, GWT definitely is not a dying project. Quite the contrary actually as there are now more than 20 regular contributors from within Google (versus a semi-dozen back in 2008). Wave (despite being discontinued as a Google service, it's still alive as an Apache Foundation project), Orkut, AdWords, Google Moderator and the new (still beta) Google Groups are made with GWT; and parts of Google Buzz and a few other projects at Google are built with it too.
Now as to your choice:
Silverlight is a dying technology. Microsoft made it clear that it now invests in "HTML5": http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-our-strategy-with-silverlight-has-shifted/7834
GWT is mostly a client-side toolkit, but it comes with "high productivity" tools for client-server communications (GWT-RPC and RequestFactory for end-to-end protocols, AutoBeans for easy JSON serialization). With UiBinder, you can easily put to use your web designer skills.
if you're comfortable with JS, then go for it, but then you'd have to choose the "right toolkit" (jQuery? Google Closure?). Otherwise (which seems to be the case), it really depends how much "ajaxy" you need/want to be. I'm a strong believer in "one-page apps", but YMMV, or you can have specific constraints that rule it out. In any case, you'd have to choose a server-side technology.
So, depending on your needs/wants and skills, I'd choose GWT or "some JS toolkit". In any case, you'll have full control over the look and feel (unless you choose one of the bloated players: ExtJS/ExtGWT, SmartGWT or similar; you'll probably have a shorter time-to-market with these, but you'll pay it later, in terms of performance, integration with other toolkits, and look-and-feel).
In the light of what you're saying about your skills, I would definitely recommend GWT (despite your lack of experience with Java); because lack of experience with JavaScript is far worse than lack of experience with Java (you're talking about a "large application", so it's really important to start building things right and/or have tools to help refactoring, which you'll have with Java).
#ianmayo replied while I was writing the above, and I can only second what he said!
GWT is definitely not old or dying! A lot of Google's own applications are developed using GWT. You can download the GBST case study and learn how the global financial company uses GWT to improve productivity and create a rich user experience. You have to know that when you use GWT you automatically use javascript, html, etc. You create a your gwt application in java, but when you compile it gwt creates a folder with html files, javascript code, css, etc...
I definitely recommend it!
In order not to mislead readers with above seemingly unanimous answers, keep objective view in respected stackoverflow, following review expressed exact experiences I had with using GWT. Whether GWT is dying depends on how many new apps will adopt it,Google trend can tell (gwt trend).
Excerpt from https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38441/when-not-to-use-google-web-toolkit
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I am both good and bad to answer this question - good, in that I've actually used it before, and bad, in that I was quite experienced with HTML/CSS/JavaScript prior to working with GWT. This left me maddened by using GWT in a way that other Java developers who don't really know DHTML may not have been.
GWT does what it says - it abstracts JavaScript and to some degree HTML into Java. To many developers, this sounds brilliant. However, we know, as Jeff Atwood puts it, all abstractions are failed abstractions (worth a read if considering GWT). With GWT, this specifically introduces the following problems:
Using HTML in GWT sucks.
As I said it, to some degree, even abstracts away HTML. It sounds good to a Java developer. But it's not. HTML is a document markup format. If you wanted to create Java objects to define a document, you would not use document markup elements. It is maddeningly verbose. It is also not controlled enough. In HTML there is essentially one way to write
<p>Hello how are <b>you</b>?</p>
In GWT, you have 3 child nodes (text, B, text) attached to a P node. You can either create the P first, or create the child nodes first. One of the child nodes might be the return result of a function. After a few months of development with many developers, trying to decipher what your HTML document looks like by tracing your GWT code is a headache-inducing process.
In the end, the team decided that maybe using HTMLPanel for all HTML was the right way to go. Now, you've lost many of GWT's advantages of having elements readily available to Java code to bind easily for data.
Using CSS in GWT sucks.
By attachment to HTML abstraction, this means that the way you have to use CSS is also different. It might have improved since I last used GWT (about 9 months ago), but at the time, CSS support was a mess. Because of the way GWT makes you create HTML, you often have levels of nodes that you didn't know were injected (any CSS dev knows how this can dramatically affect rendering). There were too many ways to embed or link CSS, resulting in a confusing mess of namespaces. On top of that you had the sprite support, which again sounds nice, but actually mutated your CSS and we had problems with it writing properties which we then had to explicitly overwrite later, or in some cases, thwarted our attempts to match our hand-coded CSS and having to just redesign it in ways that GWT didn't screw it up.
Union of problems, intersection of benefits
Any languages is going to have it's own set of problems and benefits. Whether you use it is a weighted formula based on those. When you have an abstraction, what you get is a union of all the problems, and an intersection of the benefits. JavaScript has it's problems, and is commonly derided among server-side engineers, but it also has quite a few features that are helpful for rapid web development. Think closures, syntax shorthand, ad-hoc objects, all of the stuff done by Jquery (like DOM querying by CSS selector). Now forget about using it in GWT!
Separation of concerns
We all know that as the size of a project grows, having good separation of concerns is critical. One of the most important is the separation between display and processing. GWT made this really hard. Probably not impossible, but the team I was on never came up with a good solution, and even when we thought we had, we always had one leaking into the other.
Desktop != Web
As #Berin Loritsch posted in the comments, the model or mindset GWT is built for is living applications, where a program has a living display tightly coupled with a processing engine. This sounds good because that's what so many feel the web is lacking. But there are two problems: A) The web is built on HTTP and this is inherently different. As I mentioned above, the technologies built on HTTP - HTML, CSS, even resource-loading and caching (images, etc.), have been built for that platform. B) Java developers who have been working on the web do not easily switch to this desktop-application mindset. Architecture in this world is an entirely different discipline. Flex developers would probably be more suited to GWT than Java web developers.
In conclusion...
GWT is capable of producing quick-and-dirty AJAX applications quite easily using just Java. If quick-and-dirty doesn't sound like what you want, don't use it. The company I was working for was a company that cared a lot about the end product, and it's sense of polish, both visual and interactive, to the user. For us front-end developers, this meant that we needed to control HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in ways that made using GWT like trying to play the piano with boxing gloves on
First of all , GWT is not dying technology, its usage increases, and its latest version is 2.2. I am using GWT for 2 years, since version 1.6. Its improvements since them is quite amazing.
Since GWT is client side technology, it does have only positive effects of your application scaliblity feature. Because server side web technologies such as jsf, struts, wicket are server resource consumers, but gwt does not need any server resource to render user interface..
But there is problem for your team. Because your team has no java experience, it would be quite difficult to adapt yourself two new technologies java and gwt.. If you have time to learn , I would strongly suggest GWT.
It takes approx 1 year to become proficient in GWT. Using GWT pays off if you develop an application as sophisticated as MicrosoftOffice or PhotoShop. It makes no sense to use GWT for small and relatively simple apps, IMHO. GWT is a time killing framework indeed, and you have to have very strong reasons to use it. I think that 99% of web apps don't need GWT.
GWT is not dying framework, but time killing framework. It has security issue. You can do easily CSRF(Cross site request forgery) request to the GWT applications. Also Java and Javascript are totally different languages, you can't translate easily. For your productivity avoid GWT.
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Closed 11 years ago.
What do you think about both?
I began reading a book about Catalyst, and found it pretty complex as compared to Dancer.
so now I'm giving Dancer a try, and it looks easier to learn and more "human friendly".
I think David's comment is very accurate and excellent. However, as someone who has done development in both but is not a developer on either perhaps I can be slightly more objective (and technical) in what the differences are.
Both frameworks provide a variation on the Web MVC paradigm.
Catalyst's main level of abstraction is the Controller. Catalyst expects you to break separate logic out into separate packages in some logical fashion (Login code goes here, Registration code goes there, Search functionality over here). This works incredibly well if you have a team of programmers since each of you can work on separate files and not step all over each other during merges. Catalyst provides a lot of tools for making the Controller logic extensible and flexible, I think the premier example of this is Chained actions which let you split up and build a complex flow for any given request. The downside is that it becomes very seductive to put your business logic into the Controllers and you end up with very fat logic in the Controllers where it (theoretically) belongs in the Model.
Dancer's main level of abstraction is the Route. My experience with Dancer is this leads to much smaller applications. Partly my experience here is tinged with the fact that I have dealt with several thousand line applications in Catalyst but I have yet to write a Dancer app that is longer than 200 lines (with a much smaller scope). I think however that this experience holds true. The push in Dancer is in keeping the Controller logic very thin because it doesn't have the same tools for managing complex behaviors there that Catalyst does.
Honestly I've enjoyed working in both of them. They both provide different opinions on what writing a web application is supposed to be. I would, given the time and inclination, recommend learning both ultimately.
This is a somewhat subjective question, but I'll try to give you an answer in an objective way. First things first, a disclaimer: I'm part of the Dancer development team, so my opinion should of course be considered somewhat biased :)
Catalyst is more widely used than Dancer, and so there's more community support behind it - if you were to look for contractors with experience working with either framework, say, you'd be more likely to find developers who've used Catalyst. So, if you're looking for commercial support, that would be a good reason to choose Catalyst.
Dancer is a younger project, and targeted more towards smaller projects, making getting up and running quick and easy, and trying to stay out of your way. That's not to say that Dancer isn't suitable for larger projects, however; the same habit of staying out of your way means you can organise your project in the way that suits you.
However, it has picked up a lot of support, and there's a growing community of helpful users and developers on IRC and the mailing list, and more and more useful plugins being released all the time. As with Catalyst, Dancer is designed so that you can pick and choose your preferred template engine, session storage backend etc, and it's easy to extend the framework by writing your own plugins if you need to.
For user testimonials to see what people say about Dancer, see the section at the bottom of the homepage on the new website: http://www.perldancer.org/
In the interests of showing other options, there's also Mojolicious, another modern Perl web framework which has been gaining in popularity lately.
Catalyst provides the same abstraction that Dancer does, Dancer's strength or rather Catalyst's weakness or rather Dancer's weakness is in how Catalyst forces the developer to adhere to Perl OO best practices and the MVC design pattern. After doing webapps for a while, this will all become apparent.
I realize that this may be subjective but I truly need an answer to this and I can't seem to find anything close enough to it in the rest of the Forum. I have read some folks say that the framework (any MVC framework) can obscure too many things while others say that it can promote good practices. I realize that frameworks are great for a certain level of programmer but what about individuals starting out? Should one just focus on the language or learn them together?
I think web development is way more than anyone grasps when they first start getting into it! Read this and know that it is all optional...but required to be really good at what you do.
I suggest that you spend time learning your language first. I would suggest learning C# simply because it is vastly more marketable and it is usually directly supported in most of MS products. By learning C# - programming in ASP.NET, console apps, servers, services, desktop apps, etc. will all be within your reach. You can program for most of the MS products as well as on many Linux type platforms.
Once you have this down then you can move to programming for the web as programming for the web has some intricacies that most other environments don't have. Concepts such as sessions, caching, state management, cross site scripting, styling, client side vs server side programming, browser support, how HTTP works, get vs post, how a form works, cookies, etc. are all at the top of the list of things to learn separately not to mention learning the ASP.NET base frameworks and namespaces.
Once you have the programming language down and then the concepts of web programming I suggest that you pause and learn database design. Don't worry about performance just yet...try to first learn good design. Performance will come next. A good start for you is Access (blasphemy I know). It is easy for a beginner to work with. And it translates into a more robust platform such as SQL Server easily. Learn at the very least some SQL...but I suggest that you learn as much as your stomach can handle. I heard someone say that SQL is like the assembly language of the database. The number one thing that slows an application to a halt is piss poor database design and poor queries. Once you have this knowledge - stuff it away in the back of your mind and take a look at a good ORM. NHybernate is probably best at the moment but is more complex that the basic learner needs. For that reason I currently suggest getting LINQ to SQL up and running as it is SUPER EASY to work with. Then look at Entity Framework (although I still think it sucks...and you should wait till EF 2.0...ERRRRR...now 4.0 released with .net 4.0). Then NHybernate.
Now is the time to start to understand the infrastructure that is required by web development. You may bump your head against this as you learn some of the web programming stuff. But you need to understand the basics of DNS, IIS, load balancers, sticky routing, round robin, clustering, fault tolerance, server hardware setup, web farms, cache farms (MemCached Win32, Velocity), SMTP, MSMQ, database mail queuing, etc. Many people may say you don't need this. That there will be some knowledgeable network admin to help you out here. However they generally know things that impact them...not you. The more you know here the more valuable you will be to the company that hires you.
Now you can get into the details of best practices and design patterns. Learn about the basics such as repository pattern, factory pattern, facade pattern, model view presenter pattern, model view controller pattern, observer pattern, and various other things. Follow Martin Fowler and others for suggestions here. Take a look at concepts such as inversion of control, dependency injection, SOLID principle, DRY, FIT, test driven design, and domain driven design, etc. Learn as much as you can here before moving to the next step.
NOW you can think about frameworks! Start by creating a basic application with ASP Classic (comes with IIS for free!). This will give you a flavor of a no frills web development environment. Take a look at ASP.NET web forms (briefly) to see how MS attempted to make things easier by hiding all the complex stuff (which you now know how to manage on your own from your readings of the above materials!!!). Now you no longer need ASP.NET Web Forms. Move immediately to ASP.NET MVC. The MVC framwork gives you all the power you need to create a good easily manageable web application. If you build something really big no framework for pure web development may be able to deal with what you need. However MVC is way more extensible for such UBER custom scenarios.
Now that you have made it through the journey to ASP.NET MVC you can take a look at things such as Microsofts Enterprise Application Blocks (such as they use at MySpace). Take a look at Elmah error logging (a must have). Look at how to build a custom SiteMapProvider for your MVC site. If you need to get into searching stuff understand Lucene.NET.
And if you made it this far...you are ready to figure out the rest on your own as it comes up! Have fun. There is a lot of room in this space for a person with some understanding of all of the above concepts.
You'll be using SOME sort of framework. The question is, what level do you want to learn at?
You'll probably not care to learn about asynchronous I/O and mutlithreaded vs. select/poll styles of web servers.
So then, your language of choice is going to provide a layer atop this, the languages preferred "web interface" API. For Java it's Servlets, the lowest level you'd typically code at for server side web applications.
You should find what this "lower level" layer is in your language and learn the API at least. You should know basic HTTP like status codes, cookies, redirects, POST vs GET, URL encoding, and possibly what some of the more important headers do.
You'll then come to appreciate what these higher level frameworks bring to the table, and be better able to evaluate what is the appropriate level of abstraction for your needs/project.
Web development requires a certain degree of organization, since it relies so much on separation of concerns. The browser, for example, is designed to display data and interact with the user. It is not designed to lookup data from a database, or perform analysis. Consequently, a web development framework can help provide services that are needed to make the browser experience a practical one.
The nice thing about employing a platform is that it will provide core components essential to the making of any web application that you won't (and shouldn't) have to think about, such as user membership, for example. Many of the design decisions and deep thinking about how to implement these services has already been done for you, freeing you to focus on what you actually want you application to do.
Of the available frameworks, I find that frameworks that implement the MVC (model-view-controller) pattern are very practical. They clearly organize different functions of web development, while giving you full control over the markup presented to the browser.
All that said, you will need some fundamental skills to fully realize web development, such as HTML, CSS, and a core programming language for the actual underlying program, whether you use a platform or not.
I don't think I agree with the Andrew. I don't think learning C is a pre requisite for web development. In fact, learning something like Javascript, Action-script or PHP is often easier due in large part to the vast numbers of sites and tutorials available, and are enough to expose you to the fundamentals of pretty much every programing language. Variable, Conditions, Loops and OOP. I just think learning C# introduces a lot of learning that isn't really relevant to web development such as pointers and memory management.
As for wether you should learn a framework first? Definitely not. Never ever. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet first and be comfortable with HTML/CSS, Server Side Scripting (PHP/ASP/Python/Ruby whatever) and love it or loathe it, but you're going to have to have a decent understanding of Flash and Action-script.
The order in which you learn these is entirely up to you. But my learning plan would go like this...
Start with HTML. It takes about half an hour to get the basics (it's made up of tags with attributes, end of lesson 1) and it's good to get it out of the way first.
Then start leaning CSS. You'll get the basics again, very quickly. But CSS is a minefield so expect to spend the rest of your life figuring it out.
Next up Action-script. Most people wouldn't agree with me, but bear with me. HTML and CSS aren't programming languages. Action-script is. And learning a programing language for the first time is difficult and tedious. The advantage Action-script has over most other languages is that the results are very visual. It's enjoyable to work with and you can sit back and take pride in your accomplishments at regular intervals. This isn't possible with server-side scripting languages or Javascript and there's a whole host of stuff you need to learn to get server side scripting up and running. You can't build space invaders in with PHP for example.
I've changed my thinking here. I would encourage beginners to ignore ActionScript and focus on Javascript. I still believe that being able to see stuff on screen quickly is a good motivator, but I would encourage people to look at canvas tag tutorials and frameworks. Javascript has come a long way since 2009, and is now the lingua franca of programming, so it's incredibly useful. My initial point about HTML and CSS not being programming languages still stands.
Then, you can start with your server side language. At the same time, you're going to have to figure out the database stuff. I recommend PHP and MySQL because it's free.
Again, I've changed my thinking here. I would encourage beginners to use Javascript on the backend (Node.js), and split their database learning between relational databases and noSql solutions such as Mongo.
Then.... learn your framework. Or better yet, roll your own. That's what I've been doing and it's supercharged my learning.
If you're getting into web development, You HAVE to know how those building blocks work. You don't have to be an expert in all the areas, but you should try to become an expert in at least one of them. If you start learning a framework before you get the fundamentals you'll be in a sticky middle ground where you don't understand why things don't work which will infuriate you, and anyone who has to work with you.
you should learn how to use framework because it would be helpfull for u in the future also it is easier to learn.
MVC will help you a lot .. trust me ... i was developing web project not using mvc and it is like mess ... (in the past there are no well know mvc and i never heard about it)
Short version: yes, and then some.
FWIW : This more generic answer may be of use to someone out there.
What: Frameworks take out tedium of using boiler-plate code again and again. They hide complexity and design issues under wizards and conventions. They also use special libraries, design patterns etc. in ways that are far from obvious to a beginner.
So using a framework is good for getting things done without knowing exactly how - like using an ATM without knowing the internals. You just add your code bits in certain places and things 'just work'.
HTML > CSS > Ruby > SQL > Rails/Javascript framework > Libraries would make for a good learning track. Rest you learn as you go along by being curious, hanging out on forums or as extended learning as need arises.
HOW: The problem starts the minute you step outside simple text-book examples (i.e. when you try to get it to do something even a bit different).
Decoding cryptic error messages when it seems like you've done everything right but things still don't work. Searching on error strings in forums may help out. Or just re-starting from scratch.
Reading up articles and books, videos, trial-and-error, hard-work, search-engines, stackoverflow/forums, local gurus, design articles, using libraries, source-code browsing are a good way to climb the learning curve gently and on a requirement basis.
Working-against-the-framework is the number one problem for beginners. Understanding what the framework expects is key to avoiding white-hair in this phase. Having enough insight to manually do what the framework automates may help reduce this second-guessing effort.
WHY: For more advanced debugging/design, it's good to know what the framework is doing under the hood esp. when things don't work as you planned. Initially you can take the help of local-gurus or forum gurus who've already done the hard work. Later as you go deeper you can take on more of that role. For example there's a "rebuilding rails" book which looks under the hood of Ruby on Rails.
Note: Some of the tips are oriented towards Ruby/Rails but you can easily substitute your favourite language/framework instead.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm about to start a project for a customer who wants CMS-like functionality. They want users to be able to log in, modify a profile, and a basic forum. They also wish to be able to submit things to a front page.
Is there a framework or barebones CMS that I could expand on or tailor to my needs? I don't need anything as feature-rich or fancy as Drupal or Joomla. I would actually prefer a framework as opposed to a pre-packaged CMS.
I am confident I could code all this from scratch, but would prefer not to, as something like a framework would significantly cut down on my time spent coding, and more on design and layout.
Edit: I should have been more specific. I'm looking for a Content Management System that will be run on a Debian server. So no .net preferably.
I think i may end up going with Drupal, and only adding modules that I need. Turbogears looks a bit daunting, and i'm still not quite sure what it does after it's 20 minute intro video...
TinyCMS doesn't look like it's been touched since... 2000?!?
I think the best is CMS Made Simple. Seems like drupal takes awhile to customize.
http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
tinyCMS is about as barebones as you can get. (edit: fixed link, I had gotten a little click happy and linked to the wrong thing)
#modesty, I would definitely NOT use SharePoint, as it is anything but barebones. It is a fairly expensive product (especially when compared to the many free alternatives), and it has quite the learning curve to do anything interesting.
Woo, another Debian nut!
I think you need to be a bit more specific here, Forum != CMS. Is this for internal company or external customer use? What language(s) do you know/prefer? There's no point in recommending a Perl or PHP framework if your language of choice is Ruby. Do you need to plan for scalability?
What's wrong with Joomla or Drupal? I would argue that they can be successfully used on small sites. Maybe a framework isn't what you're looking for, maybe you just need a library or two (eg. PEAR?). If you need something smaller, maybe writing your own backend library that you can reuse for future projects would be a better solution.
For a one-size-fits-all framework have a look at Turbogears. ("it's a big hammer, that makes every problem look like a nail")
I've been obsessing over TikiWiki lately. Although it has "wiki" in the name, its full name is "TikiWiki CMS/Groupware" and it's an interesting piece of software. It has a real everything and the kitchen sink feel. It includes support for wiki, blogs, articles, forums, and files out of the box (and a ton of other stuff too). I think the real appeal to me is that most of the stuff can all be integrated together, wiki pages can include other wiki pages and articles (which is more useful than you might think). It's in RC stage for release 2.0 and is still missing a ton of features, but I think I might keep using it and contribute some of the features that are missing, it's a really interesting base right now.
The Mozilla support site is implemented using TikiWiki, for an example of a really beautiful implementation.
Drupal's include system should keep everything relatively lightweight as long as you only include what you need. Despite the fact that it comes with a smattering of modules, what you choose to enable is all that will be included at runtime. If you have to get under the hood and make modifications, I'm also a firm believer that Drupal is a more friendly and elegant system than Joomla. We use Drupal at my work-as much as a framework as a CMS-and it has proven pretty reliable in keeping development practices at a high level.
I realize I'm a couple years late to the party but I was looking for something like this myself and ran across this post while doing Google searches for 'barebones cms'. Along with this post, this turns up:
http://barebonescms.com/
There is also a forum on that site.
A similar combination could probably meet or exceed all of your criteria. Although, as others pointed out, you weren't particularly specific on the details.
While the original author is probably long gone, hopefully someone else finds this useful.
I would suggest PmWiki, it's something between a framework/wiki. By default there aren't even users, just different passwords, for different tasks, but using PmWiki Cookbook 'recipes' You can add additional functionality.
You can check their philosophy to get main idea what it's about.
If you want a Rails solution, Radiant CMS is a good option. It's simple, elegant, extensible and, of course, comes with all of the benefits of being based on Ruby on Rails.
if you are looking .net you can take a look at umbraco, haven't done much with it (company i work for wanted much more functionality so went with something else) but it seemed lightweight.
Edit : if the customer wants a tiny CMS with a forum, I would still probably just go Drupal with phpBB or simple machines forum, almost positive they can share logins. Plus tomorrow the customer is going to want more and Drupal might save you some work there.
Might want to check out Drupal.
Here are the details of the technology stack that it uses.
I have never used it so I can't vouch for the quality etc but definitely worth a look.
how about you use drupal but scale down and code it according to your needs.
definitely will be faster than code-from-scratch-with-framework
I have been working with Joomla for some time and I believe it one of the best CMS for starting off a Website. I have tried others a lot, But Joomla is better because it has Numerous Extentions (Components , Modules) and also its very Easy to Customize. You could also look at the Community Builder Extension for joomla.Other requirement like Chnage Fronpage Articles etc is a Breeze....
joomla.org
For some reason Joomla Does not Suit you try Drupal.
Wordpress is a very powerful but simple CMS.
bbPress is a very simple but integrated forum (easy, Wordpress user account integration with cookies and all).
Since you have programming experience you may find Wordpress to be the perfect match (PHP, MySQL) with plenty of plugins and hooks to help you achieve what you need. For example, there is a featured posts plugin that will put selected content on the front page.
I need to jump on the Umbraco bandwagon here. As far as ease of use from a developer standpoint goes, there is nothing easier than umbraco and v. 4 has full master page support and a tone of other stuff... and it's free.
For windows take a look at the DotNetNuke is asp.net based, free and open source and easily skinned and modified, there is also a thriving market in add-on modules. In addition most hosting companies offer it as a pre-installed application
Expression Engine is fantastic. It's free to download and try but you must purchase a license if you are making a profit with it.
WordPress actually has a forum plugin - it's nothing fancy but it's there. It handles user management et al and has a big community for plugins and themes. I think it is probably the easiest CMS to install & run (I've done some legwork here). There are plugins that update the core & plugins automatically (take that Drupal). I've tested these and they seem pretty solid. As usual - backup beforehand.
For .NET MojoPortal looks pretty good and is lighter than DNN. I saw the edit but thought I'd include this anyway since it looks like it's worth checking out.
Drupal is a language unto its own - I wouldn't tackle it unless you're going to do so with some regularity, otherwise it's just another different framework to learn. The uplink into my brain is at capacity already so I gently pushed it aside. The themes tend to look the same too.
Joomla may suit your users for usability.
I'd go for a pre-made framework myself because it would have a community and expansion capacity. What your client wants today will pale into insignificance tomorrow.