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I am working with a small team (2 others) of developers that are geographically dispersed, and I'm looking for good ways for us to collaborate on specs... We're thinking we might use Google Docs to write the spec in so we can all have access to modify it in a central location.
What have you done? What good ideas do you have?
If you have an intranet or VPN, I would actually consider installing and using a small Wiki for these specs.
Compared to Google docs you get:
Much better versioning and change tracking (IMHO)
Much easier to start new documents for subsections
An actual markup rather than WYSIWYG (a matter of taste, I prefer LaTeX to Word).
Possible to attach variety of other file types
Very easy to backup
Very easy to create an offline version
You don't have to worry about storing sensitive materials elsewhere.
The disadvantage is that it is not WYSIWYG, which may or may not be an issue to you.
Of course, you can pick a Wiki implementation that supports a better editor, and possibly even a synchronous collaboration one.
Google Wave - exactly what it's meant for - collaboration
IMHO, a word processor is the wrong tool for a programmer. A spec should be written in a plain text editor, and utilize lightweight markup such as reStructuredText, AsciiDoc etc.
The benefits of such an approach are:
There are excellent tools to manage plain text, that are already in the hands of programmers (VCS, automated build systems, diff, patch, programming editors, grep, etc.)
A markup language allow for expressing intent rather then formatting.
That in mind, a Wiki seem to be the obvious choice.
Personally my tool chain of choice is:
reStructuredText as the markup language.
Trac as a Wiki
Firefox + the it's all text extension
Emacs + rst-mode
The choice of technology is one issue and Google docs is a good choice IMHO. But the real challenge is how to manage the process e.g. divide the tasks.
My suggestion is to first make sure that the platform and all related technologies are decided-upon as best as feasible. Then, compose a a thorough table of contents. A well-designed TOC will allow you to divide tasks properly and not "step" on each others' work. From then on you each "flesh" out your assigned sections as well as review each others' work.
In effect, each TOC subsection becomes an atomic unit of work that can be assigned and maintained by an individual who is also accountable for said section(s).
Good luck!
I think it depends on
How heavily into writing the specs you all are
If you're likely writing at the same time
Whether you intend to publish the specs.
Google Docs is nice and easy to get started with. It's also great that you can now export folders all at once. Still, for something that's going to be published to the web, a wiki or general cms is a better presentation vehicle. A wiki will also integrate with your existing site.
If you've got small specs, primarily written by one person then use whatever tool is available where you're hosting the project code or website. If you're not likely to be editing at the same time then a wiki is good.
I've done the wiki thing, the passed document thing and the Google Docs thing.
The wiki thing has a low starting effort and lasts a pretty long time. At a certain size it does get to be a pain.
The passed document thing (writes, email, edit, email, etc) only works while one person is starting everything up. As soon as there are even minor edits then it sucks.
The Google Docs thing is fine until you have several docs and several editors or want to publish it online.
hth
This isn't programming related, but I've personally used Google Docs to write shared documents and found it easy to use.
I would suggest enabling Google Gears however, in the event that the Google servers go down momentarily or an internet connection isn't available.
For writing specs collaboratively, you could try Gingko.
It's a card-tree editor, which means it's a mix between index cards and an outliner, with real-time collaboration and full Markdown support (as well as basic LaTeX).
We are still missing several features (version history, comments, etc), but for some the benefits of having everything in a tree structure outweigh these drawbacks.
Writing specs with it is great, because you can create a card for each user story, and drill into it as much as you like (and organize them into categories if you'd like).
http://gingkoapp.com
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On my first job interview, I was asked why did I build my own CMS? Why not to use one of existing CMS, Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal...? At first, I was stunned. I couldn't immediately recall all of my reasons for building my own CMS, but this was definitely one of the main reasons: It's my code and if I want to change something in that CMS (which I often have to do, because each website I build needs CMS with different functions) it's not a big problem. For some time I've been using Wordpress and one of the main things that distracted me from using it was discovering bugs in code that wasn't written by me and this bugs were often, especially if I made some changes to CMS or added a plugin...
Here, I can find these 8 reasons why NOT to build own CMS:
It won’t meet users’ needs
It’s too much work
It won’t be a standard solution
It won’t be extendible fast enough
It won’t be tested well enough
It won’t be easily changeable
It won’t add any value
Create content, not functionality
Quote from the same page:
So the main question to ask yourself
is: ‘Why am I really trying to
re-solve a problem that has already
been solved before?’
Well, I definitely agree that it's hard to invent CMS that hasn't been already invented, but on other hand, I think every CMS is (or should be) individual... it maybe won't have a million of functions, it will have 3 functions but their usage will be clear (to a user) and do all that one site needs to have. I think also that it is not good to give to a client a CMS with a lot of functions that are never used and it looks probably more professional when website and CMS together look like one product.
I would also like to comment some quote parts:
"It’s too much work" - I agree, but when using existing CMS and customizing it to website needs and can sometimes be very hard job or mission impossible.
"It won’t be easily changeable" - I disagree with this one.
What is your opinion on this one, why did you develop or didn't develop your own CMS?
Ile
This is an interesting question that applies to most development, not just when building a CMS.
In general, I would say that it's a bad idea to reinvent the wheel (and most of your 8 arguments are correct in most cases), but there are exceptions. The first one that comes to mind is one from Joel Spolsky, In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome:
If it's a core business function -- do
it yourself, no matter what.
The point is, if you're making your money directly from building content management systems, you should not take one from someone else and tweak it until it fits you. You'd rather be in full control over your own product.
Edit:
Also, don't forget that the urge to reinvent things stems (among other things) from a fundamental law of programming:
It's easier to write code than it is to read it
This does not mean that we should take the road that appears to be easier but it explains why we fall for it. Take the challenge and actually read some code, rather than write it, from time to time.
I would build a CMS because it can be fun and a great learning experience.
However, any open source CMS can be customized to any client's need. The biggest problem is that you have to understand how that CMS works in order to be able to change it well.
Either way you would be faced with quite a big task, but I must agree with those who say that you shouldn't start from scratch (unless you are doing it to learn some new technology) exactly for the reasons stated in your question... As they say, don't reinvent the wheel unless you want to learn about wheels.
I've found it works when the context of the project is larger than just a 'content site'. I've worked on a number of real estate sites where the bulk of the content is coming in from data feeds, or already existing in databases that have had their structure set up long before you were involved. Really, we only had a handful of BS 'content' pages that made up the site that were rarely updated. What they really needed was a simple interface to data entry. It was far easier to build some one off components than try and shoehorn an existing system on top of an out of the box CMS.
Like others mentioned though, you must consider overall requirements. Is there workflow involved? Dynamic navigation? Then I'd start leaning more towards out of the box CMS's, but many times people say they need a CMS, when they really just need a WYSIWIG interface to a database. But sometimes not...
It seems to me that the biggest reason NOT to build your own CMS (besides security issues) is lack of support and upgrade path. I consider it a disservice to clients to put them on a custom CMS and then have to rely on you only support and updates. Even worse is having them pay for the development of the custom CMS - they are paying you to reinvent the wheel no matter how simple the site requirements are.
There are plenty of CMS options out there that will allow you to add your own custom extensions if your requirements are beyond what is built in.
The best reason (possibly only) to build a custom CMS is to learn a language well. Building a CMS is a great way to learn web development, but it's not a great way to service your clients.
As a team leader that is always being pushed to do more with less, I too ask the question "why would you write your own?" There are more CMS packages out there than there are programming languages and I find it difficult to believe that you cannot find one that meets most (if not all) customer, business and cost requirements.
If you find that code changes are needed, opt for an open source solution, make your changes and share as needed or desired.
I do know that many times a CMS systems is NOT what is needed. Many customers need a Content Editing System. What I mean is that someone technical puts a site in place and the customer adds/edits/removes pages. The pages are already well designed and formatted. In these cases, I can see where it may be quicker to design & implement something from scratch rather than chopping down a CMS with access rights or removing/hiding functionality.
Unless you're building one for the experience, there's only one real reason for building your own: It's cheaper and/or easier than using one on the market that meets your requirements.
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In my team we've got a great source control system and we have great specs. The problem I'd like to solve is how to keep the specs up-to-date with the code. Over time the specs tend to age and become out of date
The folks making the specs tend to dislike source control and the programmers tend to dislike sharepoint.
I'd love to hear what solutions others use? is there a happy middle somewhere?
Nope. There's no happy middle. They have different audiences and different purposes.
Here's what I've learned as an architect and spec writer: Specifications have little long-term value. Get over it.
The specs, while nice to get programming started, lose their value over time no matter what you do. The audience for the specification is a programmer who doesn't have much insight. Those programmers morph into deeply knowledgeable programmers who no longer need the specs.
Parts of the specification -- overviews in particular -- may have some long-term value.
If the rest of the spec had value, the programmers would keep them up to date.
What works well is to use comments embedded in the code and a tool to extract those comments and produce the current live documentation. Java does this with javadoc. Python does this with epydoc or Sphinx. C (and C++) use Doxygen. There are a lot of choices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_documentation_generators
The overviews should be taken out of the original specs and placed into the code.
A final document should be extracted. This document can replace the specifications by using the spec overviews and the code details.
When major overhauls are required, there will be new specifications. There may be a need to revisions to existing specifications. The jumping-off point is the auto-generated specification documents. The spec. authors can start with those and add/change/delete to their heart's content.
I think a non-Sharepoint wiki is good for keeping documentation up to date. Most non-technical people can understand how to use a wiki, and most programmers will be more than happy to use a good wiki. The wiki and documentation control systems in Sharepoint are clunky and frustrating to use, in my opinion.
Mediawiki is a good choice.
I really like wikis because they are by far the lowest pain to adopt and keep up. They give you automatic version control, and are usually very intuitive for everyone to use. A lot of companies will want to use Word, Excel, or other types of docs for this, but getting everything online and accessible from a common interface is key.
As much as possible the spec should be executable, via rspec, or doctest and similar frameworks. The spec of the code should be documented with unit tests and code that has well named methods and variables.
Then the spec documentation (preferably in a wiki) should give you the higher level overview of things - and that won't change much or get out of sync quickly.
Such an approach will certainly keep the spec and the code in sync and the tests will fail when they get out of sync.
That being said, on many projects the above is kind of pie-in-the-sky. In that case, S. Lott is right, get over it. They don't stay in sync. Look to the spec as the roadmap the developers were given, not a document of what they did.
If having a current spec is very important, then there should be specific time on the project allocated to write (or re-write) the spec after the code is written. Then it will be accurate (Until the code changes).
An alternative to all of this is to keep the spec and the code under source control and have check-ins reviewed to ensure that the spec changed along with the code. It will slow down the development process, but if it is really that important ...
One technique used to keep the documentation in sync with the code is literate programming. This keeps the code and the documentation in the same file and uses a preprocessor to generate the compilable code from the documentation. As far as I know this is one of the techniques Donald Knuth uses - and he's happy to pay people money if they find bugs in his code.
I don't know of any particularly good solution for precisely what you're describing; generally, the only solutions that I've seen that really keep this sort of stuff in sync are tools that generate documentation from the source code (doxygen, Javadoc).
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I want to convert a website to use a Content Management System for updating a large number of content pages for a website. The current website is mostly ASP.NET, but I am considering converting to PHP if it means I will have better integration with the "CMS of choice" in the market. I have heard of Joomla! and other CMS' but I would like some answers to which ones are considered better. Features that I need to support are custom sidebar and tab menus (with expandable javascript drop downs for example). Can anyone tell me of a good solution?
You should look at opensourcecms.com. It's a site that hosts demos for the majority of open source CMS's out there in both PHP and ASP.NET. You can try each one out and read the features and reviews. It's a good way to find one that meets your needs without actually installing them.
Joomla and Drupal are your most common and popular PHP based CMS solutions.
On the .NET side I would suggest only DotNetNuke. The amount of development that goes on in that CMS is second to none and there is a huge marketplace for content, modules, themes, etc. There is pretty much everything available in DNN to meet your potential needs.
The "best" CMS really, really depends on your requirements.
I will say that Joomla is pretty much typical PHP spaghetti, and I hate it, but it might work for you.
Kentico (a .NET CMS) is a pretty decent one that I've deployed a few times. Microsoft CMS is supposed to be decent, I haven't tried it though.
Without knowing specifically your requirements, I find it impossible to give a solid recommendation, though.
I didn't work with these applications yet, but AFAIK TYPO3 and ezPublish (both PHP) are considered much more professional than e.g. Joomla.
Drupal has a long history, proven track record of success (many high profile use cases, including the Obama campaign, Mozilla Firefox, and MTV in the UK), and a boatload of free modules and themes so you can start somewhere good. Drupal is also highly customizable in terms of how data is stored in terms of content types. Drupal has excellent consulting and contracting help.
Joomla is a strong second, but a quick look at Joomla criticism on wikipedia, and I think the choice gets much clearer. Two out of the three criticisms of Drupal on wikipedia are that it's too complicated, which is really a subjective matter as compared to the shortcomings of Joomla.
If web development is a hobby for you, then use an open source CMS such as those mentioned. If it is your profession, consider working towards writing your own that meets your needs. The first few will likely be a little rough, but in the long run it can prove very fulfilling and must more customizable than anything off the shelf.
Writing your own also forces you to consistently expand your skills and learn the intricacies of the programming language.
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If you have worked with DotNetNuke, what are advantages and disadvantages that you have come across? What are alternative Content Management Systems that you have used that you find are better or worst. I'm trying to get a feel of what Content Management System Frameworks people are using and the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Thanks,
XaiSoft
This post may help as it has covered some of this info!
DotNetNuke works well, and has a wide variety of addins that are available for purchase from various vendors. It is also open source which is nice, as it allows you to troubleshoot issues to a deeper level then if it was closed source.
We didn't spend a lot of time researching CMS systems but this past summer we couldn't find anything with the functionality of DotNetNuke which targets the .net framework. If your not tied to .net then there are a ton of options available.
DNN is very very dynamic in terms of functionality, features and security. There's is nothing like it. However there are a few drawbacks that i felt while using it.
The biggest drawback in my opinion is the response time of a DNN using sites. The code itself is very obsolete and you need to lock yourself and scour on each and every coding details before using DNN. One more is the URL dependency, if you need to change your domain name to another your old database will be of no use.
There are a lot of new promising CMS extension in Dot NET market and Sageframe, in my opinion, is the best of them. I have been using this extension for quite a time now and I am quite fascinated by its features though still in beta.
DotNetNuke is quite powerful. It's biggest advantage is the inline editing of site content, in my opinion. It's biggest disadvantage is that it is pretty resource intensive compared to other CMS systems.
Here's a comparison I wrote last month:
http://www.logicalvue.com/blog/2009/01/cms-shootout-dotnetnuke-vs-joomla-vs-wordpress/
The biggest disadvantage is the missing support for multiple languages.
Yes, you can install multiple languages but you can't write seperate content for each installed language...
It's not hard to write such a module yourself but the other problem is the URLs.
You can use the 'Human Friendly' option but yet again, this does not support multiple languages.
For instance /Products/tabid/57/language/en-US/Default.aspx becomes products.aspx but there isn't a possibility to include the language like this /en-US/products.aspx
I know there are 3th party tools like UrlMaster which covers this up but still I think this should be available in such a framework.
The biggest advantage is the ease of developing your own modules! If a functionality isn't available, you can write your own module without any problems!
.Net Nuke is not good for developing projects.
Microsoft is releasing lot of versiond and including lot of lauguages.
So how developers will learn all the things...
This is very bad for developers.....
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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.