Open-source CMS's - What we can learn from each other
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[edit] Mentor Summit notes
This session was about how we could unify the different CMS'es (and other software)
- Every CMS has its specialty
- Naming conventions are misleading to end users (harder to compare projects and see what fits the user best)
- Standardize the way content is stored and displayed so switching to another platform can be done more easily
Side note:
I hope what I wrote down here is correct as I didn't take any notes during the session, but I'd love to see this having a future.
Well, I remember some things a bit differently so I'll just add my notes here ... Dhaun 16:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Proposed ideas
- We could work together in "messaging" / "marketing" to get the word out: We're all Open Source systems, so it doesn't really matter which of these systems a user chooses (as long as they don't go with a proprietary closed-source system and paint themselves into a corner).
- We should try and sync our terminology (starting perhaps with "What makes a CMS?"). For example, some systems have categories, others have subjects, topics, tags, taxonomies, etc. Using different names for the same things really confuses our potential users.
- Tempting as it may be, the chances of a fully working im-/export between systems are slim.
--> For LMS there are standards like Common Cartridge or Content Package from IMS Global (Chuck Severance who was participating at the discussion is working for IMS) and SCORM available. These standards do mostly allow users to exchange content but most of the time not the whole course. Maybe e.g. the Common Cartridge standard could also be used for exchanging content throughout different CMS? I dont know enough about CMS to answer that question, this is just a thought. Instead of creating new standards building upon existing ones... --Joelfisler 10:07, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
- Security - would love to see a security council of members of all interested CMS's to work on defining best practices for application development, hosting, unit testing, and also to create a clearing house of vulnerability information for external libraries. It would rock to see high level security and testing experts help to champion this cause. There is a clear win-win for free software communities to collaborate and improve the reputation of free software across the board. AmyStephen 03:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Misc.
- Perhaps we could agree on some sort of "middleware standard" to allow re-use of components from other systems.
--> For LMS there exists a standard called Learning Tools Interoperability Standard from IMS Global (at least a draft). I dont know how specific these standards are (only for LMS?) but I could imagine that LTI could without problems be applied to CMS also. Chuck Severance or Marc Alier (both were at the Summit) did implementations for their LMS (Sakai and Moodle respectively) so they would have to answer this question. Like with my other comment above I do think that we should first see if existing standards are applicable before "inventing" new standards. --Joelfisler 10:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
- CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) may be worth looking into as a way to port over at least some of the content.
- Deliverance could help putting themes on sites, no matter what the backend is (uses XSLT).
--> We (OLAT) are currently using a CSS framework called YAML (but there are other, like the one from Yahoo etc.). This might also be an option since compared to CSS XSLT is quite a complex technology for most CMS/LMS-users. --Joelfisler 10:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Taking action
[edit] Terminology overview
| CMS Name | Function | Function term (of CMS) |
|---|---|---|
| Drupal | Grouping/classifying content | Taxonomy |
| Wordpress | Grouping/classifying content | Categories/tags |
| B2evolution | Grouping/classifying content | Categories |
| EzPublish | Grouping/classifying content | Sub items |
| Mambo | Grouping/classifying content | Categories/sections |
| Joomla | Grouping/classifying content | Categories/sections |
| Geeklog | Grouping/classifying content | Topics |
| Bricolage | Grouping/classifying content | Categories |
| Zikula | Grouping/classifying content | Categories |
[edit] Transfering to a different CMS
Quick idea though: Export to xml in a unified format, then import via translation file (which is CMS specific)
- Porting articles / simple content pages across isn't much of a problem. The interesting bit are things that are attached to the content: Users (who wrote the article?), permissions (who can see the article?), categories (and such, see above). This will quickly get you into CMS-specific stuff that can't really be ported.
- If you're looking for a simple way to import/export content without any specifics attached to it, Movable Type's mtimport format is probably sufficient in many cases.
