[opencms-dev] Suitability of OpenCMS

[M Butcher]

Seji,

OpenCMS is quite a bit different from Vignette, so a "line by line"
comparison might not be the fairest way to approach the two. However,
I'll try.

First of all, OpenCMS is heavily optimized for Web content, which makes
development time for Web apps faster than some of the other commercial
CMS products I've used.

Content Uploads: 
OpenCMS uses an XML format for much of its content. Most of the Web
content is stored, managed and edited within the OpenCMS system (usually
via the administration interface). Editors work directly on CMS content
through their Web browsers.

Uploads of other content is possible through a number of mechanisms. For
the post part, though, external file formats (DOC, PDF, XLS) are simply
treated as binary documents, and (aside from specifying metadata) not
much is done with them. That said, there are a couple of reasources that
the OpenCMS community has worked on to add on some capabilities (such as
download catalogs and Lucene searching of PDF documents).

Viewing/Uploading Content:
OpenCMS handles files in a virtual file system (VFS), so navigating
documents is done by clicking through a document hierarchy. There are
also search tools to help editors find files.

Site Searching:
There are two or three (maybe more) modules to add searching
capabilities to OpenCMS. Some provide search for published files, others
search the CMS repository directly. All that I know of use optimized
indexing as a method of searching (e.g. "periodic full text indexing").
Again, searching generally only works for Web documents (and sometimes
PDF), but AFAIK will not work on binary formats like Word and Excel.

Scripting:
OpenCMS uses JSP, XML Templates and Java classes to handle content. JSPs
are probably the closest to TCL. OpenCMS is designed to be extended, and
there are lots of ways to develop additional functionality. In the past,
I've added on features to:
- allow user registration over the web
- integrate with third-party forums
- add email notifications
- search the repository
- email web pages
- integrate third party chat

Others on the list have developed custom calendaring, news, article
management, guestbook and weather modules which are available as Open
Source modules.

Any major CMS move will take time and resources, and data migration will
be a big task. I don't know if OpenCMS will be much faster than others,
but at least you have tools (and sourcecode) that will give a
development team a leg up in expediting the process.

Finally, In addition to the official website, you may want to look at 
http://opencms.al-arenal.de/ (a repository of additional modules and
documents) and http://www.opencms-forum.de (the forums) for more info on
the product and what people have done with it.

Hope that helps.

Matt  

On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 12:14, Seji Thomas wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
> I am having a web-site which is managed through Vignette Content
> Management System 5.x. It has a content upload module through which
> users of the system upload data to the system. The data may be text,
> textfiles, pdfs, docs, spreadsheets etc. Apart from this there is
> a content display module through which users can view content and
> search for those uploaded items. The users can also subscribe for
> various kind of mail alerts when a content of their choice gets
> uploaded. The current system employs periodic full text indexing on
> the database so as to speed up the search. The web-site also needs
> search functionality - both static and dynamic content(dynamic
> desirable). 
>  
> Vignette manages the site by way of running Tcl Scripts. How suitable
> is OpenCMS for developing and managing a site of this stature? I have
> mentioned only some of the major functions of the system. Since the
> softwares currently used are costly and some of the aspects like full
> text indexing has to be implemented more efficiently the site requires
> a major revamp without loss of data. 
>  
> Any opinions on this will be highly regarded. 
>  
> Thanks in Advance,
> Seji Thomas
-- 
M Butcher <mbutcher at grcomputing.net>