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Django CMS 3.2 released

django-cms.org

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Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#31

Post by blueatlas »

EnderMB wrote: post #23
currysausage wrote: post #16

Off-topic, but since CMS-related submissions come up rather scarcely nowadays: What are some promising, modern Web Content Management Systems for medium-sized sites that I should look at, especially if I like the clean, modular design of ProcessWire very much, but not its implementation (too slow even with caching enabled)? I don't care about the programming language (PHP is fine, so is anything else). What I do care…

On PHP I quite like Concrete5. It's reasonably clean, and while I've only used it on small sites there are a bunch of people using it as their main CMS for decent sized sites. The CMS I use the most is Umbraco. It's an open-source ASP.NET CMS that I've used on a varied range of sites, from small to very large. It has its flaws, like most of these types of tools, but I recommend downloading it, and giving it a quick t…

I'll second the Concrete5 recommendation. It's MVC under the covers, a common sense architecture, highly customizable, an exceptional UI for content editors, and a good community. For content editors, we do a one hour boot camp and that is sufficient to bring anyone non-technical up to speed.

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#32

Post by intellectronica »

austinjp wrote: post #28
intellectronica wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the HN effect. Demo sites are "pre-deployed" to make sure you get a fresh individual site. Usually there are hundreds of them in the waiting but looks like we've got very popular all of a sudden :) If you'd like to give it a try and don't have patience to wait for a demo site to become available, you can also register to Aldryn [ http://www.aldryn.com/ ] (for free) and deploy your own site with a few clicks.

Slight side-track, but I'd be interested in your "pre-deployment" process. Could you enlighten me, or point me somewhere I could find out? Thanks.

It works just like normal site deployment (prepare containers with the site code and a database, etc, push it to cloud servers) but unlikely customer sites that are controlled by, well, customers, the demo is always the same site, so instead of making users wait for a deploy to start and finish when they request a demo, we deploy a bunch of demo sites in the background and when the user asks for a demo they just get one of the pre-deployed sites (while in the background we start deploying a new one to add to the pool).

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#33

Post by Jgrubb »

WimLeers wrote: post #29
Jgrubb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal 8 just dropped a couple weeks ago and will do everything you just listed out of the box. The code under the hood appears to be vastly more pleasant and interesting to work with than any other PHP CMS I know of, including previous versions of Drupal.

Indeed, Drupal 8 is first and foremost a data modeling tool. It's for structured content , not pages . It allows you to reuse that structured content in many ways, everywhere. (Django CMS as demonstrated in the video is purely about building pages, which makes it — if I'm being a bit harsh — just a glorified MS FrontPage.)

I've just gotten my first exposure to actually writing D8 code in the last few days. IMHO, you're allowed and thank you SO MUCH for this release.

I've been one of the skeptics on how big a change this was going to be for years, but now having looked at the delivered product I'm really impressed and really excited to move some old projects into it.

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#34

Post by DanieleProcida »

WimLeers wrote: post #30
etchalon wrote: post #10

Is this still a Terrible Tree of Widgets design?

What a great description! It perfectly describes my impression. Awful authoring experience for non-technical users. Which doesn't mean it's not excellent for certain use cases :)

I'm betting you haven't actually used django CMS 3.2 - since this release is entirely about improving the user experience for non-technical editors!

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#35

Post by leejoramo »

currysausage wrote: post #16

Off-topic, but since CMS-related submissions come up rather scarcely nowadays: What are some promising, modern Web Content Management Systems for medium-sized sites that I should look at, especially if I like the clean, modular design of ProcessWire very much, but not its implementation (too slow even with caching enabled)? I don't care about the programming language (PHP is fine, so is anything else). What I do care…

I would put the recently released Plone 5 on your list of CMS's to review. Major updates in Plone 5:

* completely new user interface for content managers * updated accessibility, mobilized themes, etc * content types can now be created via the web using the Dexterity. * the Diazo theming system makes customizing the look of Plone real easy via the web * Deco allows you to customize the layout of pages via the web. While Deco is still an add-on, it is ready for production use, and will be included by default in Plone in the future.

While Dexterity, Diazo and Deco all can be used via the web, you can export anything created via the web to the file system. If desired this allows you to quickly prototype work with the active involvement of content managers and designers, then bring the project under file system version control and add more advanced features via programming.

None of these technologies are new. The plone community has been working on them for much of the last 5 years, and they were available as options or add-ons to Plone 4. But the level of polish achieved, and the knowledge that these tools are standard makes Plone 5 a major improvement.

I had built many sites with Plone 3 & 4. I liked Plone, but it could be difficult to learn to program. I spent much of the last four years away from active Plone development. I am very excited by the new features of Plone 5, it is much easier to program.

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#37

Post by afandian »

currysausage wrote: post #16

Off-topic, but since CMS-related submissions come up rather scarcely nowadays: What are some promising, modern Web Content Management Systems for medium-sized sites that I should look at, especially if I like the clean, modular design of ProcessWire very much, but not its implementation (too slow even with caching enabled)? I don't care about the programming language (PHP is fine, so is anything else). What I do care…

Take a look at Wagtail.io . It's newish but seems to be getting a good amount of traction by some pretty interesting customers. Written in Python/Django FWIW.

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#38

Post by JonAtkinson »

As another poster points out, there aren't a lot of CMS-related posts on HN, but I'd like to share a little of our experience with Django CMS.

I've been using Django CMS since early in the 2.x releases (the earliest Django CMS site I still have the code for was using 2.1.0.beta2), and since then we have developed approximately 80 Django CMS sites; with traffic ranging from a few hundred hits a month, to our largest which serves a few hundred thousand hits per day across three languages.

In all this time, I still haven't found a compelling reason to switch to anything else. Django CMS's most powerful feature is that it's just plain old Django. This means that it's rare we can't use the CMS as a base framework for a site, and then plug custom applications into the site tree as necessary. Certainly few of our clients have needs which are exotic enough where this pattern breaks down. Yes, this requires a certain amount of learning curve, but it's not insurmountable at all, and I think it's conceptually simpler than most other CMSes out there (I've been an agency-side web developer for 15 years, and I still can't figure out how some people mangle the Wordpress page loop).

I was concerned early in the 3.x cycle when front-end editing was introduced (and I believe the introduction was mishandled by the development team), but recent releases have polished this to a level where I can ship it to clients with confidence. This week we launched a new site using 3.2, and content wizards, in particular, are a powerful addition (will these be made multi-step in the future? It would be nice from a UI point of view).

The CMS in general is in good hands, though I do worry that without strong community leadership, it might move too far towards being 'the platform which powers Aldryn', rather than a strong stand-alone CMS. Maybe that's too negative, but I do see it as a risk.

5 years ago I made a bet on Django CMS, and it turned out good, so I'm happy. Maybe it'll serve the next 5 years.

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#39

Post by DanieleProcida »

WimLeers wrote: post #29
Jgrubb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal 8 just dropped a couple weeks ago and will do everything you just listed out of the box. The code under the hood appears to be vastly more pleasant and interesting to work with than any other PHP CMS I know of, including previous versions of Drupal.

Indeed, Drupal 8 is first and foremost a data modeling tool. It's for structured content , not pages . It allows you to reuse that structured content in many ways, everywhere. (Django CMS as demonstrated in the video is purely about building pages, which makes it — if I'm being a bit harsh — just a glorified MS FrontPage.)

That video's just about the interface.

Even the demo http://demo.django-cms.org (good luck getting in at the moment, though) shows how django CMS can reuse structured data from multiple applications that also integrate with its editing and publishing tools (in the demo, news, people, events, jobs, etc).

There are biomedical labs for example that use django CMS to publish information automatically. Obviously django CMS itself knows nothing about biomedical data, but it provides the tools that make it very easy to integrate those applications (which thanks to Django are themselves very quick and easy to build).

Another example: https://developer.ubuntu.com/api/scopes/cpp/current/ is part of a django CMS site - and I can assure you that that API documentation is not coming out of a FrontPage-like page builder!

Re: Django CMS 3.2 released

#40

Post by the-dude »

leejoramo wrote: post #35
currysausage wrote: post #16

Off-topic, but since CMS-related submissions come up rather scarcely nowadays: What are some promising, modern Web Content Management Systems for medium-sized sites that I should look at, especially if I like the clean, modular design of ProcessWire very much, but not its implementation (too slow even with caching enabled)? I don't care about the programming language (PHP is fine, so is anything else). What I do care…

I would put the recently released Plone 5 on your list of CMS's to review. Major updates in Plone 5: * completely new user interface for content managers * updated accessibility, mobilized themes, etc * content types can now be created via the web using the Dexterity. * the Diazo theming system makes customizing the look of Plone real easy via the web * Deco allows you to customize the layout of pages via the web. Wh…

I would strongly advocate against using Plone ( 1 year of experience ). Slow, inflexible, data goes into a database which nobody uses and is not a database by any stretch of imagination. Effectively you are now locked in.

Even for a moderate site you would need a caching proxy in front. Code is not pythonic at all, but a java-esq class hierarchy over 15 levels deep.

Very small user base, little online help.

Will never touch again.

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