Forum OpenACS Q&A: Manila or other content management systems

How does OpenACS/ACS Classic compare to technology such as Manila http://manila.userland.com/?

It looks like a great way to allow updates to the system. Is there any open-source solutions similar to Manila? I have noticed the Manila site several times since I started researching technology for community based web development. It looks like oreillynet.com uses it, or at least one writer does. I found it here http://dave.o reillynet.com/stories/storyReader$38

Collapse
Posted by Don Baccus on
I've only skimmed the site, but in terms of pure content management the ACS is lacking.  However, aD's putting resources into filling that  hole in the toolkit so this won't be true for long.  If you can't wait, Manila might fit your needs.

It doesn't appear to be built on top of an RDBMS, or at least doesn't mention this on the summary page.  If not, you may be more tied into their code than you might be with the ACS - in other words, since the ACS is built on top of a standard RDBMS engine the contents of the database are available to you as a web programmer.  That means you can  write any kind of skin you like on top of the datamodel if you don't like the way the ACS does something, and as long as you maintain the integrity of the database, your custom pages will work fine with the rest of the toolkit.  If Manila sits on top of a custom flat-file storage system, it probably isn't as flexible in terms of being customized by the programmer.

But that's not what they're selling, anyway.  They're aimed at out-of-the-box solutions, while the ACS is aimed more towards being a toolkit for people to build high-end and highly customized web sites.  Depending on what you're looking for, this alone may be a determining  factor.

ACS 4.0 will be a big step forward, but is going to take a while to roll out in both ACS Classic and OpenACS form.  Since it will have a package manager, it will be easier to cobble together a custom site from pieces without doing custom programming, or fixing all those missing or buggy user group customizations and stuff that only incompletely exist in today's modules - all modules will play nice with the core when they're rewritten to the package manager spec.

But ... that's the future.

Lastly ... Manilla's not free, while OpenACS is.  Download a copy of the ACS and play around and decide for yourself if it meets your needs!

I have used Frontier, which is the earlier version of what became
Manila.

Manila does NOT have a full fledged dbms.  It has a simple,
easy-to-use hierarchical "object database".  It also incorporates its
own scripting language, which has bits of Lisp, TCL, and C influence.

Its main strengths are its simplicity and its library of functions for
handling HTML.  You design a template for your site and then "render"
(turn into HTML pages) each page.  You can embed scripts inside the
pages.  So it is very good for consistency.  It also has neat scripts
that for instance will re-render a page to static HTML whenever its'
content changes.  You can also run it in full dynamic mode, where each
page request causes a script to run (like adp or .tcl pages).  It has
several neat ideas - one is an outline (hierarchical tree) type, with
functions that let you walk the tree in various ways.  Plus it has
builtin features for handling tables.  It also has non-validating XML
support.

Its main weaknesses are that it is not robustly multi-user the way
Oracle or Postgres is - it uses something similar to file-locking to
ensure that only one person at a time is editing that page; that it is
not open-source; that it uses its own language (new stuff to learn)
that is OK but not great (lots of special cases, idiosyncracies); and
that it is $899 PER USER, so if you have a development box and a
deployment box, you need to buy 2 licenses.  And the Linux version is
not considered very stable, so you have to run Mac or Windows NT/2K as
your server.

Collapse
Posted by Dave Bauer on
Thanks. I am running OpenACS on a couple of sites I am building now. I am the only content writer so far, so I shouldn't have a problem using html, tcl and adp pages.