Forum OpenACS CMS: Possible CMSystem

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Posted by Rob Oliver on
Thought I'd let everyone know about MMBase. Just like
OpenACS/ACS it's best of breed (my opinion) in a crowded
market. Relatively mature with many features that would  be ideal
for OpenACS. - ready built web-based editors, etc....

Taken from MMBase site -

'MMBase introduction
MMBase is an Open Source content management system that
can be used for publishing websites. MMBase coveres the
whole spectrum needed to: import, manage, maintain, export
and publish information. In other words, MMBase contains web
based editors for editorial people to insert, manipulate, and
delete information. MMBase has a language which enables web
designers to publish the information dynamically. MMBase has
also knowledge of connected devices. This means that
publishing a CD, or an image (placed on a scanner), or a live
stream involves minimal work.

Separation of content and design

MMBase strictly separates content from design, which means
that content can be reused in different designs. When creating a
web page, for example, you can use HTML tags to create the
appropriate design for that individual page. Showing the
information on that page as XML or plain text is no longer
possible. By strictly separating content from design, information
can be reused in different websites (3voor12.vpro.nl,
www.vpro.nl/pp98, www.vpro.nl/pp99), displayed on a WAP
device, broadcast, sent as e-mail, published on an IRC channel,
or exported as XML.
MMBase models its information as objects. MMBase creates
objects that are a representation of things, and MMBase
maintains objects that specify the relations between things. The
object structure results in a web of objects and relations that
represent your constantly changing reality. A music band, for
example, can have a relation called "plays on" the festival called
"Pinkpop", and this relation indicates that the band is displayed
on the Pinkpop site. If you want to remove the band from the site,
you can simply remove the relation and the band will not be
published on the website anymore. If you want to publish the
band on another site (with another design), you can simply add a
relation that indicates that the band needs to be displayed on
another website.
Another advantage of separating content and design is that all
information is stored only once. If the band changes its name,
you only have to change the name of the band once and all
websites will change this information. This is a welcome
contrast to "hardcoded" webpages, where you might have to
review all the web pages to see if the new band name has been
properly published there.

Device and software support

Thus the way MMBase maintains its information is very
important, but another very import issue is that MMBase can
communicate with a lot of hardware and software that is
frequently used for publishing information. e.g. CD players. If a
song of a band has to be published, you can insert a CD into a
CD player and use your editors to relate the track to the band, at
which point the song will be published on your website. No
saving of the CD, or converting of formats, or copying to a server
is necessary. MMBase has automated these frequently recurring
actions. Another example is a photo placed in a scanner. The
editors can be used to tell MMBase which relations that image
has, and you can give the image a title and a description. For
other actions such as converting the image to a JPG, resizing the
image is needed. Relating an image with a band will cause the
website to show that image on the band page.
MMBase integrates a lot of external software. This means that
you don't have to encode music file to different file formats, or
convert image formats, etc. MMBase also contains internal
software agents that are able to automatically broadcast audio,
save audio from the radio, check information within MMBase, etc.
MMBase has a great deal of functionality, and the MMBase
community will create more and more of this in the future.

Editors

Information can be added to MMBase in a number of ways, the
most important of which is the MMBase editors. The MMBase
editors allow people to insert, manipulate, and delete
information. The editors are based on a web interface, and can
be run in a web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer.
The advantage of a web-enabled editor is that you don't need to
install additional programs to edit the information, and you can
maintain the information from all over the world. Editors don't
need to have any knowledge of website design. They are only
involved in the process of managing information.

Publishing information

Graphical designers can publish the information maintained
within MMBase in any format they wish. They can publish the
information at a website, in multiple websites, on a WAP device,
in Flash, or can broadcast the information maintained by
MMBase. MMBase provides a language that enable designers to
retrieve the MMBase information. The information can also be
retrieved with other languages, such as PHP, and JSP. MMBase
can even give the information as XML.'

Could be a great start?!

Thanks Rob

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Posted by Rob Oliver on
By the way! Forgot, as you may have noticed! MMBase is @
www.mmbase.org
Thanks Rob
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Posted by Michael Feldstein on
FWIW, mmbase is apparently written in Java and released under the Mozilla license.