Forum OpenACS Q&A: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report

1: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report

Posted by Dave Bauer on 11/11/03 03:57 AM

A gathering of those interested in content management applications in OpenACS was held right before the Boston OpenACS Social.

Those attending included:

Dave Bauer
Caroline Meeks
Carl Blesius
Talli Somekh
Luke Pond
Dave Hill
John Sequira
Michael Steigman
Rich Graves
Dave ? from brandeis

If I missed anyone, please correct me.

There was a little presentation of the current CMS package which has been rarely used due to having an inpentrable user interface and needing too much work to become an end-user application.

After that I showed the raw state of the BCMS-UI-BASE package in the contrib repository. Talli demonstrated a web site that was built using BCMS and BCSM-UI-BASE.

We discussed improving the Tcl API to the content repository to allow rapid development of a custom user interface for content management. Those attending seemed to agree that getting a usable Tcl API into the OpenACS toolkit was important and that the BCMS and BCMS-UI packages were the closest solution existing to a end-user content management system and that work should be done to improve the BCMS packages so they could be added to the OpenACS toolkit.

A desire was expressed to have some sort of content managed home page as the default home page upon install of OpenACS. To allow through-the-web editing of the home page content to get a customized web site more easily upon install.

2: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 11/11/03 04:03 AM

Ok that was the report. This week, I am exploring adding another user interface that runs on top of the BCMS package. Right now in the contrib repository we have BCSM-UI-WIZARD and BCMS-UI-BASE. I believe Jun is mainly working on BCMS-UI-BASE at this point.

I have a couple of reasons to do this. #1 to develop an alternative user interface to demonstrate how a comprehensive Tcl API to the content repository enables rapid development of content applications. #2 to build a user interface similar to these mock ups: http://blesius.org/projects/openacs/acs-subsite/cms/ #3 To allow content to be managed from directly under an instance of acs-subsite without adding any files to the filesystem. This experiment requires adding an index.vuh file to acs-subsite and adding a package parameter.

As I am doing this I will add the code directly to the contrib repository so anyone interested can see what's going on and contribute ideas. I think developing several user interfaces will help us determine the effectiveness of the Tcl API.

3: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 11/11/03 05:23 AM

Hello,

I haven't updated bcms-ui-wizard since I have made changes to bcms. Lars has been modifiying bcms too, so some changes are in.

I plan to freeze bcms at some point and provide an apm or tar ball. So people can install on a relatively more stable code. Also gather up my docs and put it into html and add to it www/doc. Its not an easy task as I have to do other stuff too. After the client project I need to go over bcms and bcms-ui-base and turn it into a cleaned up implementation.

As I can see it and likely Lars and Dave. get_X and set_X tcl calls help in developing. But list_X and tree_X helps only on prototyping or making the query as your reference query. SQL still works best, unless the default query satisfies all the current needs.

If any developer out there is willing to help please email me. Right now Lars and Dave is helping out.

4: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 11/11/03 06:41 PM

I would like to be involved in the Tcl API aspect of all this, since there are still pieces in the original CMS that we should grab, better integration with ad_form which is possible (the building of content type forms automatically), etc.

After having taken a bit of a break the last half of summer and part of fall, I expect to be working virtually full-time on OpenACS/.LRN throughout this winter at least through early spring (I may take three-four weeks off in April or May).

5: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 11/11/03 07:25 PM

Hi Don,

The building of forms according to content type or more generically object type isn't something I am working at. As I have told Lars I am waiting for which implementation to follow. Lars is looking at this right now.

bcms is something that has helped me out and it just there on contrib, maybe it can help someone out there too. I have started to review and re doc the files. I have check in the first few files in.

6: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 11/11/03 09:06 PM

Don,

Great news. I definitely want to get as many developers from the community involved as possible, even if it is just to comment on the plans and implementation, although anyone who wishes to contribute code won't be turned away.

You are correct about the CMS package. There are a few items that can be reused from CMS. Many of the procedures make assumptions about how a CMS should work internally, which I think should be avoided, but we can definitely take inpiration from the general functions that are provided in the old CMS package.

Also, some of the functionality is tied to the user interface pages and not exposed as an API at all. I think the point is that BCMS or whatever comes from it will be the most basic operations needed to use the content repository and then it can be expanded as we learn more about how the content repository is used.

7: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Walter McGinnis on 12/03/03 12:34 AM

Dave,

Do you have an update on your work? Dave Hill and I will be doing CMS work for a client and would like to take part in the process. We should discuss how we can become apart of the team of people working on this.

Is there any code we can look at beyond the bcms stuff? How about webdav integration?

Thanks,

8: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 12/03/03 01:26 AM

Walter,

Just keep up with the forums postings. I think the latest news is that Jun has been cleaning up BCMS a little and not much else has happened.

I recommend you try installing the BCMS and BCMS-UI-BASE packages from contrib. I believe they will require OpenACS 5.0 unless you want to backport some functions such as list-builder.

Also check out the CMS project pages:

https://openacs.org/projects/openacs/packages/cms-future/

We definitely want to include real-life client needs in any CMS effort.

I would like to focus on finishing the tcl API to the content repository. Everything I have learned suggests that CMS UI are very subjective and will need to be customized for clients. Even so, we could use more example UI code for developers to base their work on.

9: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Walter McGinnis on 12/03/03 02:19 AM

Thanks. I've already read through the pages you mentioned, plus a lot of related threads and other related links. Here are some of them for posterity:

I'll be installing and playing with BCMS stuff soon (I've already done a survey of some of the code), but beyond that, I still have some design questions, etc. What I'm really getting at, is that we have some work cycles to offer the general CMS project if we can coordinate a workplan that suits our clients needs.

I have been encouraged by the Bug Bashes and this thread's pre-social meeting. Perhaps we need something similar with CMS down the line, i.e. a more hands on design and implementation meeting bash.

Thanks,

10: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 12/03/03 02:25 AM

Walter,

Having a coding session to work on CMS is a great idea. I have a bunch of little ideas I want to test out.

11: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 10)

Posted by dave hill on 12/03/03 04:24 PM

Excellent, I sat down to post about our upcoming CMS work and find that walter has beaten me to it. I'll start a new thread to get the idea of a meetup going.

12: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 12/03/03 05:42 PM

Hi,

I have committed some docs on bcms on the CVS. It should give you some additional info. Thanks.

13: Re: Boston OpenACS Pre-Social CMS get together report (response to 12)

Posted by dave hill on 12/03/03 05:55 PM

great. thanks, Jun. I hope you can be available online for the CMS meeting. I posted the message on the CMS board, here, as it seemed more appropriate.