Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Looking to hire ACS (TCL) Guru Developer
Posted by
Hawke R
on 10/24/01 07:38 AM
Someone suggested that many of you would be interested to hear the reason for converting to ACS.
I'll detail that below, but obviously some details and names will have to be left out to protect the innocent (and those not so innocent). ;)
I came on board with the company in September 2000.
A project was already many months under way with a consulting company to build our company a fairly complex combination site.
The site was to provide:
eCommerce
Partner network of content providers and content distributors
Content management system
And more.
I stumbled across ACS for the first time at that October's Oracle Open World 2000 in SF.
I come from a broad background, and one of the companies I worked for specialized in implementing document workflow and content management solutions such as Filenet, Documentum, inConcert, and others. And I used to implement and support these systems.
I kept asking the consulting company why they opted to build everything we needed from the ground up, rather than getting something off the shelf that was at least 80% match to our needs.
They kept insisting there was no such product, and I didn't buy. But alas the momentum was already under way, and I as the new (and youngest executive by at least 10-15 years) CTO, wasn't yet proven in my opnions and instincts.
I saw the source code of this custom product 2 weeks before launch (I tried for months to get my hands on it before them, but was delayed by the consulting company daily).
I could tell once I saw it, that it was going to be a disaster. We launced on it December 13th despite my protests.
It's been hell ever since.
The system doesn't scale to out needs.
The user & group management system is a joke, and has to be hard coded to add anything new.
Most of the upload and download bulk utilities didn't work right until months more of work on our team's part.
We've been unable to add any new functionality because the system is totally monolithic, and in no way modular.
Any changes to any part of the code causes many unforseen failures.
We needed a system that our small team could manage.
Could work on in a modular fashion. Fixing fires in one area of the system, without breaking everything else.
Easily add features.
Has a high caliber user and group management system.
Flexible workflow and content management system.
Decent eCommerce system.
Strong portal/cobrading capabilities.
Scalable for traffic, content, users, searches, data imports and exports.
We work with thousands of pdf's and images at a time.
If it wasn't for the current systems' bottlenecks, our current 50k titles would be 4x greater already.
After months of haranguing the executives, they each one by one finally reached their pain threshold, and were willing to follow my recommendations to move to another product, and more specifically ACS.
I researched, installed, and used ACS Java 4.6, ACS TCL 4.2, OpenACS 3x. I ran each on my own personal websites over a 4 month period at www.merp.com, tolkienhome.org, lotr.ws, manicmechanic.net, and alpentech.net, colorificsigns.com, and other sites.
I now run my busiest and most community centric site (merp.com) on OpenACS (I liked ACS better, by I personally couldn't afford the Oracle license).
It became clear that ACS 4.2 TCL was easily 80%+ match to our current and future needs.
ACS Java was more in line with out development teams skill set, but the Java version would require to much coding from scratch, and doesn't have any proven implementation or enough community adoption(yet).
Maybe in 1-2 years when there are more modules, etc. We'll convert to that, but for now ACS 4.2 appears to have what we needed, just about ready to go.
Now we just need someone who keep show us the most efficient way to do that. :)
I hope this helps others considering these prospects as well.
I'll post to this thread over the coming months as to any issues, and progress made.
The deadline to launch on this new platform, is a VERY solid March 11th 2002. And if it can be moved up 1-2 months sooner, so much the better.
Thanks,
-Hawke
CTO
MightyWords Inc.
www.mightywords.com
I'll detail that below, but obviously some details and names will have to be left out to protect the innocent (and those not so innocent). ;)
I came on board with the company in September 2000.
A project was already many months under way with a consulting company to build our company a fairly complex combination site.
The site was to provide:
eCommerce
Partner network of content providers and content distributors
Content management system
And more.
I stumbled across ACS for the first time at that October's Oracle Open World 2000 in SF.
I come from a broad background, and one of the companies I worked for specialized in implementing document workflow and content management solutions such as Filenet, Documentum, inConcert, and others. And I used to implement and support these systems.
I kept asking the consulting company why they opted to build everything we needed from the ground up, rather than getting something off the shelf that was at least 80% match to our needs.
They kept insisting there was no such product, and I didn't buy. But alas the momentum was already under way, and I as the new (and youngest executive by at least 10-15 years) CTO, wasn't yet proven in my opnions and instincts.
I saw the source code of this custom product 2 weeks before launch (I tried for months to get my hands on it before them, but was delayed by the consulting company daily).
I could tell once I saw it, that it was going to be a disaster. We launced on it December 13th despite my protests.
It's been hell ever since.
The system doesn't scale to out needs.
The user & group management system is a joke, and has to be hard coded to add anything new.
Most of the upload and download bulk utilities didn't work right until months more of work on our team's part.
We've been unable to add any new functionality because the system is totally monolithic, and in no way modular.
Any changes to any part of the code causes many unforseen failures.
We needed a system that our small team could manage.
Could work on in a modular fashion. Fixing fires in one area of the system, without breaking everything else.
Easily add features.
Has a high caliber user and group management system.
Flexible workflow and content management system.
Decent eCommerce system.
Strong portal/cobrading capabilities.
Scalable for traffic, content, users, searches, data imports and exports.
We work with thousands of pdf's and images at a time.
If it wasn't for the current systems' bottlenecks, our current 50k titles would be 4x greater already.
After months of haranguing the executives, they each one by one finally reached their pain threshold, and were willing to follow my recommendations to move to another product, and more specifically ACS.
I researched, installed, and used ACS Java 4.6, ACS TCL 4.2, OpenACS 3x. I ran each on my own personal websites over a 4 month period at www.merp.com, tolkienhome.org, lotr.ws, manicmechanic.net, and alpentech.net, colorificsigns.com, and other sites.
I now run my busiest and most community centric site (merp.com) on OpenACS (I liked ACS better, by I personally couldn't afford the Oracle license).
It became clear that ACS 4.2 TCL was easily 80%+ match to our current and future needs.
ACS Java was more in line with out development teams skill set, but the Java version would require to much coding from scratch, and doesn't have any proven implementation or enough community adoption(yet).
Maybe in 1-2 years when there are more modules, etc. We'll convert to that, but for now ACS 4.2 appears to have what we needed, just about ready to go.
Now we just need someone who keep show us the most efficient way to do that. :)
I hope this helps others considering these prospects as well.
I'll post to this thread over the coming months as to any issues, and progress made.
The deadline to launch on this new platform, is a VERY solid March 11th 2002. And if it can be moved up 1-2 months sooner, so much the better.
Thanks,
-Hawke
CTO
MightyWords Inc.
www.mightywords.com
