From the number of people present we can safely assume that CMS is critical to many OpenACS projects. I came away from this gathering with the following impressions:
- Whoever needed CMS, they have built their system apart from OpenACS CMS.
- Very few people knew how the other Open source CMS functioned.
- Very few people have played with the current CMS module. Some felt that it did not work, Jeff Davies contends the problem lies with the UI. The underlying technology (data model and Oracle packages) are well thought out and function correctly.
- No consensus on the important components of CMS. Do we need an asset management system? Do we need a product to allow users to manage templates (i.e. DreamWeaver)?
- The new workflow breaks CMS. Not very promising.
I think as a community we need to define a framework (perhaps a new requirement). Organizations that have build a CMS should share their experiences (why did they not use the CR)
Ronald Haynes suggested that we should download some of the packages available on the net and analyse their advantages and disadvantages.
Jeff Davies's believes we should incrementally build the modules. If we have a CMS product, lets make sure that it works (or used) properly. Streamline the UI. Later in the day Jeff also mentioned that about 3 weeks are required to redo the UI.
