[seek-web] CMS and Portals

[Steve Tekell]

In order to get us on the same page when discussing CMS and Portals, I've
put a together a little intro for those who might be interested.

===============================================
====== CMS - "Content Management System" ======
-----------------------------------------------

A CMS provides features as such versioning, auditing, workflow, publishing,
access control, content repositories, content creation tools and methods to
bring manageability and order to a content-centric web site.  

A simple example would be a sytem used by an online newpaper.  Articles are
entered into a structured template and stored in a content repository
(possibly a database).  The article would then go through an approval
process such that mutliple versions, editors approval and the future
publication date are handled within the system which also controlls access
for the different roles.  After approval and according to publication date
the article is published onto the public website.   Of course content is
more complicated than single articles and the nature of content can vary
greatly between different domains.  So a CMS will need to meet more complex
situations and offer appropriate customizations.

Some CMS solutions...

Commercial CMS
--------------
Vignette http://www.vignette.com/
Interwoven http://www.interwoven.com/
(plus most all major app vendors, IBM, MS, SAP, etc offer some CMS solution)

FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) CMS
---------------------------------------------
Plone http://plone.org
OpenCMS http://www.opencms.org
Red Hat CMS http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/cms/
Apache Lenya http://cocoon.apache.org/lenya/
(there are tons of open source CMSes, 50-100, partly because they generally
stink so people keep starting their own)

Note: PostNuke is not a CMS, it's a Portal.

Standards
---------
In general there aren't any standards and it's very difficult to switch
between or mix CMSes.  JSR-170 (Java Specification Request #170 - Java
Content Repositories) is coming, but I don't know how significant that it
will be to the CMS world as a whole.

Related Concepts:
-----------------
CMF - Content Management Framework 
this is a set of technologies upon which you can build a CMS without having
to do it from scratch.  If no CMS met your needs you might then go to lower
level and pick a CMF and build your own.  Also, it's worth noting that there
may be several CMSes using the same CMF.  Plone and Easy Publisher are built
on Zope.  Lenya and Jetspeed v2 are going to use Jakarta (Apache) Slide.

LMS - Learning Management System
LCMS - Learning Content Management System.
(more on these later, I hope)

========================================
======  Portals (and Portlets)  ========
----------------------------------------