Site Admin Features :
CMS Platform Examples
"Content Management" seems to include several functions. Different systems provide different sets of these:
1. Authoring: allowing contributors to write less than complete HTML, and expanding it into valid HTML. Parts of this function can be done on the contributor's machine, or on the server.
2. Page presentation: formatting user content and applying headers, styles, etc. This can be done at page view time using various engines, at some kind of compilation time, or at composition time, and be done on either the server or the contributor's machine.
3. Content Upload: allowing contributors to send their content for inclusion into a site, without giving them the ability to destroy the whole site. This can be done by web form, FTP, rsync, etc. It may be different from actually publishing the pages where they can be seen.
4. Workflow: supporting multiple content creators who have different roles and access to different parts of a site, where changes proposed by one contributor may need approval by other roles before being published. Administration of this facility can be by a control panel, text tables, etc.
5. Content Archiving and Coordination: preventing accidental overwriting of one contributor's changes by another, and supporting the ability to roll back specific changes.
6. Special features: graphics, calendars, trackbacks, shopping carts, email, forums, catalogues, shipping, payment, etc can be added to sites presented by a system.
Users' needs vary: blog software won't work for a catalog site, and vice versa. Each of the first 5 functions is really defined by what mistake it is trying to prevent.
[Above from Tom Van Vleck (http://www.macintouch.com/cms02.html)]
Below are a list of CMS platforms that I've looked at to see what features they offer and how the administrator pages are designed. They offer some excellent examples for us to consider with the framework. Several of these sites (and other opensource CMS platforms) can be demoed at OpenSourceCMS.
Mamboserver.org
This site has the most user friendly administrator pages, with graphical buttons for each section. This would probably appeal to our campus users.
See mambo flash tutorials for administration functions and design:
http://docs.mambo-foundation.org/content/view/51/69/#
This page allows you to log into the demo site for mambo administrators:
http://www.mamboserver.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=116
The Admin Home Page has a set of graphic images that link to the central administrative sections. In addition, the user can use the menu pull-downs at the top of the page to go to specific pages. This mix is user friendly. To the right is a box with basic status and statistics for easy access.
www.joomla.org
The admin pages here are almost identical to mamboserver (it's a variant).
http://demo.joomla.org/demo10/administrator/index2.php
- login: rhackett
- password: bsp1990
Here are a few screen shots:
Big Medium
This software puts the administrative controls on the left side with collapsable menus. It's offers an intuitive user interface. Here are a few screens from this site:
- Big_articlelist.pdf
- Big_articleeditor.pdf
- Big_articlenew.pdf
- Big_SectionEditor_Main.pdf
- Big_SectionEditor.pdf
You can read more about how Big Medium CMS works at http://www.globalmoxie.com/moxie/bigmedium/tour/index.shtml.
Use the registration information provided below to sign into Big Medium at this address:
http://demo.globalmoxie.com/bmadmin/index.html
Your user name: guest19341
Your Password: 6RHAWM
Your e-mail of record is: rhackett@bonner.org
Signing into Big Medium allows you to add, edit and update articles in the 2 sample websites listed above under "your websites." To review your edits on the live websites, click the link under "current site" at the top of the Big Medium control panel.