CMS Roundup: Introduction
Over the next few weeks, I am going to review a handful of web content management systems for the community college where I work, and I will be blogging my reviews here in a series called “CMS Roundup“. This review will cover mainly ColdFusion solutions, since that is my love and specialty, but a few non-CF packages may sneak their way into the mix.
Scale. I will be reviewing open source, entry level, and mid-market packages, which places the price range from free to $150,000. Enterprise-level solutions in the $200,000 to 7-digit numbers will not be considered because they are ridiculously out of our price range.
Weighted features. There are some features that I will be particularly interested in. The system has to be very easy for a non-technical user to understand. The developer should be able to set up various templates and security for different site areas. The marketing department should be able to enforce page approval and workflow to ensure the accuracy, consistency, and propriety of the content. Easy integration with existing external applications should be simple as well. These are just some of the features that will be considered; the strengths and weaknesses specific to each CMS will be reviewed as well. And I’m sure I’ll get a feeling for more desirable features as I progress through the reviews.
The players. My list of CMS’s for consideration is a fluid one, so please make recommendations while I’m in the middle of this process. The open source ColdFusion players are FarCry, Gerobase, and Katapult; commercial ColdFusion players are CommonSpot, ShadoCMS, HotBanana, and Savvy. I’ll look at a couple non-CF contenders, like Estrada and CrownPeak in the commercial space and Plone, Joomla, and Drupal in the open source space.
Likely, this journey will end with a summary of strengths and weaknesses of all CMS’s, including winners in each category, and of course, the name of the CMS that ultimately earned a new customer. 
The game is afoot.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I also would suggest Contens (contens.com) as a CF & Fusebox/MachII solution.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
… and there is also Typo3 (typo3.com) which is one of my favorite one in PHP world after Drupal.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Thanks, Oğuz. I’ll look into these and consider adding them to the mix.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
NQcontent (nqcontent.com) is also a CF based commercial solution. It is not popular in US like Contens but these 2 are really good at their job.
I look forward to hear your analyze reports.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
You may like to check out AssetNow NX (www.assetnow.com) - our CMS uses the XStandard XHTML editor and has very strong web standards support. Development is easy with template and widgets. Meet the other feature criteria on your list.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:23 am
I think FarCry is too cool open-source cms: it is extend-able and too quickly you can deliver the functionality to your clients. simply this is CF world’s fastest development language.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I liked the concept of FarCry, but in my testing; it did not pass your requirement (and mine) for ease of use for non tech people
July 26th, 2007 at 10:02 am
@Mark: I am suspecting that as well. I am going to review it and see what happens.
@Sana: I have heard similar sentiments. This doesn’t quite meet my requirements, though: As the IT guy, I want to swoop in, implement the CMS, and get out with little overhead. On a secondary level of consideration, I want the developer tools. But most importantly, the CMS is for the non-tech users.
@Johan: Thanks. I totally missed this one.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Cripe, this round-up would have been most useful to use a year ago when we were looking. We ended up going with Plone due to its 3 minute up and running install and no training needed for non-techies to figure it out. It’s crazy fast, and super easy to use.
But if you want to customize it (add modules/extension, etc…)… good luck. It’s based on the ZOPE DB which is some object relational DB that you can’t just query using SQL, and the programming is based on Python… which I’ve yet to meet a single programmer who knows that.
So in hindsite… not sure if it was the right decision. But it’s free.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Looking forward to your results. There are a few more not listed which I mention here:
http://coolskool.blog-city.com/coldfusion_content_management_systems.htm
July 27th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
@Darth
Yeah I looked at Plone and rejected it for all of the reasons you listed.. but my boss like it ’cause it was “easy for non tech people” and took some hits rejecting it and his other choice “internet dashboard” a .net CMS with lots of prebuilt web apps but didn’t see any way to modify/ customize it.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Thanks for including us in your list. Let me know how I can help in your evaluation in any way.