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Great points and, I think, an accurate assessment of Drupal now and in the near future.

Not sure if this translates to the Python framework v. CMS discussion, but in PHP land I enjoy both. I like writing applications that don't fit the CMS model with Symfony, but I also enjoy *sustainably* extending Drupal. I really *don't* like reinventing the wheel or making things harder for future me (whether actual me or my successor), so if Drupal does 90% of what I need then I'll write a Drupal module to handle the other 10%. That's much more maintainable for us than a custom CMS, and so is better for my institution. There's plenty of work; we don't need to *try* to make ourselves indispensable. :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cary Gordon
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 1:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python CMSs

Random comments and crackpot remarks.

---

I like to think of myself as a programer and architect, not a PHP developer or a Python developer (Rails, JS, Scala, APL. Java, C/+/+...). In 2005, I was either going to build a new CMS in ColdFusion or move to Django, when Drupal presented itself as a possibility. I was no fan of PHP, and I was skeptical.

My first Drupal project was not a CMS. It was putting a user-freindly face on a dSpace library. Drupal won me over because it had well documented APIs and it was XML friendly. Drupal was written in PHP, but avoided the excesses of that language by adopting strong coding standards. Even then, the community was thinking of it as a content management framework.

Since then and across 5 major releases, Drupal has picked up thousands of contributed modules, and, notably, moved to test-driven development. It has kept its tight coding standards, and added tools to help developers maintain those in their own modules.

Coming soon(ish): Drupal 8 we will be based on a framework. Symfony started life as a "Rails for PHP" and has evolved into a movement. What Symfony and Rails (and Drupal) have in common are passionate, dedicated communities. The move to Symfony is expensive for the community, but we feel it is worth the effort, as it will lower the entry bar for Drupal developers who have a background in PHP, Symfony or even Rails and Rails-ish frameworks.

---

As was pointed out earlier, the selling point for using a full-on CMS is support and maintenance.

You can build the coolest, most specific site and/or CMS in the world in Unlambda, Piet or Lolcode, but unless you have a dedicated amanuensis, or perhaps your own reality TV show, whoever owns it had better have a really good insurance policy on you, just in case you get hit by a truck before you get to the documentation step. If they have both the insurance policy AND a truck, watch out.

---

I really like Python, but I seldom use it for anything other that systems-related jobs. Day-to-day, I use Drupal (API-as-language), Symfony, Node, and occasionally Rails. Java drags me in once in a while.

Thanks,

Cary


On Feb 14, 2014, at 8:39 AM, Sarah Thorngate <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I second Jason's approach. Even though I'd have more fun using a 
> framework, I'm currently implementing a CMS (Drupal) for our main site 
> content. If your non-technical library colleagues are anything like 
> mine, they will want LibGuides-level simplicity for editing content. 
> My thinking is that it's worth a little extra pain now to make sure 
> I'm not the only one who can make changes to our content in the 
> future; that can be a huge time suck, and prevent you from moving on to other projects.
> 
> Sarah
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Scott Turnbull 
> <[log in to unmask]
>> wrote:
> 
>> We used Django and Python extensively while I was at Emory.
>> 
>> First let me answer your question.  If Django interests you then 
>> DjangoCMS is a pretty good choice https://www.django-cms.org/en/
>> 
>> I know a few folks who use it and like it quiet a bit.  That said I 
>> know a lot of the community is trending toward Flask for simple apps 
>> in python so it depends on how deep you want to go with what you need 
>> to develop.
>> 
>> In terms of what I'd add, I would reflect what a lot of people have 
>> already said here.  My own philosophy is that the CMS problem has 
>> already been solved and it's not a great fit for a custom framework
>> unless you have very strong use cases that prove it isn't.   I suggest
>> you consider taking care of straight up content with whatever CMS you 
>> want to use (Drupal, Wordpress, etc) and reserve Django and python 
>> for custom apps that need to sit under it.
>> 
>> You can theme the sites so they look the same, leave the CMS to the 
>> CMS and put your django apps under an app. subdomain to make the 
>> experience more ore less seamless.
>> 
>> Just my thoughts, I hope that helps some.
>> 
>> Good luck and let us know what you end up doing,
>> 
>> - Scott
>> 
>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Jason Bengtson 
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> I agree with Josh. In the end it's really going to come down to
>> balancing priorities. On my personal site I don't use any kind of 
>> content management system and have no interest in adopting one. This 
>> has left me free to do as I please without jumping through hoops to 
>> try and get things work with an often intentionally limiting CMS. At 
>> my last University we started with nothing but moved institutionally 
>> to Cascade Server (a horrible mistake if ever there was one). Still, 
>> as rotten as CS is, I was able to shoehorn a lot of web code through 
>> various mechanisms and the campus web team simply kept all the good 
>> apps and such on an application server and linked to them as needed. 
>> Of course, that meant that the pages of the site itself were pretty 
>> static and standardized, in most cases, to the point of 
>> McDevelopment, but it also allowed departmental admins to make 
>> changes without knowing a stitch of web code. I was in  bad position there because I had little access to anything but t!
>> he CMS, so I had to find ways to shoehorn web apps I built into the 
>> CMS and get them to work within its strictures. It didn't help that 
>> we had an upper leadership element that didn't understand the 
>> difference between a web page on our site and a purpose-built web app.
>>> 
>>> Here at RMB, we don't currently use a CMS, but my predecessor built
>> what, in some ways, amounted to a kind of CMS for some of the content 
>> using ColdFusion. We're evaluating a move to a CMS to put broader 
>> content editing in the hands of departments so that they can take 
>> charge of more than news items and the addition of database links. 
>> We'll see how that goes. Needless to say, the good stuff will be kept 
>> far away from the CMS. The biggest advantage to that arrangement on 
>> the computing side is that someone coming in to replace me wouldn't 
>> really need to have an in-depth understanding of php (which is the 
>> main server-side script I use) to get a handle on the majority of the 
>> site. When I was hired I quickly discovered that it was fortunate I 
>> had some ColdFusion in my background, or a lot of what our site did 
>> and how it worked would have been inaccessible until I got up to speed on the language.
>>> 
>>> I guess what it comes down to for me, as we look at this decision, 
>>> is
>> how much CMS flexibility and tweakability I need for the main site, 
>> vs what I want in place for the real web apps that have been built or 
>> are underway (which I can locate separately and build using whatever 
>> framework I see fit). As such you may want to use Django as your 
>> framework on a separate application server, while employing a more 
>> normative CMS for most of your site content.
>>> 
>>> Hopefully at least some of that wasn't too trite.
>>> 
>>> Best regards,
>>> 
>>> Jason Bengtson, MLIS, MA
>>> Head of Library Computing and Information Systems Assistant 
>>> Professor, Graduate College Department of Health Sciences Library 
>>> and Information Management University of Oklahoma Health Sciences 
>>> Center 405-271-2285, opt. 5
>>> 405-271-3297 (fax)
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> http://library.ouhsc.edu
>>> www.jasonbengtson.com
>>> 
>>> NOTICE:
>>> This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual to whom 
>>> it
>> is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, 
>> confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure. If the reader of 
>> this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent 
>> responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you 
>> are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying 
>> of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received 
>> this communication in error, please immediately notify us by replying 
>> to the original message at the listed email address. Thank You.
>>> 
>>> On Feb 14, 2014, at 8:30 AM, Joshua Welker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> There are two conflicting issues here. If you want ease of 
>>>> development, you want a framework. If you want ease of content 
>>>> creation, you want a CMS. As a developer, it's always my preference 
>>>> to go for ease of development and use a framework. Designing 
>>>> plugins and modules just
>> sucks.
>>>> A simple plugin like displaying dates on a page is stupidly 
>>>> complicated when you have to integrate it with the entire CMS 
>>>> rendering engine. But
>> I
>>>> have to acknowledge that it is better for me as the developer to do 
>>>> a little extra legwork than requiring all the non-techie content 
>>>> creators
>> to
>>>> do the extra legwork. That said, it isn't _too_ hard to implement a
>> basic
>>>> wysiwyg editor like CKeditor in most frameworks that would 
>>>> eliminate
>> much
>>>> of the difficulty for content creators.
>>>> 
>>>> The bigger issue for me is that, when you use a framework, you more 
>>>> or less guarantee that anyone inheriting your code is going to be 
>>>> facing a steep learning curve, possibly insurmountable depending on 
>>>> their level
>> of
>>>> programming knowledge. With a CMS, there is built-in documentation 
>>>> and a support community for 95% of functionality, and then you just 
>>>> have to document the 5% or so of code that you custom wrote.
>>>> 
>>>> Having said all that, I have to point out the amazing Yii PHP framework.
>>>> It is so extremely easy to build a data-driven app. If you ever 
>>>> want a
>> PHP
>>>> framework, use that. For Python, I'd go with Django just because it 
>>>> has
>> a
>>>> better support community and is slightly easier than Flask for 
>>>> database functionality like ORM.
>>>> 
>>>> Josh Welker
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
>>>> Behalf Of Coral Sheldon-Hess
>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:14 PM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Python CMSs
>>>> 
>>>> Hi, everyone!
>>>> 
>>>> I've gotten clearance to totally rewrite my library's website in 
>>>> the framework/CMS of my choice (pretty much :)). As I have said on 
>>>> numerous occasions, "If I can get paid to write Python, I want to 
>>>> do that!" So, after some discussion with my department 
>>>> head/sysadmin, we're leaning toward Django.
>>>> 
>>>> Here's a broad question, re: Python and Django: If you've made the
>> switch,
>>>> what has your experience been? Has Django (or any other Python
>> framework)
>>>> given you something cool that was lacking in your previous 
>>>> language/framework/CMS? Has it helped you build something awesome? 
>>>> Have you found it enabling or limiting in any way? If you were 
>>>> going to sell people on (or against) using it, what would your 
>>>> arguments be? I'm a relative newbie to Python, and a total newbie 
>>>> to Django, so even if
>> there
>>>> was a tutorial you found useful, or some caveat you learned along 
>>>> the
>> way,
>>>> I'm interested. :)
>>>> 
>>>> And then a more specific question: Given the following 
>>>> requirements, do you have a Django-based CMS you'd recommend? (Of 
>>>> course, I'll also do my own research, but I'd love to see what 
>>>> other libraries' experiences have been and what's popular, right 
>>>> now.)
>>>> * There's a chance we'll want to offer other editors access to it, 
>>>> at some point, so it would be nice if I can provide a WYSIWYG 
>>>> interface, which I also am going to want the option to *turn off*, 
>>>> for my own
>> sanity.
>>>> * We're a Springshare-heavy library with Summon and big secret 
>>>> API-based plans, so easy JavaScript (preferably jQuery) integration is a must.
>>>> * It should play nicely with MySQL.
>>>> * Because I probably won't be here forever, it's of the utmost
>> importance
>>>> that whatever we end up with is easy to maintain.
>>>> * I'm used to MODx's page-ID model, where I can move pages around, 
>>>> and
>> as
>>>> long as I don't delete/recreate a page (thereby changing its ID), I
>> don't
>>>> have to change any links anywhere else in the CMS. I'd really like 
>>>> something that will work equally well, since the odds that I'll 
>>>> nail the information architecture on the first try are probably 
>>>> slim. :) (Maybe this one should go without saying, since I know 
>>>> WordPress and many other CMSs do this, but if you have to err, err 
>>>> on the side of being explicit,
>>>> right?)
>>>> * A nice forms-builder plugin (module?) would be a great thing to 
>>>> have,
>> as
>>>> well. We use FormIt in MODx, and now I'm spoiled.
>>>> 
>>>> And, I mean, if there's a CMS on top of another Python framework 
>>>> you
>> think
>>>> I should be considering, feel free to throw that out as a 
>>>> possibility, too!
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you!
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Coral Sheldon-Hess
>>>> http://sheldon-hess.org/coral
>>>> @web_kunoichi
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Scott Turnbull
>> APTrust Technical Lead
>> [log in to unmask]
>> www.aptrust.org
>> 678-379-9488
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Sarah Thorngate
> Digital Services Librarian
> North Park University
> [log in to unmask]
> 773-244-4562
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