webgen users - Nov 2008 - Webgen as a backend for a end-user friendly CMS?

Hi all,

I just had the idea of using webgen as a backend for an end-user 
friendly CMS. Such an end-user would for example be someone who has no 
programming or computer skills that go beyond using M$ Word. After 
logging into a friendly, graphic-based admin area of the website (e.g. 
PHP or Ruby-based), he/she can easily create, change, delete menu nodes, 
text content, and do a lot of other things. The initial creation of the 
templates and the initial filling of content would have to be set up by 
an programmer in collaboration with the end-user, of course. After that, 
the user''s site would to an great extent be self-managed by the
end-user.

The main advantage of this approach would be that the generated site is 
a static one, which can be hosted on the server with the PHP or 
Ruby-based admin area itself (which would lessen response time due to 
its static nature) OR be copied over and hosted on a purely static 
account, which today is free for nearly everyone who has a private 
internet provider (which would "outsource" hosting cost).

Now, would that be an legitimate idea or just "Yet another CMS" that 
would have grave disadvantages/inflexibility in comparison to other 
existing solutions?

Could such an admin area be programmed in Ruby, maybe as extensions to 
the existing webgen core?

Thoughts appreciated,

FWIW,
Michael

Am Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:58:35 +0100
schrieb Michael Franzl <franzl at
corporatematters.at>:
> Now, would that be an legitimate idea or just "Yet another CMS"
that
> would have grave disadvantages/inflexibility in comparison to other 
> existing solutions?
> 
> Could such an admin area be programmed in Ruby, maybe as extensions
> to the existing webgen core?
> 
> Thoughts appreciated,
Sounds like a nice idea. Have you seen the webgen webgui? You can start
it by executing `webgen webgui`. It will start a Ramaze application and
pop up a browser window with the application with which you can create
and render websites.

One could use this as a basis for the application you described.
However, webgen currently does not provide an API for manipulating the
files of a webgen website (except for creating a website). There is
another Ruby application called nanoc [1] which also generates static
websites but is focused on providing an API sothat the application can
be used as a CMS backend. You may wanna look at that.

As for adding an admin area as described: I think this wouldn''t be to
difficult to add to webgen (or to the webgui). A webgen website can
currently be instantiated and initialized by

    require ''webgen/website''
    ws = Webgen::Website.new(directory)
    ws.init

After that the configuration is loaded and everything is good to go. A

    ws.render

would render the website or you could use `ws.config` to view/set
configuration options. One could add the admin area code and use the
above methods (and other webgen API methods if needed) for doing the
work.

I think that if a user has access to a PHP powered server, he could
just install one of the many PHP CMS''s out there and has a viable
solution. Download speed or response time for such a small incarnation
of a CMS would be sufficient for a user you described. One thing I
would like to do is to create a nice application (either a
web app as the webgui or a real rich client) that allows you to
maintain a website on your computer. I think that this is much more
useful than a server based approach for most people.

Just my 2 cents,
  Thomas

[1]: http://nanoc.stoneship.org/

> There is
> another Ruby application called nanoc [1] which also generates static
> websites but is focused on providing an API sothat the application can
> be used as a CMS backend. You may wanna look at that.
Thanks for your response. I will investigate a bit into 
nanoc and Ramaze and will come back to this topic.

Michael