[imc-cms] [Plone-developers] Indymedia.org CMS Developers Survey - please read!

[Justizin]

On 2/10/07, ryan <ryan at linefeed.org> wrote:
> Dear Plone development group,
>
> We are writing on behalf of a working group within the Indymedia
> network which is tasked with researching content management systems.
> We are contacting you as part of a survey we are conducting of
> development teams of active CMS software projects.
>
> Indymedia is a global network of websites which acts as a
> clearinghouse for independent media. We've been successfully deploying
> real world applications of user networks and user-generated content
> websites since 1999. There are over 100 IMC groups around the world
> who meet in real life and operate these websites.
>
> Over the years, we have internally created a number of CMS projects
> with varying success. An overview of those projects can be found here:
> https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/WebHome
>
> In 2006, a conference of Indymedia developers was held in Sao Paulo,
> Brazil. Indymedia programmers from all over the world came together
> and met about the state of Indymedia CMS'es. A resolution was adopted
> that we should abandon our miscellaneous and scattered projects, find
> a mainstream open source CMS and dedicate all of our resources to
> customizing that software and contributing to that project.
>
> The first step in that process is conducting a survey of active CMS
> software projects. As part of that, we are contacting each CMS
> developer team with this same email and survey. We are asking that
> anyone who is an active developer for a particular CMS project respond
> in part or completely to the questions listed below. The information
> and insight we get from your responses will help us find the perfect
> match for our development plans.
>
> Some of the questions are simple and we already know ("what language
> does the CMS use?"). However, we believe we'll find value in getting
> answers like this from everyday developers on the project.
>
> We thank you in advance for your time. When we find the right
> project match, we hope there will be a mutual exchange which will
> greatly benefit both Indymedia and the CMS software teams.
>
> Signed,
> ryan, from the imc-cms working group
> imc-cms at lists.indymedia.org
>
> ---------- (survey begins) ----------
>
> INDYMEDIA CMS DEVELOPERS SURVEY
> Please fill in as many questions as you can. When you are completed,
> you should email your responses to imc-cms at lists.indymedia.org
>
> 1) Survey Part 1 - Personal Details
>    a) Your name?

Justin Alan Ryan

>    b) Your geographic location?

Varies.. In the past three years: San Francisco, Austin, Houston, San Antonio

>    c) How long have you worked with Plone and what work do you do
>       with the project?

I've been working with Plone and Zope for about 4-5 years, since 2002
or 2003.  I'm not a "core developer", but have been working with a
large organization, the Association for Computing Machinery, for a
couple of years on a handful of intertwined projects.

>    d) Do you work on any other CMS projects?

No, but I have some partners, clients, and other associates who do,
esp Drupal which is very popular within the ACM community but, by all
verdicts, simply not up to the task of large-scale ECM or repeatable,
documentable, simplicity.

> 2) Survey Part 2 - CMS Basics
>    a) What programming language is Plone written in?

Python, I originally learned about Plone when looking for a
replacement for existing python web framework at Rackspace Managed
Hosting, an early "Pythonology Success Story"[0].

>    b) What is the backend database used by Plone?

ZODB by default, would like to see us using something like knit with
xml versioned on the filesystem, but will take the community a few
years to come around.

>    c) Are there other servers required (application server, Tomcat,
>       etc)?

ZServer is the HTTP Server generally used in Zope / Plone deployments,
is written in Python.  I generally recommend a chain involving
front-end http server and caches like Apache and Squid.

>    d) How do you describe the overall software design of Plone?

"Evolution, not Revolution" has been the mantra for a while.
Plone/Archetypes was intended to provide a Zope3-shaped box for us to
deploy applications in using Zope2 until Zope3 became available.  In
that time, Plone came to represent a whole lot more and is being
rearchitected to use aspect-oriented, interface and adapter driven
Zope3 framework.

>    e) Can you give details about real-world scaleability
>       considerations for Plone?

I use Plone largely and specifically because I found it in my quest to
rebuild an Object-Relational Mapped application in such a way that
Object Oriented structures could be cached across requests in memory -
a persistent application, we of Rackspace's CORE Team agreed that this
was necessary to scale beyond 3 or 4 machines and serve more than a
couple hundred highly interactive users at a rate of about 10-20
clicks per minute.  It's been my experience that it scales far more
sensibly than traditional SQL/RDBMS apps built with tools like PHP,
but still requires serious consideration, experimentation, etc..

> 3) Survey Part 3 - CMS Functionality
>    a) A core feature of our software is the ability for anonymous
>       users to post media to appear on the site. Is this easily
>       added to a site using Plone?

Sure, and I use a service from captchas.net to protect this sort of thing.

>    b) Can you describe the site search functionality available?

It's great, Google-quality full-text indexing, search appliance and
other external search integration, the entire system is designed to
comply with accepted information architecture and standards.

>    c) How is RSS/XML/RDF support included?

I think we should dump the ZODB for XML/RDF-ish tech, and use XSLT
instead of our proprietary templating language, TAL, which is pretty
good but a barrier to client acceptance.  RSS support is included OOTB
and as of Plone 2.5, site configuration and migration can in many
cases be highly xml-driven.

Most of us are still dipping our toes into this tech, and most add-ons
don't support it yet, but progress is being made.  For instance, the
utility to generate skeleton style add-ons is now almost entirely
xml-driven, rather than containing a lot of boilerplate python install
code.

>    d) We would like to have one server per site which allows many
>       instances of actual websites, each with different admin logins
>       and different websites altogether. Is this easy to set up with
>       Plone?

Yep, this is the default arrangement of things.

>    e) Can you describe the multimedia support in the software? We
>       allow users to upload and manipulate online all types of media -
>       mpeg, mp3, ogg, jpg, pdf, etc.

Facilities for manipulation of media files could be extended and will
probably grow in coming years, but support for things like podcasting,
flash players for audio / video, image resizing and other simple
transforms, etc.. are strong, with add-ons in all cases except for
images, which are supported by default.

>    f) Internationalization is very important to us. Many of our sites
>       support 2-3 or more languages. Can you describe how this is
>       accomplished in Plone?

LinguaPlone, an add-on which is destined some day to float into the
core of Plone, makes this very simple.  An example site can be seen
at:

  http://montreal.siggraph.org/

>    g) What types of anti-abuse or anti-spam measures are in the code?

Via add-ons there is captcha support, I often use invite systems to
keep membership from being 100% open, and there are a few as-of-yet
incomplete stories about approval-based or payment-based membership
which have grown a lot of promise recently.

>    h) Is there a calendar included in the codebase?

Some basic functionality is in the core, a small calendar and code to
handle the basic structure of events and, via Dublin Core, and there
are addons also with growing promise in this area.

>    i) How do you describe how a user would edit a given piece of content
>       on the website, or briefly describe the model used in this part
>       of the functionality?

If a user is logged in and has access to edit a given piece of
content, it should be self-evident by means of an "edit" and some
other tabs along the top of the central / content area of the page.
This interface vastly improves in the upcoming Plone 3.0 and has even
be partially backported to 2.5.

>    j) How do you describe any type of user moderation system that
>       is built into Plone?

As mentioned above, there is a growing story for this, it has worked
in the past but needs to be built into Plone core because the past
solution fell out of favor and only ever intermittently worked.