“Re: Ugly Secrets of Content Management Systems”

Mark Morgan said:

>What are "workflow features", if I may ask?

Some examples:

• Static publishing
• Message labels
• Version control

There's actually more, but I don't want to spoil it all this early, and some of it is private to this customer's project. The point is, workflow features make it easier for a site with a LOT of content and a LOT of guests to have a standard workflow that takes content from assignment (to a writer or artist) through to publishing.

>I think you're downplaying the real value of Conversant.  As you're always
>telling me (and everyone), Conversant is an groupware package with a CMS built
>on it.  But you can build anything on it, groupware speaking.  It's the most
>important thing about Conversant:  if a company's needs change, so can
>Conversant.   Say Inside builds a custom CMS.  Can they then use the same
>tools they sweated over to manage group scheduling?  No--time for another
>custom tool for that.  Hope the programmers for the original tool are still
>around... And so on, one custom tool at a time.  As the staff changes, each
>new person has to be brought up to speed with the new tool.  Ugh!

I certainly don't mean to downplay the importance of Conversant, but you have to get beyond the "coolness" aspect of it and actually get some work done, at some point. Conversant as a groupware platform is useless if the applications we build on top of it are not (or can not be) as good as comparable apps from other companies.

If a potential customer is looking for a strong Content Management System, then telling them about Conversant's event calendar isn't going to cut it. They're interested in Conversant as a CMS, period. The fact that they can use it for more than that might be interesting, but if we're going to compete then we have to do it on implemented features. It's like operating systems: hardly anybody chooses their OS based on how easy it is to write apps for it. Instead they choose their OS based on power or ease of use, and the apps that are already written for it.

>Disclaimer:  I'm happy being able to program my watch correctly, and I haven't
>worked in a normal corporate environment in years.  But it's got to be easier
>to build everything on a standard system than to custom design, and redesign,
>all the time.

Sure, that's true. However, the point of the article was probably in the last paragraph, where he said that everybody should be using JSP to build their CMS's, as JSP is already open-source. My point is actually the opposite: I don't think most companies want to build their own, but rather that they have a right to expect their vendors (Macrobyte) to work like crazy to provide them with exactly what they need. That's the benefit of our plugin architecture... we can add customer - specific features very quickly.

Great comments, Mark, thanks for taking the time.

Seth