
Django CMS version 3.3 has been released - DanieleProcida
https://www.django-cms.org/en/blog/2016/05/27/version-3-3-of-django-cms-released/
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JonAtkinson
We recently upgraded one of our sites in development from 3.2 to 3.3. There's
a really appreciated level detail orientation in this release; the speed
increases also help.

It's a pleasure to see Django CMS mature into something this polished. The
stewardship from the OSS developers and Divio is something to be applauded.

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DanieleProcida
Thanks Jon!

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collyw
Anyone got any advice on Django-CMS vs Wagtail vs Mezzanine? We want to build
a job site with a blog component. Any reason to choose or not choose any of
them?

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lojack
Can't weigh in on Mezzanine, and haven't built a site in any in over a year so
things may have changed, but the big difference between Django-CMS and Wagtail
come down to how your content is modeled. If you're looking to have a page
with a variety of widgets that can be mixed and matched, then Django-CMS is
probably more suited. If you've got a structured page where your users are
going to be filling in predefined fields and the pages have more consistency
then Wagtail is probably better.

The backend of Wagtail is completely geared towards authors, and a lot easier
to use in my opinion, and it's got a media library built in. Django-CMS
extends the standard django admin backend, may require a third party plugin
for a media library, and tends to encourage more frontend editing, so authors
will more immediately be able to see how a page looks. It also tends to be
more flexible and can do more (which may be a good thing or a bad thing,
depending on your goals). If you need more control over permissioning,
workflows, etc. then django-cms may be a better choice.

I personally love both of them, and would recommend either.

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bennylope
I've used both as well and this perfectly crystallizes my thoughts on them.
Integrating custom models felt a bit more cumbersome in Wagtail but I've
mostly chalked that up to my own experience gap between the two CMSs.

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emdd
I didn't realize it, but Django CMS got OSS CMS of the Year Award from CMS
Critic. That's very impressive.

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andybak
We've always had our own hand-rolled CMS in Django (mainly because Django CMS
didn't exist when I started).

Last time I looked at Django-CMS I found the UX of the admin to be a bit
clunky - especially as something I'd want to give to clients and their staff.
(Bear in mind I find Wordpress admin to be unbearably clunky too)

Just too many things on screen that would require an explanation, a "don't
touch that or a "you don't need to worry about that".

Has that changed? What are other people's experiences?

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bigmanwalter
I've just spent months research different CMS alternatives and I've found
vanilla Django to be far more pleasurable to work with than any of the add
ons. Most of my clients can't be trusted to pick their own URL structures or
deal with unnecessary buttons in the back end. Django gives me full control :)

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andybak
This is one of the other reasons for hand-rolling our CMS - we got to control
url structure, page layout, lock down WYSIWYG editing to just the required
features (no, you can't have green text!) and countless other things.

The job of a client-facing CMS is NOT to be a flexible general purpose web
editor - it's to allow the client to edit their content and enforcing enough
constraints that it's hard for them to ruin their nice shiny new web site. :)
(if any of my clients are reading - I know you would never do such a thing)

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bigmanwalter
Glad to see I'm on the right track :) I spent too long figuring out that
WordPress and Drupal are terrible, and then it took a while for me to find
Django. Very little written out there about using Django to build
brochureware.

If you don't mind me asking, could you write up a list of all the django apps
and python packages that help the most in your projects? I'm new to the
ecosystem and picking it up as fast as I can but there's only so many hours in
the day. Obviously, I've chosen to do this live in the middle of a contract so
it's sorta eating me alive.

Also, I'll take this chance make my short pitch: If you're ever looking for
some extra hands on a project, I'm currently looking for freelance work. I do
full stack. New to django, but very experienced with MVC frameworks and I'm
quite excellent with frontend javascript. I can even hold my own when it comes
to design and selecting stock photos :) e@ericwaldman.ca

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mkoistinen
I've been using it for a week or so now. NICE! The speed boost is very
noticeable.

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brownsugar100
The speed improvement seems impressive will test soon ;)

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nkozyra
Bummer, getting 403s every time I start a demo. The video looks a little non-
intuitive and blackboxy in the way pages are built. Is there a WYSIWYG-esque
visual layout concept in Django CMS these days?

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DanieleProcida
I think it's a temporary cache-related glitch. Can you try deleting your
browser cache, or simply trying again?

It's working for me here, anyway...

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nkozyra
It's a 403 error, so it's probably _unlikely_ it has anything to do with
browser cache (but of course possible, though I don't know what Django would
need from cookies/webstorage/cache). I did try on another machine in a
incognito window and got the same thing 3 times.

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DanieleProcida
OK, really sorry about that. We're working on it back here, we can definitely
see a caching issue somewhere in the pipeline. Would you try once more in
incognito mode?

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DanieleProcida
Sorry if you had any problems with our demos - it turned out that the A/B
testing tool we had on the form was sometimes raising a 403 error - we've
deactivated it and all is working smoothly now.

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dmonn
The CMS evolved so much in the recent years :) love the development

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rdudek
How's the security of django compared to other CMS'es?

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DanieleProcida
Django takes security extremely seriously:
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/topics/security/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/topics/security/).

Any Django application that follows good practices and doesn't do anything
daft will inherit those security benefits.

Django doesn't permit overwriting of its own program files for update
procedures, for example, which some systems to.

(A CMS is by nature slightly more vulnerable, because of the potential for
mishandling user-submitted content.)

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rdudek
Nice, I may have to check this out. I'm looking to setup a small site for
myself with a blog and security always worries me if I look at things like
Wordpress.

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arendch
That's a speedy step forward ;)

