

BrowseCMS - like Drupal, but in Rails - clofresh
http://aac2009.confreaks.com/07-feb-2009-10-00-browsercms-patrick-peak-and-paul-barry.html

======
evdawg
This should probably be retitled; after playing with it for a bit BrowserCMS
is really nothing like Drupal, nor is it meant to be a Drupal clone. Instead,
it's a powerful general-purpose CMS that will easily manage both static and
dynamic content. If you've looked at Radiant but thought it was too simple,
take a look at this.

Grab the source at <http://github.com/browsermedia/browsercms>.

------
peakpg
Most web design shops which build websites for clients will end up using some
form of Content Management System, to allow those clients to maintain the site
after launch. BrowserCMS is a solution to our firm's problem, which is wanting
the productivity of Rails for building custom websites, but giving clients Web
CMS tools to maintain the site after launch.

I'm the product manager for BrowserCMS, so hopefully I can shed some light on
the 'whys' behind the project. It is certainly not to clone Drupal in Rails.
Drupal is mentioned in the presentation because many developers are familiar
with it, so the enviable first question I hear is 'How is BrowserCMS like
Drupal?'.

Our intent with BrowserCMS is to provide a client friendly CMS. Making a site
maintainable and understandable by non-technical users is the primary goal of
the CMS. We also want to allow Rails developers to be able to customize sites.
We do have a module system (different than Drupal's), which allows developers
to build custom modules (News, Events Calendars, Blog, etc). The dynamic
content can be placed by non-technical users on pages. Obviously, it's a new
project though (still in Beta), so we are about ~4500 modules behind Drupal
here.

Anyway, if folks have more questions, our mailing list is at
<http://groups.google.com/group/browsercms>

------
mechanical_fish
It will take me some time to watch this. Anyone able to summarize right now
why this thing is like Drupal?

("It's a CMS" is not enough. The word "CMS" has many meanings. And Drupal is
arguably a CMS, but it is a specific _flavor_ of CMS. For example: Does
BrowseCMS have a module system reminiscent of Drupal's?)

~~~
clofresh
BrowseCMS itself doesn't seem to have a module system, but since it's Rails,
you can use any of the existing Rails plugins out there.

~~~
mechanical_fish
So here's the thing: Rails plugins are for programmers. I'm no Rails expert,
but I've never encountered a Rails plugin that was configurable without using
Ruby. (Which is, of course, perfectly in line with Rails design goals and
philosophy.)

The majority of Drupal modules are designed to be used without writing a
single line of PHP code. (This is not to say that Drupal developers don't end
up writing PHP code anyway... or that this design philosophy doesn't often
lead to unusable confusion, or that it doesn't entail some big compromises, of
which the tendency to have code stored in the _database_ is one of the most
annoying. But I have seen quite impressive Drupal sites built by people who
refuse to touch PHP. That's a big selling point.)

So, no: This isn't Drupal. But we are getting there!

------
knieveltech
"Drupal works, lets rewrite it in Rails." Other than serving as a thought
experiment on a grand scale where is the perceived benefit of trying to
implement the feature set of an existing CMS in a slower language? Is this an
example of language preference taking to an extreme or are there concrete
benefits to this approach?

~~~
clofresh
If you've every worked with any large scale Drupal deployments, you'll know
that its module system doesn't scale very well in terms of maintainability.
You basically end up with thousands of functions in the global namespace with
little to no abstractions. Rails and Ruby in general are well known for their
syntactic sugar, allowing for more clear and maintainable code.

~~~
knieveltech
I have worked pretty extensively with Drupal and I don't agree with your
assertion that the module system has maintainability issues. Performance
issues, absolutely, but it's quite maintainable.

