

Osmek - phirschybar
http://osmek.com/

======
wiremine
This is more awesome than it first appears.

They are a SaaS "Create Once, Publish Everywhere" (COPE) provider. NPR
popularized the term a few years back, and the use it in their production
environment. I have one client actively using the same architecture in
production, and they love it. They use a Django site as the backend, and
node.js-powered websites to publish the content.

Some links on the topic:

[http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-
once-...](http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-
everywhere/)

[http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Do-you-COPE-Create-
Once-39120...](http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Do-you-COPE-Create-
Once-3912082.S.117059484)

[http://www.slideshare.net/KMcGrane/adapting-ourselves-to-
ada...](http://www.slideshare.net/KMcGrane/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-
content-12133365)

[http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-
ada...](http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-
content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/)

[http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/adaptive_content_manage...](http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/adaptive_content_management)

[http://meetcontent.com/blog/structured-content-an-
overview/](http://meetcontent.com/blog/structured-content-an-overview/)

One of the uphill battles they face is the nomenclature. Most people couple
their content creation tools with the publishing tools. I.e., we think of a
CMS as both the editor and the content renderer. This sort of system decouples
that.

I think they are smart starting with a PHP library: that seems to target a
broad install base, and publishing in PHP using an API is much easier than
building a solid CMS in PHP.

~~~
tomp
Didn't programs such as Microsoft Word / Macromedia Dreamweaver / Microsoft
FrontPage provide something similar a very long time ago? Maybe I'm confusing
this with something else, but IIRC there were some settings in the menus that
allowed you to set up remote hosts (but I'm not sure because I never used
them).

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nailer
I've read the website, but I don't know what this is or what value it
provides.

My understanding so far is: rather than using a CMS, I code something (not a
CMS?) in whatever language I like and Osmek helps me or makes it better in
some way... ?

~~~
Adirael
What I understand is that you publish your content using Osmek and then use
their API to pull it where you need it, be it a webapp written in JS or an iOS
app.

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ashray
It took a little while but I'm thinking the main point here is that you store
your content in the Osmek system.

Then the content can be published to multiple sources such as an iOS app,
website, tablet app, mobile website.

I just don't understand how this is different from having your own database
with the content. What's the difference between this and say Django's auto
generated admin interface (setup with proper permissions) ?

Why can't my apps just pull stuff out of the database or through my own API ?

I'm sure I'm missing something because this seems expensive so it must be
worth a lot to somebody. But why ?

~~~
lifeformed
I still don't quite get it. Can you provide an example? Let's say I want to
make a shared blog with Osmek. My writers use Osmek's interface to write
articles, and I use the API to get the articles into blog? So it's storing the
article content and it's metadata for me?

------
ishener
It's a very nice idea. It can be very helpful when working with content
people. It really can save a lot of time developing and configuring the
content management.

In my opinion, the interface is a little confusing. It took me a long time to
figure out how to create custom fields, and I was looking for it! From my
experience with CMS, it's by far the most important feature. It should be very
easy, especially for content editors to create by themselves...

Other than that, it can be very useful. I'll remember it for a time I'll need
it...

~~~
eddieroger
Can you explain to the rest of us what it is then? All I know for certain is
that it's not a CMS, and it doesn't care what language I write in.

~~~
ishener
It's a way to let content editors enter the content in a nice interface. Than
the programmer can write code that uses their api to get that content the
editors uploaded.

Yes, there are content management systems that you can install in your own
server and manage it. But this system removes that hassle from you.

------
gyaresu
If you're creating Name and Email Address fields then please follow the W3C
naming guide. [http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-
names](http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names)

I, for example only have one name.

Thanks :)

------
borplk
For those who are struggling to understand what this is,

It's basically a 'content store' that provides a supposedly nice interface for
people to create all sorts of content and then it exposes that content back to
you via an API that you can use in other places such as a CMS.

Good idea in theory, hard to execute because there is no common
interface/standard.

If there was a common interface/standard you could use/build services like
this to essentially decouple your content/data from the skin on top.

For example you could just pull the plug on CMS X, and 'connect' your content
to CMS Y if it has a better user experience.

Easier said than done.

~~~
Gormo
> It's basically a 'content store' that provides a supposedly nice interface
> for people to create all sorts of content and then it exposes that content
> back to you via an API that you can use in other places such as a CMS.

So, essentially, it's a database with a shiny frontend?

------
egsec
Is this is just a cloud provider for something similar to a de-coupled CMS,
ala Symfony CMF ([http://cmf.symfony.com/](http://cmf.symfony.com/)) ?

The idea is that the content is not locked to your CMS, like an old Joomla
system where the content and meta-data are hard-coded in the schema. I would
be concerned about latency, etc for hosting something like this.

There service holds and organizeds the DB storage for you. The advantage would
have to come with redundnacy/latency versus rolling your own datastore. If you
are doing a NoSQL or JSON type storage that allows an arbitrary format, then
you are free to reuse it wherever.

------
kirinan
This is a Backend as a service for Content management. Its basically
Salesforce for "Content Management", which isn't a bad idea. However, for my
two cents: The documentation is lacking and as a potential customer I don't
quite know enough information about the product to make an informed decision
to say yes/no (on spending money on it). I had this same idea a while back
(except not content, mainly blogging as a hosted web service), and didn't
chose to pursue it. I do believe that there may be a market, and god knows
word press can use some competition. God speed and good luck! Oh and just at a
final glance, the API Documentation can be cleaner.

------
zekenie
So you write your code and where you would have content you say something like
{{bucketname}} and you can mess with it in the cms? What's the tempting
language?

------
innino
I have no idea about the value of this service, but I have to say, the website
is pretty good-looking. A great advertisement for flat design - the clean
typography and icons combined with bold, simple colours give the page a real
confidence. The content seems to expand to "own" the entire screen, while
maintaining a lightness and freshness in a way which the older style of design
just doesn't seem capable.

------
madbiz
Looks like an interesting service for managing typical application content
like mail templates. A free tier would be great to try it on a project. Does
anybody know similar services or open source projects that are mainly a CMS
with an API combined with a good end-user editor? Git based would be a plus.

------
tjpd
It'd be good to see more client libraries. PHP is popular but having more will
help enormously with adoption. Even just stubbed out libraries on Github can
be a useful starting point for the community to build on.

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lnanek2
Pretty expensive for what is essentially a replacement for phpmyadmin or Rails
scaffolds...cheap content admin usable by non-programmers separate from the
actual site/app.

------
tmslnz
getsymphony.com seems to be quite close to this, self-hosted.

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_mikz
So it is CMS with an API? With metadata option.

~~~
eloisant
More like a CMS that is just an API. That makes all the difference.

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skore
Just a small thing: The contrast on the Pricing Table makes it very hard to
read. #ccc on #fff = eyestrain.

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warble
How is this different than a database?

~~~
jacques_chester
It looks like a semi-structured database with certain common inbuilt types. A
bit like a lot of 4GL products that were around in the 90s.

------
lazyant
SaaS CMS backend I guess

